Hyper-V Reviews

Hyper-V is used to virtualize machines. You install the latest version of Microsoft Windows Server on your hardware, and you install Hyper-V in the Microsoft Windows Server. You can now install multiple virtual servers within Hyper-V. They all can have different functionality.

The servers can be used for many things, such as file servers, ERPs, and web servers. All of this was not available before the advent of virtualization. With virtualization it's easy with one hardware machine, you can have several servers.

Hyper-V could improve by making it easier to manage.

I have been using Hyper-V for approximately 20 years.

Hyper-V is a stable solution, but not as stable as VMware.

The solution has good scalability.

The server is accessible to all the users that need to have access to the network resources.

The in-house Microsoft specialists will attempt to resolve any issues we are facing and if they are not able to do it, we escalate to the head office. If the head office is not able to do assist with a resolution, then they escalate to Microsoft for the final support. The Microsoft support has been very good and this is why we are still with Microsoft.

I have previously used VMware. 

VMware may be a better solution than Hyper-V because Hyper-V is a bit more sophisticated and complex. VMware is not as complex. However, the best option depends on the company and what the business wants. That's what we determine, what is best for us. We are using Hyper-V because we do not need to get a separate license in our Microsoft system.

The implementation of Hyper-V is more difficult than VMware.

The deployment time depends on the number of servers you have in total but to deploy one of the servers, would take approximately 15 minutes. You have to, first of all, start with the installation of the server, and do all the conversion. It could take you close to four hours, depending on the speed of the machine.

We did the implementation of the solution ourselves. We have certified Microsoft specialists as part of our team. If you did not have them we would use an outsourced implementation.

In Nigeria, we have three to four people managing the solution, but in other places, the number could be different. For example, in Ghana, we have five managing the solution. 

There is a license to use this solution and it is an annual purchase.

I rate Hyper-V a seven out of ten.

We usually use Microsoft Hyper-V for very small customers that don't have the budget for another library or hypervisor. We use Hyper-V when the customer has only one or two virtual machines. It's typically bundled with the Windows Server operating system, so we can provide virtual machines for free. 

In Malaysia, we started the cloud journey in 2020. Most people were looking for services, and many customers wanted to migrate to the cloud immediately. They just look forward and make some comparisons. If you say, "I want to migrate to a cloud," typically, our customers will ask for AWS as a primary choice, followed by Microsoft Azure.

The biggest problem with Hyper-V is that the virtual machines are mostly running on top of the Windows Server, so we often need to reboot the machine and virtual machines when updating the host level. That's why we prefer VMware. It's much easier to patch the host. Also, Hyper-V has security vulnerabilities. It's easy to attack and compromise the host.

VMware is more stable than Hyper-V.

Hyper-V's scalability or stability is okay. The problem is updating the host. Sometimes we have to schedule downtime for the entire machine to boot up, and the Windows update process takes a long time on the loading stream. It causes a lot of downtime for the customers. Hyper-V has more requirements to scale up compared to VMware. 

Only about 15 percent of our customers use Hyper-V. Most use VMware. VMware is much more robust than Hyper-V. If customers need high availability or more stability, we tell them to go with VMware. If cost is an issue, they can opt for the VMware Essentials Kit, which is the cheapest. 

Hyper-V is much easier to deploy because Hyper-V is already installed inside Windows Server OS. You only need to turn on Hyper-V as a service, and then you can use it. The most convenient thing about Hyper-V is the operating system. We can do anything on top of it without any other computer. 

VMware can't do this. You must have a console server, and then you can use the web to enter to the VMware to do the configuration. Hyper-V can still be configured inside the host operating system, which is more convenient.

We don't have a dedicated team just for Hyper-V. We just have a Microsoft support team. This is a Microsoft product.

The time to value for Hyper-V is shorter than VMware because the customer will typically purchase a Windows Server license with the hardware, so it will be faster.

I think Hyper-V is much cheaper for a small or medium-sized business. If the customer is running VMware and using Windows Server, we still have to purchase a Windows Server license plus the VMware license. Hyper-V will be cheaper if it's just a small deployment for one or two virtual machines.

I rate Hyper-V six out of 10. Hyper-V is okay if customers are comfortable with it and don't require high availability. 

