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Hyper-V vs RHEV comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 6, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Hyper-V
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
145
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
RHEV
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
11th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Server Virtualization Software category, the mindshare of Hyper-V is 19.1%, up from 14.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of RHEV is 2.4%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Virtualization Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Hyper-V19.1%
RHEV2.4%
Other78.5%
Server Virtualization Software
 

Featured Reviews

Tomas Basus - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Professional at NIPOS
Virtualization has reduced licensing costs and improved integration but still needs better performance insight
Integrations bring the biggest benefit to us. We use half of our virtual machines that are Microsoft, so it works better hosted in Hyper-V compared to VMware. Clustering and failover capabilities in the product help with our availability. It helped because we switched to Hyper-V because it was lower cost than paying for high availability in VMware. We need Microsoft licenses for virtual machines, so it costs less than buying two solutions for that. We have data center editions, so it did not cost us additional money compared to paying for high availability from VMware. I think it helped a little, but not so different compared to VMware regarding security and bandwidth optimization.
Mike Neuliep - PeerSpot reviewer
Linux Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Has supported virtualization projects in side jobs but has required workarounds due to lack of maintenance
In my opinion, the best features of RHEV are that it is a real hypervisor and it is free, so it performs better than VMware. I have used the live migration feature in the past with RHEV. There is a free clone of it that is based on the open source. Live migration is a nifty feature if your app is not highly available and you need to do maintenance on a machine. You can migrate the VM off of it, do your maintenance, and move it back when you are done. RHEV has a high availability architecture with a built-in monitoring feature where you could see machines other than the one you are operating on. I tend to implement high availability not so much in RHEV, but by using standard application high availability strategies. Red Hat has another product specifically for high availability.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution's technical support is the best."
"The most valuable feature is that it's an end-to-end solution."
"The solution allows us to take advantage of our physical environment."
"The most valuable feature of Hyper-V is the replica service."
"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."
"The virtual SAN feature is helpful."
"Hyper-V is completely free, which is a significant advantage."
"The most valuable feature is that it is user-friendly and easy to use."
"It's a scalable solution."
"The solution makes migration easy."
"Technically, the main reason why I'm using Red Hat is because of its stability."
"RHEV’s cost is much less compared to VMware."
"The most valuable features of RHEV are all the tools, such as virtualization, management of cloud platforms, and integration of container environments. The solution has good compatibility between virtualization, content management, and cloud management. Having the full set of these tools is the advantage of it."
"It is very stable."
"It is easy to deal with when comes to application migration and its compatibility with the multiple component applications."
"The solution is a great all-round product. The virtualization is especially good."
 

Cons

"I would like Microsoft to put more effort into the Admin Center interface and make it much easier. It is customizable, but you have to be a PowerShell expert to customize these things. That is a limitation."
"The tool is expensive."
"I think there is room for improvement in terms of the cloud solutions."
"They should include a few more hardware components for integration with servers."
"Hyper-V should ensure the features of VMware are covered within its platform."
"The operating system is very, very heavy."
"Failure capabilities are insufficient for disaster recovery."
"Hyper-V doesn't have a lot of features and is limited compared to other virtualization software."
"The Administration of the Oracle database and the SAP ERP needs improvement."
"A few features of the product do not work as well as those in VMware."
"It would be better to have more patches, especially kernel-level updates, live and online so that we can keep the business up and running during this period."
"My teammates and I often complain that VMware is well-documented and has a large community since it is the de facto standard. I would love to see better documentation and ease of use."
"We would like the dashboard feature of this solution to be improved, as it is not very detailed at present."
"Configuring the network interfaces is much better in Ubuntu and should be improved."
"Customers are not aware of this solution, they can improve by providing more awareness and solution availability."
"Specifically, enhancements in managing virtual machine migrations, cloning, and the creation of different VMs could further optimize its functionality."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This product costs less than other competitor products on the market."
"Hyper-V is cost-effective and is a one-time purchase. Microsoft has multiple licensing options available, such as a subscription model and an outside purchase model that customers can choose as per their requirements."
"The product is a bit expensive, but it is worth the money."
"I think I'm okay with the cost. There are no monthly or yearly costs or additional costs."
"Since we have an agreement with Microsoft, the solution is not very expensive."
"The pricing and licensing is pretty good."
"Hyper-V is expensive."
"Once we bought the datacenter version of the server, we did away with worrying about the cost of licensing our VMs separately"
"We have to pay extra for vulnerability and fault tolerance."
"The solution does not require licencing but a subscription is necessary, which is very affordable."
"This product has a variety of licensing options available. However, the level of licensing, and therefore the cost of licensing, is dependent on the number of servers being utilized."
"We are using the free version of Red Hat."
"Its price depends on the use cases."
"It's a budget product as far as I'm concerned. It's way cheaper than any of its competitors. The only thing cheaper than Red Hat is that the people who take the Red Hat code clone it and then self-support it."
"I believe we pay on a yearly basis."
"Price-wise, RHEV is okay, in my opinion."
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Comparison Review

VL
CIO at Robusta Technology & Training
Jan 13, 2015
vSphere vs. RHEV vs. Hyper-V vs. XenServer
We have used the following functions: 1. Hypervisor: to ensure that the virtual server provide web and email services to the company, thus providing a stable operation a with single sign-on integration of an AD server and vCenter. 2. Network and Storage: centralized data server…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
8%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business70
Midsize Enterprise37
Large Enterprise46
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

How does KVM compare with Hyper-V?
KVM is better. But let's just look at the software instead of judging. Hyper-V was a free solution from Microsoft to virtualize Server or Client OS as it is a feature on Windows Server since 2008 a...
How does Proxmox VE compare with Hyper-V?
One of the best things about Proxmox VE is that it is open-source and very inexpensive. You get all of the same features as with the more well-known products. Proxmox VE is very easy to deploy - it...
What do you like most about Hyper-V?
The initial setup is not difficult at all. It is very easy.
What do you like most about RHEV?
The initial setup is fairly straightforward and well-documented. The process is very similar to its competitors. The success of your setup depends on how well you plan.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for RHEV?
It's the open source. There's not much cost. It's very minimal comparably. Compared to what I am paying for VMware, it's negligible.
What needs improvement with RHEV?
RHEV is not improving because it has been discontinued. It has been discontinued for years. I would love to get back into RHEV, but the job market is difficult and no one is hiring. RHEV is designe...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Large customer base from all industries, all over the world. Two major Hyper-V customers are Telefonica and EmpireCLS.
Qualcomm and Bonham's Auction House.
Find out what your peers are saying about Hyper-V vs. RHEV and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.