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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

"It is a stable product."
"I find the quick provision feature in Hyper-V to be extremely helpful."
"Hyper-V deployment is very user-friendly. It supports partial scripting and offers a UI for a smooth experience. There's also PowerShell scripting available for advanced users."
"We can perform maintenance on equipment during the day because we can live migrate all of the machines from one server to another."
"Live migration, SMB3."
"The initial setup is easy."
"Hyper-V is easy to set up even though the management is a headache."
"The solution's ease of use is the most important feature, as it is very easy to use and implement, with very good fail-over features that allow servers to run in a fail-over cluster so that whenever one server fails, you can migrate the workloads to the second one to avoid service downtime or minimize it at the very least."
"If you have a heterogenous data centre that is specially focused on Linux platforms, this is safe money, and good if you are looking for automation."
"When any organization needs end-to-end infrastructure deployment, configuration management, and automation, then RHEV is the best fit."
"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."
"What they provide is way beyond the essential requirements of customers."
"The solution is overall very good with all the facilities. It is user friendly, easy to configure, has documentation, and support is available."
"We find the ease of use of this solution to be invaluable. It is user-friendly and integrates well with other software."
"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."
"This solution is very stable. Much more so than similar products."
 

Cons

"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 pricing and technical support can be improved."
"Hyper-V needs to improve its support."
"The costs in regards to upgrading the solution are quite high and it deters customers from changing versions."
"We've had many issues with Hyper-V's stability, including resource crunches and memory leakage."
"If a person has never implemented the solution before, they might find the process difficult."
"The networking portion of Hyper-V needs improvement."
"Cannot copy paste within the app. Some bugs were not fixable and I had to reinstall core OS."
"Specifically, enhancements in managing virtual machine migrations, cloning, and the creation of different VMs could further optimize its functionality."
"We have found the technical support for this solution to be very slow in responding to our requests for assistance."
"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."
"The initial setup is not simple or straightforward. It's very complex."
"You need to buy support from red hat and you need to renew support every year in order to keep getting support from red hat."
"There are two things that I would like to see improvement in when it comes to Red Hat. First is the pricing and second is the support."
"It lags behind in that you need to go to something like Fedora to get all the extra bells and whistles."
"I would love to see better documentation and ease of use."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We previously used VMware, but we switched because Hyper-V is cheaper and delivers the same stability for less money."
"Hyper-V is part of Windows Server, so there are no extra costs for the product."
"The pricing and licensing is fine."
"I think it is expensive. I think if they want it to be more competitive, they should lower the price."
"Licensing needs to be a lot easier to manage with Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware is easier."
"Hyper-V is free-of-charge."
"This is a fairly expensive product because it balances the needs of security."
"It's cheap, but not the best."
"I would say the price is acceptable."
"This is an open-source solution."
"We are using the free version of Red Hat."
"Its price depends on the use cases."
"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 buy a license for commercial use, and we also use the free editions."
"Price-wise, RHEV is okay, in my opinion."
"The solution does not require licencing but a subscription is necessary, which is very affordable."
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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%
Comms Service Provider
7%
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.
889,855 professionals have used our research since 2012.