Manager, Information Technology at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees

Nov 11, 2021

It's good for small or medium-sized environments, but if you want to scale larger you should consider something else

Pros and Cons

"It's good for what it does. If you have a small or medium-scale acclimatization, it's an excellent solution."

"I'd like to see better predictive diagnostics, so I know what's going on with the machines."

What needs improvement?

I'd like to see better predictive diagnostics, so I know what's going on with the machines.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using Hyper-V since about 2012.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Hyper-V has been pretty good. I have no complaints about the stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It scales well so far, but I think we're nearing the edge of that. We have somewhere in the region of about 200 users.

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How are customer service and support?

The support could be better.

How was the initial setup?

I can't say setting up Hyper-V was particularly complicated. The deployment was about two months with the help of some integrators.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I think I'm okay with the cost. There are no monthly or yearly costs or additional costs.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Hyper-V seven out of 10. It's good for what it does. If you have a small or medium-scale acclimatization, it's an excellent solution. But in terms of scaling larger, you might want to consider something else.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Madhura Direckze

Technical Account Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Jul 27, 2021

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User-friendly GUI, good technical support, but security needs improvement

Pros and Cons

"I have found the GUI user-friendly and having the solution be a Windows application makes it familiar to users."

"VMware has antivirus protection that covers the entire VM. If Microsoft could have something similar to this in Hyper-V, that would be great."

What is our primary use case?

We use Hyper-V for virtualization.

What is most valuable?

I have found the GUI user-friendly and having the solution be a Windows application makes it familiar to users.

What needs improvement?

VMware has antivirus protection that covers the entire VM. If Microsoft could have something similar to this in Hyper-V, that would be great. Currently, in Hyper-V, we have to have a separate antivirus for each VM. If there could be umbrella coverage to the entire setup, then that would be beneficial.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Hyper-V for approximately 10 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution could be more stable as it is vulnerable to viruses, ransomware, and malware.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have approximately 100 customers using this solution.

How are customer service and technical support?

The support from Microsoft is good.

How was the initial setup?

The installation is very easy, it takes approximately 30 minutes.

What about the implementation team?

We have three supporting engineers that do the implementation of the solution.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

There is a perpetual license to use the solution and there are additional fees for support.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Hyper-V a seven out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner

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it_user1406361

IT Infrastructure Specialist at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jul 7, 2021

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A scalable and user-friendly native hypervisor

Pros and Cons

"I like that it's easy to use."

"The backup site could be better. We used to face a lot of issues, and we are looking to solve that now. We are in the process of moving all the infrastructure to the cloud. It could also use more integration on the management part. We also need more integration on the monitoring sites."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for anything like production and everything we're running on right now.

What is most valuable?

I like that it's easy to use.

What needs improvement?

The backup site could be better. We used to face a lot of issues, and we are looking to solve that now. We are in the process of moving all the infrastructure to the cloud. It could also use more integration on the management part. We also need more integration on the monitoring sites.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Hyper-V for four to five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It could be more stable. We faced a lot of issues on the backup site.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Hyper-V is a scalable solution. We are a global center, and we use Hyper-V across 22 countries.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We also use VMware vSphere.

How was the initial setup?

It is a straightforward implementation. If you want to put Hyper-V as a single load, it will take about one to two hours. If you want high availability, it will take approximately four to five hours.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented this solution.

What other advice do I have?

I have been using VMware and Hyper-V. Comparing the two, I love to use VMware more than Hyper-V. However, I would recommend this solution to potential users.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Hyper-V an eight.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Yogesh (Datamotive)

Founder at a tech company with 11-50 employees

Oct 26, 2020

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Easy to use and does the job that we need, although the management interface needs to be improved

Pros and Cons

"The most valuable features are ease of use, and it gets the job done in a straightforward manner."

"The management interface is in need of the biggest improvement."

What is our primary use case?

We are using Hyper-V to host a few Linux virtual machines.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are ease of use, and it gets the job done in a straightforward manner.

What needs improvement?

The management interface is in need of the biggest improvement. There are a few gaps in there when I compare with VMware.

Some additional monitoring features would be helpful.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Hyper-V for the past four or five years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have a few support applications that run on top of this solution, so we just have a handful of people who use it. I would say that there are five or six users.

At this point, we do not have plans to increase usage.

How are customer service and technical support?

I have not personally been in contact with technical support.

How was the initial setup?

The installation was straightforward and I don't think that we had any major issues there. I think that it took approximately one day to deploy.

What about the implementation team?

The implementation was done by our in-house IT people. We have one system administrator that takes care of maintenance.

What other advice do I have?

For what we use this product for, it is pretty basic and it is good enough for our purposes.

Our main complaint is about the administration interface.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

ReviewerD658

Network Administrator II at a maritime company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jan 17, 2019

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Helps us build servers

Pros and Cons

"It helps us build servers."

"It needs to improve compatibility with third party software."

What is our primary use case?

I build servers using this solution.

What needs improvement?

It needs to improve compatibility with third party software.

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used VMware.

How was the initial setup?

