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Hyper-V vs VMware vSphere comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.8
Hyper-V reduces IT costs as a cost-effective virtualization option, often achieving significant ROI through server maintenance and energy savings.
Sentiment score
7.2
VMware vSphere reduces costs by improving server efficiency, management, and resource use, offering quick financial returns despite initial investment.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.9
Hyper-V support experiences vary; first-level is inconsistent, second-level better, with documentation often helpful for troubleshooting.
Sentiment score
7.1
VMware vSphere customer service is responsive and knowledgeable, with occasional issues in timeliness and engineer quality variability.
Technical support from Microsoft is excellent, rated ten out of ten.
The technical support for Hyper-V is excellent
The technical support is very good
Priority one issues are usually addressed by engineers within one to two hours.
If we have issues, the support tends to be unreliable
My team solves most tickets, needing support only about once or twice a year.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.4
Hyper-V is flexible and scalable, accommodating growth well, but effectiveness depends on infrastructure and has some VMware limitations.
Sentiment score
7.4
VMware vSphere is scalable and adaptable, efficiently managing large deployments and increasing workloads, though licensing and compatibility are challenges.
Hyper V can support over two hundred virtual processors and around 12 TB of memory.
The scalability of Hyper-V is great; I would rate it nine out of ten.
Scaling is easy, whether it is hyperconverged or a three-tier architecture.
It is a highly scalable solution.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Hyper-V is generally stable but less so than VMware, dependent on configuration and occasionally impacted by updates and resource limits.
Sentiment score
8.0
VMware vSphere is praised for stability and reliability, with minimal downtime and issues mainly due to hardware or misconfigurations.
Automation is unavailable, and reporting is difficult.
Frequent Windows updates can impact stability compared to VMware ESXi.
It is a very stable hypervisor solution.
I would rate the stability of VMware vSphere as eight out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

Hyper-V requires improvements in cloning, licensing, features, performance, configuration, networking, storage, management, and integration compared to VMware.
VMware vSphere users highlight complex management, high licensing costs, and desire improvements in fault tolerance, UI, and support.
Hyper-V could be improved by implementing the same set of features that other tools provide.
Hyper-V should ensure the features of VMware are covered within its platform.
I suggest improvements in platform support and performance considerations for Hyper-V.
Sometimes, it is difficult to find documentation for specific tools and solutions.
Another area is the stability during upgrades from older versions to newer versions, where we face issues.
Although the product is very strong and includes all necessary features, the high pricing drives many customers to avoid using it.
 

Setup Cost

Hyper-V is cost-effective with favorable licensing, though additional costs for features and support can impact the overall expense.
VMware vSphere offers robust features and stability but is often criticized for its complex and expensive pricing and licensing.
Hyper-V is completely free and requires no licensing fee.
Hyper-V's licensing costs are lower compared to VMware, making it cost-effective for smaller workloads.
Until 2019, Hyper-V was a cost-effective solution because it was available as a free product.
Many customers are trying to avoid it due to its high cost.
Costs significantly increased from perpetual to subscription, with prices rising by two to three times over three to five years.
 

Valuable Features

Hyper-V provides cost savings, scalability, and seamless Windows integration, making it ideal for efficient business virtualization.
VMware vSphere enhances server virtualization with seamless VM migration, resource efficiency, scalability, and robust management for cost-effective infrastructure optimization.
It is completely free, which is a significant advantage.
I find the quick provision feature in Hyper-V to be extremely helpful.
It offers the stability needed for non-enterprise data centers and has improved over time.
The vMotion feature is beneficial for online migration of virtual machines from one host to another without downtime.
The vSphere application is free and very useful, ensuring effective management and improvement in operations.
The high availability feature is significant.
 

Categories and Ranking

Hyper-V
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
142
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware vSphere
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
453
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Server Virtualization Software category, the mindshare of Hyper-V is 14.4%, down from 15.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware vSphere is 17.8%, down from 19.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Virtualization Software
 

Q&A Highlights

Julia Miller - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 05, 2018
 

Featured Reviews

Ananth Narayana Rao - PeerSpot reviewer
Cost-effective and good for small workloads while addressing update-driven challenges is needed
I use Azure Monitor and other monitoring solutions to support clients in Accenture's managed services. We support multiple environments, primarily on cloud platforms like Azure and AWS, and also on-premises environments with operating systems like Windows, Linux, and Solaris, among others…
Neeraj Mehra - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamlines virtualization and has features like high availability and vMotion
The primary use case is for virtualization, including the implementation of vSphere, vCloud Foundation, vCloud Director, and cloud automation with vSphere My customers, particularly SMBs, mainly utilize High Availability (HA), DRS, and vMotion features. The vMotion feature is beneficial for…
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Comparison Review

it_user234735 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 10, 2015
Hyper-V 2012 R2 vs. VMware vSphere 5.5
I was won with Hyper-V 2012R2 recently and the table below based on customer RFP (edited). This articles all about technical, there is not related with TCO/ROI, licensing cost, “political”, etc. Another to noted is the Windows Server 2012 licenses is based on 2 socket CPU, meanwhile…
 

Answers from the Community

Julia Miller - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 5, 2018
Jan 5, 2018
HyperV. I am using HyperV past few years without any problems, before I used VMware. In my last two companies I migrated the infrastructure from VMware to HyperV. One big reason is the cost. VMware is still very expensive. HyperV is coming for free. If you have budget , it is nice to buy system center and then manage it with VMM but if you are too small for System Center you can buy third part...
2 out of 26 answers
it_user84306 - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 7, 2014
VMware vs Hyper-V ? Both are good, both do exactly what they say they're able to do, both have pros and cons. Which one do I prefer? both and none :), actually being an IT consultant I tend to provide the best solution to our costumers needs, this means for some customers it's VMware, because they have multitudes of servers with linux, specific needs for automation, the IT staff is Linux/Unix world oriented /competent fearless to the black windows (CLI), for other customers Hyper-V would be the perfect fit, because the company has an open software contract with MS, because the admins are Windows SuperHeros and the Darkest Errors logs won't beat them.... Vmware with it's latest release comes with good features, Hyper-V with the release of windows 2012 R2 becomes what they call an "Entreprise Level Product" very mature, stable lots of good functionality etc .
it_user103077 - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 7, 2014
http://www.infoworld.com/d/virtualization/virtualization-showdown-microsoft-hyper-v-2012-vs-vmware-vsphere-51-217125
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
38%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
5%
Educational Organization
31%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 is IOMMU?
DEEPEN DHULLA did explain well IOMMU. IOMMU has to be activated at the bios level. It exists on Intel and AMD platforms. It is used a lot inside virtualization platforms like VMware VSphere. It pr...
Why KVM??? Help please!
We use VMware and KVM. We find that KVM is a lot simpler to use and it provides the virtualization we need for Linux and Windows. For us, VMware does not offer any advantage. Moreover, KVM is free.
What is the biggest difference between Nutanix Acropolis and VMware vSphere?
We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface that allows you to talk directly to your VM from the present software. We fou...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Large customer base from all industries, all over the world. Two major Hyper-V customers are Telefonica and EmpireCLS.
Abu Dhabi Ports Company, ACS, AIA New Zealand, Consona, Corporate Express, CS Energy, and Digiweb.
Find out what your peers are saying about Hyper-V vs. VMware vSphere and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,113 professionals have used our research since 2012.