We performed a comparison between Hyper-V and KVM based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below
Comparison Results: Hyper-V is the clear winner in this comparison it is easy to install, robust and high performing. Hyper-V, as a Microsoft product, also offers stable and ongoing customer support.
"The support with Microsoft is great."
"It works very well. Its performance, stability, and redundancy are all very dependable."
"The most valuable feature is being able to do checkpoints then roll back to the checkpoint because that's what we need to test the software. We're testing the installation and then we roll it back and retest it."
"The most valuable feature of Hyper-V is that it's very intuitive."
"The performance is very good."
"We've probably seen a 50 percent speed increase on our SQL server. Hyper-V has also significantly reduced our downtimes with faster boot-up and reboot. If we have to reboot a server, there is maybe two or three minutes of downtime. When we were on a bare-metal server, it could be five to ten minutes due to the total boot time."
"I value the simplicity of configuration because it has worked as expected for my client."
"We chose this solution because of the pricing and the simplicity of the product."
"The initial setup was very easy."
"The most valuable feature of KVM is its stability."
"It offers a high-availability environment."
"Documentation and problem-solving troubleshooting are the most valuable features. Performance (when fine-tuned and with "special" HW) is awesome, equal to or more than other enterprise closed-source solutions."
"KVM is stable."
"I like that this is an open-source solution. It is very powerful, and it's easy."
"The product is really good...One can get good performance because of kernel-based virtualization."
"The GUI interface makes the management of KVM easier than ever before."
"There is a problem with high-availability if the load is too high."
"The solution should improve its native integration with other public cloud solutions."
"If I want to create a cluster of around five to 10 physical servers Hyper-V does not get integrated with any kind of virtual sense, such as vSense."
"It would be nice if it was turned into its own product because that's the problem with it. It doesn't have a single place where you can manage things. You have to go into all different screens to be able to configure it. And then you have no idea what the performance is. It's really just a feature added to Windows, and Microsoft does not really have anything that pulls it all together well. Compared to VMware, it does not have everything collaborate on one screen."
"An improvement I suggest is having more guest operating systems."
"Hyper-V could improve by making it easier to manage."
"When one server or one virtual machine fails, or one is turned off, the virtualization stops, and we have to initiate again with human intervention."
"We'd like a template feature to help deploy VMs quickly."
"The virtual manager and the graphical QEMU for KVM need some improvement."
"The stability of this solution is less than other products in the same category."
"The main drawback in the solution is probably disaster recovery."
"We would like to have a software lifecycle solution included in this solution. We can handle the software needed for KVM, but also the software that we provide. A lifecycle component would be very beneficial."
"Technical support could be better. In the next release, I would like to see an improved user interface and dashboard. This type of improvement will make it easy or help our engineers understand the solution from a requirement point of view."
"The solution’s user interface could be improved and made more user-friendly."
"Monitoring and resolution could be improved."
"The speed is around thirty percent slower than another competitor. This would be something to work on."
Hyper-V is ranked 3rd in Server Virtualization Software with 134 reviews while KVM is ranked 4th in Server Virtualization Software with 39 reviews. Hyper-V is rated 8.0, while KVM is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Hyper-V writes "It's a low-cost solution that enabled us to shrink everything down into a single server ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of KVM writes "Delivers good performance because of kernel-based virtualization". Hyper-V is most compared with VMware vSphere, VMware Workstation, Proxmox VE, Oracle VM VirtualBox and Nutanix AHV Virtualization, whereas KVM is most compared with Proxmox VE, Oracle VM VirtualBox, VMware vSphere, VMware Workstation and Oracle VM. See our Hyper-V vs. KVM report.
See our list of best Server Virtualization Software vendors.
We monitor all Server Virtualization Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.