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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 allows us to take advantage of our physical environment."
"I definitely track savings in terms of time saving and money saving."
"Microsoft has documentation that is easy to find, helpful, and readily available."
"The interface is quite good."
"The implementation process is simple."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from how my company uses Hyper-V for replication."
"I think the cluster environment is a good feature of Hyper-V because, if something happens, then it will automatically move to some other mode. This is a great feature of the solution."
"It's scalable."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"Technically, the main reason why I'm using Red Hat is because of its stability."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The solution makes migration easy."
"Stability and speed are the most valuable aspects."
"The price is the solution's most valuable aspect. It's much cheaper than, for example, VMware."
"The solution has a good licensing module."
"The solution is a great all-round product. The virtualization is especially good."
 

Cons

"The only negative thing I heard was that the baseline price is very, very attractive relative to VMware, however, the vCenter counterpart, the thing that brings it all together, is quite pricey."
"I also use VMware which I find to be more scalable and stable overall."
"Hyper-V needs to improve its support."
"The management of Hyper-V could improve, there is a lot to improve in that area."
"Storage via SMB3."
"I think the setup for the Virtual Network Manager could be improved."
"There are some storage problems which do occur in high load systems, especially SQL workloads."
"It would be better if it demanded less memory. Once you have allocated those memory spaces for the installed server, fewer resources are left to allocate for the Hyper-V virtual environment. That's the drawback with that. For example, once you install Windows 10, and let's say Windows 2019, Windows 2019 will take at least 10 GB of memory. If a customer has only 16 GB of RAM on the system, they think of installing Hyper-V. Because when you have windows 2019 or something else, they give two free Hyper-V virtual licenses. But we can't because there's not enough memory. We can, however, install this as a VMS. But this UI isn't that user-friendly for most customers. They like to have a user interface with VMI, and it's not easy when you install VMI. It would also be better if they can improve their core Hyper-V version to be a bit more familiar and user-friendly with its interface. I think it would be much easier. We had a few issues with the VM Hyper-V virtual network. Once you have such issues, it's very difficult to find out where they came from. They had such issues, and we had to resolve the system again. But other than that, if it's useful and keeps working nicely, it will work very nicely even if something happens. But it's very hectic and challenging to find out where it's happening. In the next release, it would be better to control this data store part in a manageable way. This is because once we install and create a Hyper-V machine, it goes everywhere. It would be better if it had a single location and a single folder with a heartbeat and virtual machine information. You can just go forward, and the data store and everything are going into one place like the C drive. But something always goes fast, or everything gets lost if the customer doesn't manually change the direction of where the virtual hard drive routes, the more serious the problem. It would be better if they could merge all that together. This includes the virtual machine and the virtual hard drive in the same folder when creating the virtual machine. I think that it would be much easier to manage and in case something happens. Technical support also could be better."
"Customers are not aware of this solution, they can improve by providing more awareness and solution availability."
"The solution should be made more user-friendly."
"We hope that Red Hat can produce a paradigm edition. We are looking for paradigm computing and paradigm storage. Its scalability can be improved. It is not easy to scale, and we hope that Red Hat can provide a more scalable system. They should also provide local service and support. Our customers are looking for a good software vendor to provide professional services."
"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."
"A few features of the product do not work as well as those in VMware."
"We would like the dashboard feature of this solution to be improved, as it is not very detailed at present."
"There is not any proper documentation on the site to reference."
"With RHEV, the cyberattacks should be fewer. I want RHEV to be better protected."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Hyper-V is included in the Microsoft Azure license for no extra cost. However, they charge for technical support calls on an hourly basis."
"Thanks to our enterprise agreement with Microsoft, Hyper-V is free for us."
"Since we have an agreement with Microsoft, the solution is not very expensive."
"There is no cost associated with it if customers are already using Microsoft products."
"We previously used VMware, but we switched because Hyper-V is cheaper and delivers the same stability for less money."
"Hyper-V is free when you buy Windows Server. You only have to pay for engaging in the management aspect in System Center."
"Cost-wise, what one gets is directly proportional to the price paid. If the need for capacity doubles, then the price also doubles."
"We did not have to pay extra money for the Failover Clustering feature."
"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."
"The price of RHEV is high. It is an open-source solution, the price should be less. The price should not be on par with a solution, such as VMware. It's not more or equal to VMware, it's less, but the difference should be more substantial."
"Its price depends on the use cases."
"I would say the price is acceptable."
"The solution does not require licencing but a subscription is necessary, which is very affordable."
"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."
"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
12%
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: February 2026.
883,692 professionals have used our research since 2012.