Item: Hyper-V
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Hyper-V

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We utilize Hyper-V on a few servers to make best use of some of our hardware and to compartmentalize our infrastructure onto particular nodes. It was set up to help reduce hardware use. Specifically, we have Archicad in the office and it requires server nodes for each version, and we used to have a separate physical server for each version. We now have one with 2 VMs running on it.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Reduce hardware
Save money
Maximize investment on kit

Cons

Setup can be a little difficult and required some reading up on Hyper-v to get it all running properly
When we used failover clustering, we had some issues with performance so had to stop that
It can be tricky with updates

Return on Investment

It's been great at reducing physical infrastructure at our office.
Helps maximize investment on the hardware we get.
With the infrastructure on one box it has increased the impact if there is a hardware failure, so have to ensure good backups are kept.

Alternatives Considered

VMware ESXi

The alternative is VMware, which we also use on a cluster. As this also has a free version, it's a tough one to compare. For us the reason it was chosen was as Windows licensing allows for 2 VMs with the standard license, so fitted easily into our particular setup requirements.

Support Rating

We haven't had to use any support with Microsoft for Hyper-V and tend to find all answers we need are relatively easy to find on user forums and help websites, so nothing else I can really report on here in terms of quality of support or my feelings towards it at the moment.

Key Insights

Do you think Hyper-V delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Hyper-V's feature set?

Yes

Did Hyper-V live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Hyper-V go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Hyper-V again?

Yes

Other Software Used

VMware ESXi, Veeam Availability Suite, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365

Likelihood to Recommend

It's great if you already have a Windows server and need to create some more servers (using the 2 VM licensing allowance with server standard). It does pose an issue for backups though, as you have to be careful what and how you back them up. We've opted for Veeam and this seems to work well.

Hyper-V Feature Ratings

Comments

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A great built in Hyperviser solution