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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's good for what it does. If you have a small or medium-scale acclimatization, it's an excellent solution."
"Hyper-V is a good product with some limitations, and we can suggest it to customers who mostly prefer Windows."
"Hyper-V improved the infrastructure drastically, not only from a performance perspective but from a control/administration view as well."
"The performance is very good."
"There are some products that you can mount over Hyper-V that provide the features that, in today's Hyper-V, are not present."
"Using cluster with Hyper-V had a major impact on our protection environment. So all applications were virtualized using Hyper-V."
"The initial setup of Hyper-V is far easier than VMware."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from how my company uses Hyper-V for replication."
"Technically, the main reason why I'm using Red Hat is because of its stability."
"The platform is scalable, allowing for the installation of multiple nodes."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the support portal."
"It's a scalable solution."
"What they provide is way beyond the essential requirements of customers."
"Red Hat is the most stable system."
"The solution is a great all-round product. The virtualization is especially good."
"Stability and speed are the most valuable aspects."
 

Cons

"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."
"Hyper-V should ensure the features of VMware are covered within its platform."
"They should include a few more hardware components for integration with servers."
"The solution is heavily reliant on Microsoft's active directory for authentication, for coordination between nodes. Therefore, it inherits all the issues that are within the active directory."
"Hyper-V could benefit with improvements to their management interface."
"Many vendors, such as Cisco and HPE, are discontinuing support for Hyper-V as they believe it does not have a significant market share."
"Sometimes there's a bit of slowness in the VMs."
"They can hot add NICs to the VMs. However, there is still not the ability to hot add virtual processors to running VMs."
"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."
"The UI should be more interactive with additional features."
"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."
"Customers are not aware of this solution, they can improve by providing more awareness and solution availability."
"The availability of technical expertise with the solution may be limited in some areas."
"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

"We have an agreement with Microsoft, so this came with that solution. The pricing is OK for us."
"The Hyper-V pricing and licensing are very good."
"Because we're an NGO or a charity, we get discount rates from Microsoft. The costs are not astronomical for us. To give you an example, Office 2019 would only cost 30 or 45 for us. We tend to use the on-premises version rather than the cloud version. The reason is that the subscription service works out more expensive after a few years than the on-premise version. We're not worried about having the bleeding edge stuff. We just want it to be functional."
"There is a license to use this solution and it is an annual purchase."
"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."
"Once we bought the datacenter version of the server, we did away with worrying about the cost of licensing our VMs separately"
"There is nothing extra required for Hyper-V apart from the licenses that one purchases to use Microsoft Windows."
"This product costs less than other competitor products on the market."
"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 are using the free version of Red Hat."
"We buy a license for commercial use, and we also use the free editions."
"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."
"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."
"Price-wise, RHEV is okay, in my opinion."
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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: February 2026.
883,619 professionals have used our research since 2012.