I was not involved in the setup of the product.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I do not have experience with pricing or licensing of the product.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Muhammad Tariq

Program Architect (Microsoft) with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jan 16, 2019

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The virtualized applications is a good feature, but the setup of the solution was complex

Pros and Cons

"The virtualized applications and real time audition of the VMA is quite a good feature."

"The initial setup was complex. It was nearly six years ago, but I remember it was complicated."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case of this solution is for implementing the private cloud over the system center.

What is most valuable?

Hyper-V 2016 is very impressive. The virtualized applications and real-time addition of the VMA is quite a good feature, which is competitive to VMware. It's not VMware but it's close to it and is a competitor.

What needs improvement?

The networking portion of Hyper-V needs improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

More than five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is a stable product.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is a scalable product. We have over 100 users and we are growing towards a more virtualized solution.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have previous experience with Citrix and VMware products.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was complex. It was nearly six years ago but I remember it was complicated.

What was our ROI?

The price of this solution makes it a worthwhile purchase for our organization. We have all of the features we need within a cost-effective solution.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

This product costs less than other competitor products on the market.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user8253

Architect at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees

Aug 22, 2016

What is Hyper-V over SMB?

Hyper-V over SMB

With the release of Windows Server 2012 Microsoft offers a new way to store Hyper-V Virtual Machine on a shared storage. In Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V Microsoft did only offer block-based shared-storage like Fiber channel or iSCSI. With Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Microsoft allows you to used file-based storage to run Hyper-V Virtual Machine from via the new SMB 3.0 protocol. This means Hyper-V over SMB allows you to store virtual machines on a SMB file share. In the past years I did a lot of Hyper-V implementations working with iSCSI or Fiber channel storage, and I am really happy with the new possibilities SMB 3.0 offers.

The common problem of block storage is that the Hyper-V host has to handle the storage connection. That means if you use iSCSI or fiber channel you have to configure the connection to the storage on the Hyper-V host for example multipath, iSCSI initiator or DSM software. With Hyper-V over SMB you don’t have to configure anything special because SMB 3.0 is built-in to Windows and supporting features like SMB Multichannel are activated and used by default. Of course you have to do some design considerations but this is much less complex than an iSCSI or Fiber Channel implementation.

How did they make it work

The first thing which was important was speed. SMB 3.0 offers a huge performance increase over the SMB 2.x protocol and you totally have to think about it in a different way. There are also a lot of other features like SMB Direct (RDMA), SMB Multichannel or Transparent Failover and many more which help in terms of performance, security and availability, but more on this supporting features in the next post.
Hyper-V over SMB Multichannel

Why Hyper-V over SMB?

Well I already mentioned a lot of reasons why you should use Hyper-V over SMB, but if you think about it there are there main reasons why you should use it.

Costs – Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V allows you to build cluster up to 64 nodes and if you build a clusters this size with fiber channel storage this will be quiet an investment in terms of fiber channel hardware such as HBAs, Switches and cables. By using Hyper-V over SMB you can reduce cost for infrastructure dramatically. Sure maybe you have already invested in a fiber channel storage and a fiber channel infrastructure and you don’t have to change that. For example if you have 100 Hyper-V hosts you may have about 200 HBAs and you also need fiber channel switches. What you could do with Hyper-V over SMB, you could create a Scale-Out File Server Cluster with 8 nodes which are attached to the fiber channel and present the storage to the Hyper-V hosts by using a SMB file share. This would save you a lot money.

Flexibility – Another point which I already mentioned is flexibility. By using Hyper-V over SMB you are removing the Storage dependency from the Hyper-V host and add the storage configuration to the Virtual Machine. In this case you don’t have to configure zoning or iSCSI initiators which is making life for Virtualization Administrators much easier. Here are two examples how IT teams can reduce complexity by using Hyper-V over SMB. First in small IT departments you may not have a dedicated storage team and if you have to add an new Hyper-V host or if you have to reconfigure your storage this can be a lot of difficult work for some people who haven’t much experience with the storage. In enterprise scenario you may have a dedicated Storage and a dedicated Virtualization team and in the most cases they have to work really closely together. For example if the Virtualization team adds another Hyper-V host, the Storage team has to configure the Storage for the host on the Storage site. If the Storage team makes changes to the Storage the Virtualization team eventually has to make changes to the Hyper-V hosts. This dependencies can be reduced by adding a layer between Storage and the Hypervisors and in this case this could be a Scale-Out File Server.

Technology – The third point in my list is technology. Microsoft is not really mention this point but since I have worked with different options like iSCSI, fiber channel or SMB I am a huge fan of SMB 3.0. Fiber channel is a great but expensive technology and people who have worked with iSCSI know that there can be a lot of issues in terms of performance. SMB 3.0 has some great supporting features which can help you increase performance, RDMA which is a technology which can increase networking performance by multiple times and SMB Multichannel which allows you to use multiple network adapters for failover and load balancing are working very well and let you make the most out of your hardware. Another part can be security if you think about encrypting iSCSI networks via IPsec you know that this can be something complex, with SMB Encryption there is a very easy solution for that on the SMB scenario.

