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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 is easy to use, and it is stable. It is a good solution."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to integrate the Hyper-Visor center from one console."
"The most valuable feature is the high availability of the solution."
"The flexibility and API are the most valuable features. It helps us be able to integrate with other systems and then push data easily."
"The initial setup was very easy."
"The initial setup is not difficult at all. It is very easy."
"It's a very manageable product."
"It makes it easier to deploy service. All service tends to migrate onto the server house without having problems now. It is hardware independent."
"RHEV’s cost is much less compared to VMware."
"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."
"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 biggest aspect for me is the disk usage, the virtual manager, and the deployment of machines."
"The price is the solution's most valuable aspect. It's much cheaper than, for example, VMware."
"For the Windows side, we also initiated a digital transformation project, moving a lot of Windows applications to the container side and the open-source software side, which resulted in almost 70% savings of our past expenses."
"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 stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
 

Cons

"Hyper-V needs to improve its support."
"They should include a few more hardware components for integration with servers."
"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."
"It would be nice if they had video acceleration, they got rid of that and VMware has video acceleration."
"When one server or one virtual machine fails, or one is turned off, the virtualization stops, and we have to initiate again with human intervention."
"The solution could improve by having virtual restore."
"The the only challenge for us was moving existing physical machines to virtual machines."
"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 solution could use network virtualization."
"The documentation is not as good as it should be."
"The Administration of the Oracle database and the SAP ERP needs improvement."
"We would like the dashboard feature of this solution to be improved, as it is not very detailed at present."
"RHEV is not improving because it has been discontinued. It has been discontinued for years."
"RHEV is not improving because it has been discontinued. It has been discontinued for years."
"In comparison to VMware, this solution isn't as stable. We're testing it right now, and we're not trusting the stability of the product."
"A few features of the product do not work as well as those in VMware."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I use the free version of Hyper-V."
"If you have the standard edition of Windows server then with each copy of the operating system, you have two virtual machines for free."
"This is a fairly expensive product because it balances the needs of security."
"The pricing is competitive, and a bit less than other options on the market."
"There is a license to use this solution and it is an annual purchase."
"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."
"It's cheap, but not the best."
"We have an agreement with Microsoft, so this came with that solution. The pricing is OK for us."
"We are using the free version of Red Hat."
"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."
"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."
"Price-wise, RHEV is okay, in my opinion."
"RHEV offers pricing based on a per-physical-machine licensing model."
"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
10%
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.
884,732 professionals have used our research since 2012.