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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

"It runs our most critical workloads and supports all our branch offices."
"The installation was straightforward."
"It's good for what it does. If you have a small or medium-scale acclimatization, it's an excellent solution."
"The solution allows us to take advantage of our physical environment."
"Microsoft has documentation that is easy to find, helpful, and readily available."
"Hyper-V provided freedom to spin up development and test environments. As projects were created, an environment could be created and applied."
"The initial setup is simple. There's not much to do. We input one command or just one or two clicks on the UI. Initial setup in the Windows environment for any software is not that difficult."
"The initial setup is easy."
"We find the ease of use of this solution to be invaluable. It is user-friendly and integrates well with other software."
"The price is the solution's most valuable aspect. It's much cheaper than, for example, VMware."
"Stability and speed are the most valuable aspects."
"RHEV’s cost is much less compared to VMware."
"It's a scalable solution."
"Customers are moving to open source and Red Hat is the leader in this particular space. I think customers feel more confident running Red Hat Virtualization than VMware."
"The platform is scalable, allowing for the installation of multiple nodes."
"The solution is stable."
 

Cons

"Hyper-V could improve by making it easier to manage."
"In my opinion, it would have been better to truncate the site-to-site replication."
"Failure capabilities are insufficient for disaster recovery."
"There needs to be more functionality overall in the Hyper-V manager."
"Today, most backup tools and others prefer VMware. Hyper-V should ensure the features of VMware are covered within its platform."
"Virtualizing Linux isn't as easy as virtualizing Windows."
"We've had many issues with Hyper-V's stability, including resource crunches and memory leakage."
"Hyper-V systems need a lot of admin effort because security updates and monthly updates require rebooting after the update."
"We should improve how we manage storage domains and make more comprehensive control available through the command line."
"RHEV is not improving because it has been discontinued. It has been discontinued for years."
"The availability of technical expertise with the solution may be limited in some areas."
"A few features of the product do not work as well as those in VMware."
"I would love to see better documentation and ease of use."
"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."
"We would like the dashboard feature of this solution to be improved, as it is not very detailed at present."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think it is expensive. I think if they want it to be more competitive, they should lower the price."
"Thanks to our enterprise agreement with Microsoft, Hyper-V is free for us."
"The price is quite fair. It is not too expensive."
"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 licensing is pretty straightforward."
"I wish the licensing was simpler, and allowed for a greater number of VM's with the Microsoft standard licensing, but overall I think it's fair. The pricing is definitely fair."
"Hyper-V is free-of-charge."
"Hyper-V's price is essentially zero because it's a feature of the operating system that I can enable and disable at will."
"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."
"We buy a license for commercial use, and we also use the free editions."
"Price-wise, RHEV is okay, in my opinion."
"Its price depends on the use cases."
"The solution does not require licencing but a subscription is necessary, which is very affordable."
"I believe we pay on a yearly basis."
"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."
"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
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.
884,012 professionals have used our research since 2012.