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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

"My understanding is it's easy to set up."
"The most valuable features are ease of use, and it gets the job done in a straightforward manner."
"The ease of use of Hyper-V is the most valuable feature."
"It is a great advantage for any company that is using a Microsoft Windows server."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"It allows for quick deployment of servers and workloads."
"I find the ease of use the most valuable asset of the solution."
"Migration is easy."
"We find the ease of use of this solution to be invaluable. It is user-friendly and integrates well with other software."
"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."
"It is a scalable solution."
"Stability and speed are the most valuable aspects."
"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."
"The solution is overall very good with all the facilities. It is user friendly, easy to configure, has documentation, and support is available."
"The biggest aspect for me is the disk usage, the virtual manager, and the deployment of machines."
"Red Hat is the most stable system."
 

Cons

"Microsoft tech support is horrible."
"Enhanced visibility and reporting capabilities are desired for better insights and analysis."
"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."
"The tool is expensive."
"There needs to be more functionality overall in the Hyper-V manager."
"It needs to improve the handling of the amount of storage."
"Hyper-V is hosted on OS but if your OS scratches you are in big trouble. In addition, if a host fails, automatically the machine and the virtual machine should boot from another source. Those type of features would benefit Hyper-V."
"If you have a bigger implementation, you need more tools to coexist with many, many features that are not present in the base Hyper-V."
"It lags behind in that you need to go to something like Fedora to get all the extra bells and whistles."
"There is not any proper documentation on the site to reference."
"RHEV is not improving because it has been discontinued. It has been discontinued for years."
"Red Hat by itself is not scalable. But you can have third party add-ons like Ceph to make it massively scalable."
"The documentation is not as good as it should be."
"RHEV is not improving because it has been discontinued. It has been discontinued for years."
"This solution could be more secure."
"A few features of the product do not work as well as those in VMware."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a perpetual license to use the solution and there are additional fees for support."
"The pricing is not an issue for us because we have a licensing agreement with Microsoft. So we are given an 80% discount."
"Hyper-V is part of Windows Server, so there are no extra costs for the product."
"Microsoft recently tacked on a higher price for their software to use the storage migration in the Storage Spaces Direct array. That was just terrible."
"Cost-wise, what one gets is directly proportional to the price paid. If the need for capacity doubles, then the price also doubles."
"I do not have experience with the pricing or the licensing of the product."
"There is a license required for this solution. I would recommend purchasing the support."
"The licensing costs depend on the environment you have. If you have an environment of less than 10 or 30 VMs, It's nice to have a Hyper-V, but if you have more than 100 or 200, I would recommend using VCenter, VMware virtualization, especially for an on-premise solution."
"The solution does not require licencing but a subscription is necessary, which is very affordable."
"Price-wise, RHEV is okay, in my opinion."
"I believe we pay on a yearly basis."
"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."
"RHEV offers pricing based on a per-physical-machine licensing model."
"Its price depends on the use cases."
"I would say the price is acceptable."
"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
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: March 2026.
884,371 professionals have used our research since 2012.