I hope I could give you a quick introduction to Hyper-V over SMB and why it’s a good idea consider this in your deployment plans. In the next post I will quickly summarize the supporting features in SMB 3.0.

Disclosure: The company I work for is a Microsft Partner

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user810477IT Consultant at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

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Jul 5, 2018

This is a great budget friendly solution for companies who are looking to reduce costs associated with storage hardware and software and still want to maintain speedy experience. Many people think that Hyper-V over SMB will result in lower VM performance, however, with the advent of RDMA and SSD based disks, the performance of this solution is very much comparable to that of FC.

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it_user8256

Senior Manager of Infrastructure with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 2, 2013

Configuring and Managing Hyper-V Replica

Management Considerations
Hyper-V servers are managed locally using the Hyper-V Manager interface or remotely using the Hyper-V Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) or System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM). If the configuration is a Hyper-V Failover Cluster, the Failover Cluster Management interface is used.

Configuration and Management UI
Hyper-V Replica settings are configured in the Hyper-V Manager interface for standalone Hyper-V servers and the Failover Cluster Manager interface for Hyper-V Failover Clusters.

Configuration Settings

Configuring a Standalone Hyper-V Replica Server
1. In the Hyper-V Manager interface, Click on Hyper-V Settings in the Actions pane
2. In the Hyper-V Settings dialog box, Click on Replication Configuration
3. In the Details pane, Select Enable this computer as a replica server
4. Choose an Authentication method to include the port that will be used (The default ports are 80 for HTTP and 443 for HTTPS). There are default firewall rules already in place that just need to be enabled when replication is enabled on the Hyper-V server.
5. Configure Authorization and storage. This includes designating a specific location to store replica virtual machine files if the default location is not to be used. Should you not desire to allow all Primary servers to be serviced, there is an option to allow only specific servers (Primary servers) to send replication requests. If you want to allow all servers within the domain, a wildcard character can be used (e.g. *.contoso.com). When using a wildcard, only one storage location can be specified. If individual server entries are used, different storage locations for replica files can be configured. Complete all entries for the Primary Server, Storage Locations, and Security Tag information. Click Apply or OK when finished.

Configuring a Hyper-V Replica Failover Cluster
A Failover Cluster consists of multiple physical servers also known as nodes. Each node must have the Hyper-V role installed as well as the Failover Clustering feature. Installation of the Hyper-V role has already been covered. To install the Failover Clustering feature:
1. In Server Manager, start the Add Roles and Features Wizard (ARFW) by first choosing the Dashboard view and then choose Add Roles.
2. Step through the ARFW choosing the local node and making the following choices:
a. Installation Type: Role-based or Feature-based installation
b. Server Selection: Choose local node
c. Server Roles: Make no selections and click Next
d. Features: Choose Failover Clustering
e. Confirmation: Review the information and click Install (a reboot is not required when installing the Failover Clustering feature)
f. Results: Ensure the result is a successful installation of the Failover Clustering feature.
3. Complete this action across all nodes that will be members in the cluster
NOTE: The Failover Clustering feature can also be installed from the command line interface (CLI) by using the Deployment Image and Service Management (DISM) command line tool. At a command prompt, type: dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:Failover-Clustering. A reboot is not required to complete the installation.

After the Failover Clustering feature is installed and a Failover Cluster is created, the Hyper-V Replica Broker Role needs to be configured. To create the Hyper-V Replica Broker role:
1. Open the Failover Cluster Manager interface (located under Tools in the Server Manager Menu bar)
2. In the left-pane, connect to the cluster
3. With the name of the cluster highlighted in the left-hand pane, click on Configure Role in the Actions pane
4. The High Availability Wizard initializes
5. Select Hyper-V Replica Broker in the Select Role screen
6. Complete the wizard by providing a properly formatted NetBIOS name and IP address (as needed) which serves as the connection point (Client Access Point (CAP))when configuring virtual machines for replication
7. Ensure the Role comes Online and is able to failover between all nodes in the cluster

Configuring the Failover Cluster as a Replica cluster

With the Hyper-V Replica Broker Role configured in the cluster, the cluster can be configured as either a Primary cluster or a Replica cluster. This is accomplished using the Highly Available Hyper-V Replica role. To accomplish this:
1. Open the Failover Cluster Manager interface (located under Tools in the Server Manager Menu bar)
2. In the left-pane, connect to the cluster
3. With the name of the cluster highlighted in the left-hand pane, click on Roles in the details pane under the Navigate category
4. Right-click on the Role and choose Replication Settings
5. In the Hyper-V Replica Clustering Broker Configuration screen, make the appropriate selections as needed to configure the cluster as a Replica server.

This action implements the configuration across all nodes in the cluster. Keep in mind this does not automatically enable the correct firewall rules in each node of the cluster nor does it properly configure authentication if certificates are being used. Those actions will have to be completed by the administrator on each node in the cluster. When using certificate based authentication in a Failover Cluster, all of the cluster nodes and the Client Access Point (CAP) supporting the Hyper-V Replica role will need machine certificates.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.