Item: Hyper-V
Rating: 8
Author: Charles R. Coggins III

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are currently using Hyper-V for the deployment of all of our servers. Our main servers house Hyper-V and we deploy 9-10 VM's off of each server and those servers host data for our cloud customers. I would consider Hyper-V to be the backbone of our company. I also personally use Hyper-V here for development and testing purposes. We are a software company so I often create a bunch of VM's for myself and other users to test new software or if we happen to find broken/bugs in our software. We are able to make a replica of the environment that is not running correctly and it will allow us to troubleshoot the issues without further messing up the production environment.

Pros and Cons

Virtualization - Hyper-V does this well and I feel like it might be the best and easiest software out there to use. I am able to spin up virtual environments very quickly. Hyper-V also has a "quick" add feature where you don't even need to have the OS ISO on your computer and you can choose between Windows 10, Server or Ubuntu.
Setup and Management - Hyper-V is pretty straight forward. When I first started using this it seemed a bit confusing, but after a couple of days of playing with it you end up finding out everything is pretty straight forward and really not that complicated.
Just turn off the VM and go into the settings and you can manage the Storage, Memory, and CPU's.
Setting a VM up on a Domain is super easy and you can create a static mac address for the machine so in Windows DHCP you can use that static mac address to give that VM an IP it can use every time it boots up.
I think the best feature is the ability to create "Checkpoints" - If you are going to be doing something over and over and you need to start from the same point with each test you can setup your VM the way you need it prior to testing. Create a Checkpoint. Do your tests and then revert back to the Checkpoint so the system will be exactly how you had it setup prior to testing. Then you can go on and do your second set of tests and so on.
Another great thing is the ability to just backup the vhdx file.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this review we run most everything from Hyper-V. I make weekly backup of the vhdx files which are the Virtual Environment files.
This is an extreme example, but if the building ever caught on fire I could go out and buy like 15 PCs at Best Buy and load up Hyper-V on them and just import the vhdx files and be back up and running fairly quickly.

The only issue I have with Hyper-V is I am unable to use Veeam on my Windows 2016 Server to backup my FreeBSD HAProxy VM.
There is some sort of checkpoint issue that I have been unable to figure out, but it works just fine on my Windows 2012 Servers. I do believe this is a Microsoft issue and not a Veeam issue though.
Another thing that could be useful that Hyper-V does not have would be some sort of GUI that shows the status of all the VM's on a given server to help us manage them easier and know what is going on. However, I do have Zabbix for this and that does a good job at monitoring all my servers.

Return on Investment

Hyper-V has been nothing but positive for our company.
With the way Virtualization works it has saved us a bunch of money vs. having to go out and build a server for each environment we needed to host our customers.
The ability to tell and show our customers that their data is safe due to the ease of backup has been wonderful.
The ease of deployment is has also been very beneficial for us. If I need to get a new server up and running it only takes a few hours to get everything setup and updated and ready to roll out.

Alternatives Considered

I really do not have a bunch of experience with VMWare or VirtualBox which I know are two other well-known Virtualization software. I have used VirtualBox a few times when I was in college to learn other operating systems, but I don't recall them being as easy to get going and set up and Hyper-V was, but that might be biased because I have been using Hyper-V a lot in this current position I am working in.

Support Rating

I gave it a middle of the road rating - as far as getting direct help from Microsoft this never seems to happen. (Good luck getting ahold of them.) Getting help from online support forums is pretty much where I get all my help from. Hyper-V is used quite widely and anything you could need help with is out there and easily searched for on your favorite search engine.

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?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Hyper-V again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Veeam Backup & Replication

Likelihood to Recommend

A specific scenario where Hyper-V is well suited would be for environment testing purposes. Let's say you want to learn or test a new OS for a product or just for learning purposes. You are able to boot up this OS in just a few mins on Hyper-V and then begin working, testing and learning with no money out of your pocket. You don't have to go out and build or buy a new PC (assuming your current PC has enough memory and CPU usage for a single VM.).

I do not think there is a scenario where this would not be appropriate. This is not really a piece of software that you need to install to do other things. If you are enabling Hyper-V you are using it to create a virtual environment. The only time you really wouldn't use this is if your application would be better off running in a docker/container setup.

Hyper-V - Lightweight and easy to use!

Overall Satisfaction with Hyper-V