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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

"Hyper-V has improved our organization by enabling consolidation, high availability, disaster recovery, backups, and more."
"This is the best solution for customers with budget constraints."
"Hyper-V improved the infrastructure drastically, not only from a performance perspective but from a control/administration view as well."
"We have a higher capacity server (specification wise) so there is no need to buy another additional hardware."
"VMware virtualization is our main solution, but we use Hyper-V because of the licensing and the cost-effective solution, and on the remote offices we only have fewer than 10 servers."
"It is a great advantage for any company that is using a Microsoft Windows server."
"Hyper-V provided freedom to spin up development and test environments, and as projects were created, an environment could be created and applied."
"It is stable."
"The solution is overall very good with all the facilities. It is user friendly, easy to configure, has documentation, and support is available."
"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 price is the solution's most valuable aspect; it's much cheaper than, for example, VMware, so companies can save money using it if they need to."
"The solution is easy for us to deal with when comes to application migration and has good compatibility with multiple components."
"The solution is stable, there are no bugs or glitches, it doesn't crash or freeze, and it's reliable with good performance."
"It is very stable."
"If you have a heterogenous data centre that is specially focused on Linux platforms, this is safe money, and good if you are looking for automation."
"We are very satisfied with it."
 

Cons

"I am using the free version of the solution. There are some limited features, and it is not too scalable."
"There is a problem with high-availability if the load is too high."
"Hyper-V's management platform falls short in terms of scalability, especially when handling multiple Hyper-V servers. VMware has a central console to pull in all your VM servers, so you can easily manage them all through one console. You can manage servers in Hyper-V's admin centers, but it's not as scalable. It's doable with a couple of Hyper-V servers, but it becomes harder to manage when you get over two or three Hyper-V servers."
"The initial setup was complex. It was nearly six years ago, but I remember it was complicated."
"The solution should be compatible with different systems."
"The interface could be more user friendly. In addition, the documentation and security could use improvement."
"The backup site could be better. We used to face a lot of issues, and we are looking to solve that now."
"In my opinion, read the documentation carefully. If you do not, you will have problems."
"This solution could be more secure."
"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."
"Its scalability can be improved. It is not easy to scale, and we hope that Red Hat can provide a more scalable system."
"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."
"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."
"The availability of technical expertise with the solution may be limited in some areas."
"The support is tricky in a few places. We're facing some challenges within Malaysia where we don't really have the system integrators available who can provide extended support. When we need personnel on-site, we can't get them."
"The solution has a very small lifecycle."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product comes with Windows Server."
"The pricing isn't too bad, because you can do the bare metal hypervisor, and it is pretty fair. Other competitors are more expensive."
"It's cheap, but not the best."
"We rent our licenses for this solution, which means that we also have access to premium-level support. The rental cost is payable annually and includes a number of products that work with this solution. It also allows us to run unlimited virtual machines without needing a license for each one."
"We chose this solution because of the pricing and the simplicity of the product."
"I recommend Hyper-V to customers with budget constraints."
"Because we're an NGO or a charity, we get discount rates from Microsoft. The costs are not astronomical for us. To give you an example, Office 2019 would only cost 30 or 45 for us. We tend to use the on-premises version rather than the cloud version. The reason is that the subscription service works out more expensive after a few years than the on-premise version. We're not worried about having the bleeding edge stuff. We just want it to be functional."
"I think I'm okay with the cost. There are no monthly or yearly costs or additional costs."
"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."
"I would say the price is acceptable."
"RHEV offers pricing based on a per-physical-machine licensing model."
"We buy a license for commercial use, and we also use the free editions."
"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."
"Its price depends on the use cases."
"We are using the free version of Red Hat."
"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
10%
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.
885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.