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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 April 2026, in the Server Virtualization Software category, the mindshare of Hyper-V is 19.4%, 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 Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Hyper-V19.4%
RHEV2.4%
Other78.2%
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 initial setup was straightforward; it was easy to install, and it took an hour to get the on-premises system running."
"We can illustrate all of the infrastructure very easily."
"It has provided a good cost-saving from the management perspective."
"This solution is much easier to manage than a bare metal machine."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is storage virtualization."
"Hyper-V's technical support is good - they're responsive and sort cases based on criticality and category, so they get dealt with quickly and by the correct team."
"The solution is stable and the cost is reasonable."
"The most valuable features are ease of use, and it gets the job done in a straightforward manner."
"I can control and manage everything. I know everything that's cooking inside. This is the best part for me."
"The solution is easy for us to deal with when comes to application migration and has good compatibility with multiple components."
"Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization can help to optimize their space utilization and optimize their costs."
"The solution is stable."
"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."
"Whenever there's an issue or problem, I contact customer support and they take it seriously."
"Technically, the main reason why I'm using Red Hat is because of its stability."
"The solution is stable, there are no bugs or glitches, it doesn't crash or freeze, and it's reliable with good performance."
 

Cons

"We would like to have a cloning function added to this product."
"Hyper-V systems need a lot of admin effort because security updates and monthly updates require rebooting after the update."
"The interface could be more user friendly. In addition, the documentation and security could use improvement."
"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."
"When it comes to Hyper-V the worst thing is it's based on the Windows operating system. For the installation of Hyper-V, you're supposed to install the right operating system. For me, it's strange."
"It needs to improve compatibility with third party software."
"The networking component of the setup needs to be less complex."
"They can hot add NICs to the VMs. However, there is still not the ability to hot add virtual processors to running VMs."
"I have found that the stability is related to the upgrade cycle. I find the cycle a little bit annoying; if the system is constantly upgrading then it is very painful in terms of the operation."
"The UI should be more interactive with additional features."
"RHEV is not improving because it has been discontinued. It has been discontinued for years."
"This solution could be more secure."
"Configuring the network interfaces is much better in Ubuntu and should be improved."
"The documentation is not as good as it should be."
"When we do a direct comparison, then obviously VMware does better in terms of having Fault Tolerance and doing active disaster recovery and these kind of things."
"If you wanted to go to the desktop computer side of things, it lags behind in that you need to go to something like Fedora to get all the extra bells and whistles."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In terms of the licensing, if you are using Microsoft Windows 100%, it is OK. But, when you start mixing other environments, it becomes quite tricky."
"This is a fairly expensive product because it balances the needs of security."
"The pricing and licensing is pretty good."
"It comes with all the features and goodies inside the box, so you do not have to purchase anything else."
"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."
"The Hyper-V pricing and licensing are very good."
"Hyper-V is cost-effective and is a one-time purchase. Microsoft has multiple licensing options available, such as a subscription model and an outside purchase model that customers can choose as per their requirements."
"The price is quite fair. It is not too expensive."
"We are using the free version of Red Hat."
"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."
"I believe we pay on a yearly basis."
"This is an open-source solution."
"I would say the price is acceptable."
"RHEV offers pricing based on a per-physical-machine licensing model."
"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."
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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
10%
University
8%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
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: April 2026.
886,576 professionals have used our research since 2012.