We are mainly using Hyper-V for VMs. The primary business is biscuit manufacturing, so we have 70 different types of sales-related software, some Windows-based SAP, and VMs running on Hyper-V. All VMs are running on Hyper-V. So indirectly, everyone is using it because it's our primary production system. We have maybe 650 employees at the moment. About 200 of these are computer users who are connected with Hyper-V in one way or another. Either they are using some of its services in a virtual machine or they're the IT guys directly involved with it. The non-IT people are using finance software or SAP-related software that they access through the web. Some servers are standalone Hyper-V, and there are two clusters of Hyper-V.

We have a cluster with storage space direct in Hyper-V, and we have virtual networking as well, so we are using all of the features except for Credential Guard, Host Guardian, and a few other things. We are not using these types of Hyper-V solutions because we don't need them.

Microsoft has developed a Windows Admin Center to manage its servers. I would like Microsoft to put more effort into the Admin Center interface and make it much easier. It is customizable, but you have to be a PowerShell expert to customize these things. That is a limitation. Microsoft could also do more modules related to servers and add administration features for that. I like Admin Center, and I want to deploy it in my organization, but the role-based access control feature is limited as we have to give a complete administrative right to other users as well. So these are some limitations that are blocking us. The Admin Center needs to provide a consolidated management interface that is easy to configure and provide a role-based access control so that we can give certain rights to our other users enabling them to administer the servers.

I joined the organization where I currently work in the last year, and the organization has deployed Hyper-V since 2012. So, in this organization, I have used Hyper-V for one year. But before that, I was a Microsoft instructor teaching about Microsoft products, including Hyper-V.

I would say that Hyper-V is pretty stable. But when it updates, we must restart all Windows systems. So if Microsoft can fix this thing so that the packages install restarting, then everything would be heaven for us. This means some downtime on our business side.

Yeah. It's easy to scale cluster features like Microsoft or Hyper-V. We can add as many servers—a maximum of 64—so it can handle a lot and it's easy for us to add to it. But there is one requirement, which is that the servers have to be identical in hardware specs. So that is one of the limitations.

Technical support was good. We didn't require Hyper-V technical support, but we have some issues with our Exchange online and email. So, for that, we opened a ticket with Microsoft, and they provided us with good and excellent support.

The initial setup is simple. There's not much to do. We input one command or just one or two clicks on the UI. Initial setup in the Windows environment for any software is not that difficult. Installing Hyper-V takes five to 10 minutes, including two server restarts. And then, we have to make the VMs, so that depends on how many we are making. That's the other factor, not the initial deployment. Migrating VMs is easy. It does not require any specific configurations because it runs on most hardware. And Windows Update comes with automatic updates. We use the WSUS server to update our servers to have controlled update patches. We keep our servers up to date, so it's easier, and it does not require any specialized hardware.

I rate it eight out of 10. I recommend Hyper-V because it's easy to install and supports most hardware. It runs on almost everything. I'm also recommending my company go for Azure Stack because it also uses Hyper-V, so we will not have to convert our VMs. But the top management in our organization is considering Nutanix or VMware solutions. I don't know why they're doing this. 

Two main x3650M3 servers with 192GB and 96GB RAM. Primary case was Active Directory infrastructure (actually three DC's), file repository, main MS SQL Server and couple of applications servers.

Additionally remote access thru Desktop Services, management (nVision), central AV (ESET), software routers. In short - whole bunch of different servers and different operating systems Windows Server and desktop, different flavours of Linux, even FreeBSD).

Creating virtual machines is really straightforward. Possibility of changing virtual disk size is very helpful. The simplicity of the interface can be confusing because it really provides some advanced options.

I am waiting for improvements in networking and life migration. Some networking settings could be less cryptic.

More than five years.

I have never had any stability problems caused by Hyper-V for over five years.

I am very satisfied with the scalability of Hyper-V. I'm using up to eight virtual machines on single x3650 M3

We previously used VMware, but we switched because Hyper-V is cheaper and delivers the same stability for less money. To be honest for free.

Initial setup was straightforward. It was easy and fast. It took me between a half  to an hour for complete deployment. The most complex part is the networking.

In-house. To be precise by myself.

Licensing is fairly easy because Hyper-V itself is free.

Citrix Xen, but this solution has become too expensive.

