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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
13th
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 January 2026, in the Server Virtualization Software category, the mindshare of Hyper-V is 17.2%, 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 Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Hyper-V17.2%
RHEV2.4%
Other80.4%
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 Failover Clustering feature allows us to be able to make our most critical workload highly available."
"I value the simplicity of configuration because it has worked as expected for my client."
"It is actually very low on resources. It doesn't use many resources. It is also very easy to tailor. You can change things like the amount of memory and storage on the fly. It is very stable and reliable. I like its replication feature, which is very good. It is also very easy to move the virtual machines across push servers without any difficulty. Its performance is also very good. Now with this pandemic, a lot of workers are working from home. A lot of workers have been using laptops as their desktop computers, and they would remote into a virtual PC. There is no difficulty, and they can't tell the difference between this and the real one. It is much easier to manage."
"Hyper-V is a good product with some limitations, and we can suggest it to customers who mostly prefer Windows."
"The organization has realized the benefits on smaller data center space, power, cooling, etc. apart from the benefit that the virtualization layer brings in."
"There are two very good things about this product including licensing and stability."
"It is an affordable platform."
"It is stable."
"The solution makes migration easy."
"Technically, the main reason why I'm using Red Hat is because of its stability."
"When you purchase RHEV, you are essentially buying a subscription license. This license can be integrated with various client types, including these integrations with the subscription."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"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."
"The solution is stable."
"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 most valuable feature of this solution is the support portal."
 

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."
"It might make it easier to move VMs across Hotmail hosts. This application process make it a little bit easier."
"Sometimes it is a mess, and it is getting hanged. It should be something that could be easily fixed. It made us have to deal with fixing the bugs."
"The cost and licensing can be improved."
"It would be nice if they had video acceleration, they got rid of that and VMware has video acceleration."
"The solution is heavily reliant on Microsoft's active directory for authentication, for coordination between nodes. Therefore, it inherits all the issues that are within the active directory."
"There is a hard limitation of 20 gigs per file with Dropbox, so you've got to overcome that by chunking the zip files into something smaller and manageable."
"Hyper-V could benefit with improvements to their management interface."
"The Administration of the Oracle database and the SAP ERP needs improvement."
"This solution could be more secure."
"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."
"RHEV is not improving because it has been discontinued. It has been discontinued for years."
"We should improve how we manage storage domains and make more comprehensive control available through the command line."
"There is not any proper documentation on the site to reference."
"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."
"A few features of the product do not work as well as those in VMware."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is competitive, and a bit less than other options on the market."
"The pricing isn't too bad, because you can do the bare metal hypervisor, and it is pretty fair. Other competitors are more expensive."
"Hyper-V is free-of-charge."
"I would not say that it is a totally reasonably priced product as it is merged with our overall costs associated with Microsoft products. We bought some enterprise licenses for our company's data center for Windows Server 2019."
"It is one of the cheapest products in the market."
"The licensing is good for a data center environment."
"There is a license required for this solution. I would recommend purchasing the support."
"Since we have an agreement with Microsoft, the solution is not very expensive."
"Its price depends on the use cases."
"I would say the price is acceptable."
"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."
"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."
"We are using the free version of Red Hat."
"We buy a license for commercial use, and we also use the free editions."
"This is an open-source solution."
"We have to pay extra for vulnerability and fault tolerance."
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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
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
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: December 2025.
879,899 professionals have used our research since 2012.