No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

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 April 2026, in the Server Virtualization Software category, the mindshare of Hyper-V is 19.4%, up from 14.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of RHEV is 2.4%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Virtualization Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Hyper-V19.4%
RHEV2.4%
Other78.2%
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

"I like that Hyper-V is like a virtual environment. I like to use VMware because of the resource requirements. In Sri Lanka, most of the customers use the Hyper-V GUI. When installing the interface with the Windows version, we also install the Hyper-V feature on the server. This is because they require more features and memory. There are so many features that they have embedded in Hyper-V that are useful."
"The virtualized applications and real time audition of the VMA is quite a good feature."
"The simplicity and intuitiveness of the platform. It was a very simple adaptation, if you have any experience in virtualization."
"There are two very good things about this product including licensing and stability."
"There are some products that you can mount over Hyper-V that provide the features that, in today's Hyper-V, are not present."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is storage virtualization."
"It has provided a good cost-saving from the management perspective."
"The product is not difficult to set up."
"The solution is stable."
"Stability and speed are the most valuable aspects."
"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."
"The solution is overall very good with all the facilities, it is user friendly, easy to configure, has documentation, and support is available."
"Red Hat is the most stable system."
"What they provide is way beyond the essential requirements of customers."
"The solution is a great all-round product, and the virtualization is especially good."
"Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor has robust virtualization management features with proven enterprise security and performance."
 

Cons

"VMware has antivirus protection that covers the entire VM. If Microsoft could have something similar to this in Hyper-V, that would be great."
"All the actions are manual, and if customization is needed, it is difficult with Hyper-V."
"The only issues we have had recently are with Windows updates that are built into the Windows server with Hyper-V."
"The live migration feature needs improvement."
"Unfortunately, due to cost, we have begun to look at other products in the market."
"The area revolving around operations in the product has certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"The costs in regards to upgrading the solution are quite high and it deters customers from changing versions."
"I would love to see other options for connecting VMs to large data storage."
"The GUI interface needs improvement. Not 90%, but 50% or 60% of the work is done from the command line and so on, so the GUI needs work because people are looking for an easier way to manage the environment."
"There are two things that I would like to see improvement in when it comes to Red Hat. First is the pricing and second is the support."
"RHEV can improve by keeping pace with new features and new enhancements. They should not be halted or delayed innovation because over the past quarter the enhancements have not been as fast as they have been previously."
"Scalability depends on the applications. Red Hat by itself is not scalable."
"You need to buy support from red hat and you need to renew support every year in order to keep getting support from red hat."
"We should improve how we manage storage domains and make more comprehensive control available through the command line."
"The biggest improvement would be more third-party direct support for things like backups and provisioning through third-party portals."
"They don't know how to sell their great products and don’t really seem to be interested in taking care of their partners who trust and really know their products."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Hyper-V's price is essentially zero because it's a feature of the operating system that I can enable and disable at will."
"We did not have to pay extra money for the Failover Clustering feature."
"Once we bought the datacenter version of the server, we did away with worrying about the cost of licensing our VMs separately"
"Hyper-V is expensive."
"If you have the standard edition of Windows server then with each copy of the operating system, you have two virtual machines for free."
"Hyper-V is part of Windows Server, so there are no extra costs for the product."
"There is a license to use this solution and it is an annual purchase."
"We chose this solution because of the pricing and the simplicity of the product."
"We are using the free version of Red Hat."
"Its price depends on the use cases."
"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."
"I would say the price is acceptable."
"This is an open-source solution."
"Price-wise, RHEV is okay, in my opinion."
"We buy a license for commercial use, and we also use the free editions."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Server Virtualization Software solutions are best for your needs.
890,071 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
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: April 2026.
890,071 professionals have used our research since 2012.