The most valuable feature of this is the ability to provide a completely redundant hosted solution to our clients, no matter where they are. We have the ability to load balance a cluster of servers so that resources are evenly spread, providing the best experience. I also like the ability to live migrate machines if we have any issues with a host. The user experiences no degradation.

This solution allows us to use minimal resources to support a large number of clients.

One thing I would love to see with this product is the ability to provide an offline solution. It would be great if someone could do work when no network connection is available, then sync up when a connection is available. I would also like to see better performance with media. Right now, streaming any media within Hyper-V is just not feasible.

We have been using Hyper-V for over eight years now. We are currently using Microsoft Hyper-V 2012 to provide a fully hosted desktop solution for our clients. Our clients access their desktops through a gateway broker.

We do experience some instability with the platform. It usually happens if there is a lot of I/O happening on the volumes that hold the VMs. We also have some issues working with clustered servers not load balancing correctly.

No issues with scalability.

Technical support is 10/10. Well, it’s a Microsoft product, so the level of support has been great.

Before Hyper-V, we used VMware. At the time, VMware was difficult to manage, very expensive and not as reliable.

Hyper-V is very straightforward. It’s really just adding the appropriate roles and licenses to the servers. Once the brokers and gateways are set up, it’s really easy to just add hosting servers and VMs to those hosts.

I wasn’t involved in the pricing or licensing, so I can’t really comment on it.

Before using Hyper-V, we used VMware and Citrix. This solution gave us the most flexibility.

If you are looking for virtual technology, Hyper-V continues to grow and improve. Being a Microsoft product, it’s the most-compatible solution to implement into your environment. It’s also the most cost-effective solution and you really can’t beat Microsoft support.

I'm mostly implementing Hyper-V solutions. Most of my clients are implementing Hyper-V on-premises, and on cloud my clients are using Microsoft Azure.

I am a Microsoft architect. I'm certified in Microsoft. My company is located in Cameroon and many countries in Africa and out of Africa. In my company we are working on Microsoft solutions at 80% on Windows Server, SQL, Exchange, Microsoft for Business, ISO. We are training with these solutions and implementing them.

Most clients are using Microsoft solutions. I prefer customers to use Hyper-V because Hyper-V is mostly integrated with Microsoft solutions. For example, when you have Hyper-V, it doesn't make sense to pay more for another license to buy VMware. For me, it's a waste.

With the Windows data center, I can have an infinite number of virtual machines. In the past, VMware was very important maybe 8 or 10 years ago, but with Hyper-V it has navigation ability and it's integrated with Windows Viptela 16 for free. People want navigation and high availability. All these features are included with Hyper-V for free when you have a license of Windows Server.

For Hyper-V, the copy and paste function could be improved. You cannot continue copying from the host machine to the virtual machine. It's very difficult. You can paste text if you want to extract the command from the virtual machine. You can save the command on the host machine and pass through the main activity to paste the command on the virtual machine. It's good but sometimes when we want to work very quickly, it would help if Microsoft integrated the possibility to paste a file from the host machine to the virtual machine.

The integration tools are sometimes not very smooth. Most clients can't develop it very well because most administrators are working on host machines or from a laptop administering virtual machines. So the administrator working on a laptop  must have the possibility maybe from the host to paste on the virtual machine.

It's very stable. I have never had a problem with Hyper-V's stability.

The solution is scalable because you can migrate the virtual machine for Hyper-V to the cloud easily. Each time they release a new OS, they are adding new features so far it's scalable.

I've never had an issue with Hyper-V where I needed to ask for support. I can resolve most issues myself.

Deployment is very easy. 

It depends, but it can take two or three hours to implement it. If the infrastructure is difficult, it can take one or two days. It depends on the number of virtual machines currently in use.

I would rate this solution 10 out of 10.

We mostly use Microsoft Hyper-V in our production environment.

I find that most of the competition is more or less the same. However, Hyper-V is, when you compare it to the older platforms like VMware, a little bit more advanced at this stage. 

I like the System Center part of it, the System Center VMM, where you can manage all the stuff together in the orchestrator and those kinds of things. That was not really available when we looked at Proxmox and other options.

Microsoft's got the better deployment tools like MBT and conflict manager, which is not in the other platform.

For me, the initial setup was very easy.

The solution has been very stable.

The scalability on offer is good.

It's hard to compare it to other solutions. Everything has almost the same offering.

It's possible that more deployment tools might make it a bit better.

If a person has never implemented the solution before, they might find the process difficult. 

The next generation should at least include most of the tools of the next operating system.

I've been using the solution from the start. I likely started using it around 2006. It's been well over a decade. I've used it for many, many years at this point. 

The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

The product is scalable. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so.

The initial setup was very simple in my case. I've got a certification, so for me, it's almost like second nature. For someone with less experience, it's possible it may be a bit difficult.

I am able to handle the implementation myself. I do not need an integrator or consultant. 

We did look at Proxmox and Citrix Hypervisor, among other solutions. 

I'm just a customer and an end-user.

I'm using the 2012 and 2016 versions of the product.

I'm more familiar with Hyper-V and with Microsoft products. I've got certification in that as well. There are some management solutions out from Microsoft, which are not just for Hyper-V, but for a lot of things. With these, it's almost like an all-in-one product, which you don't really get when you look at your Linux-based virtualizers. For example, with Proxmox, there is not really management. You have these notes that you couple up and then you have a backup server, however, you don't really have something that you can orchestrate those things with. Citrix, I can't speak to as I didn't really work with Citrix that much.

If you run any kind of network solution, I would rather recommend Hyper-V over any other hypervisor at this moment - unless you are looking at it from a cost of ownership perspective.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. There's no such thing as a perfect product, however, I'm pretty happy with this.

We basically use it to virtualize a service for email on-premise. We also use it to virtualize the apps, but it is mainly for virtualizing servers, such as SQL Server, Exchange Server, SharePoint, and CRM.

It has cut down the management role on the actual service itself because we only have four Hyper-V hosts. Recently we had two, but we've put in two all-flash Hyper-V hosts. We have all-flash storage. It is good storage with loads of RAM. Most of them have got three-quarters of a terabyte of RAM, and they all are dual 32-core processors. There is no lack of power or anything in them. Because our servers are virtualized, it means that we do have four rack servers.

It really reduces the load. By using replication, we can separate out the servers and put them at different locations. We have them attached to the 10 gig fiber. With the replication facility, even if we do lose a server, we can be up and running within seconds or minutes at worst.

It is actually very low on resources. It doesn't use many resources. It is also very easy to tailor. You can change things like the amount of memory and storage on the fly. 

It is very stable and reliable. I like its replication feature, which is very good. It is also very easy to move the virtual machines across push servers without any difficulty. 

Its performance is also very good. Now with this pandemic, a lot of workers are working from home. A lot of workers have been using laptops as their desktop computers, and they would remote into a virtual PC. There is no difficulty, and they can't tell the difference between this and the real one. It is much easier to manage.

The Hyper-V management console could be improved to make it easier. It should be a little bit more granular. Various virtual switches could also be improved to make virtual desk management slightly better. 

The replication could be improved slightly. The checkpoints or snapshots could be improved to make it a bit more transparent to the user.

I have been using this solution for around 15 years.

It is very stable and very reliable. I never had any failures of any description with it, which is amazing. We might have had hardware failures on the host, but everything is redundant, so there is plenty of resilience there.

I haven't come across any scalability issues, but you need a fairly powerful host machine. 

Nearly all users are using Hyper-V in some way, but they're not aware that it is Hyper-V that they're using while logging in to the servers. The servers are all virtualized, except for the physical servers that are hosting Hyper-V. We have quite a lot of virtual servers. The gateway that they use is a virtualized gateway server. Email servers are all virtualized. All sorts of services and filling servers are all virtualized. Virtualization reduces the physical footprint.

I never had to use Hyper-V technical support from Microsoft. It has been pretty stable.

It is very straightforward, very simple, and very quick. It is very quick to set up a virtual machine. You can set it up in minutes.

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.

I would advise making sure that you have the hardware that is up to the job. You should also have a clear plan of what you want to virtualize. Make sure that there is room for growth in terms of the physical hardware for the host, which is the server hosting Hyper-V. 

It is very robust. It doesn't consume as many resources as VMware, for instance. It is fairly slick. It is very functional and doesn't really present great challenges.

I would definitely rate Hyper-V a ten out of ten.