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Mohamed -Adel - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Specialist at IPIC
Real User
Top 5
A highly scalable and stable solution, but the technical support needs improvement
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution is highly scalable."
  • "The pricing and technical support can be improved."

What is our primary use case?

The solution is used as a hosting database. 

What is most valuable?

The solution is highly scalable. 

What needs improvement?

The pricing and technical support can be improved. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Hyper-V for a few months. 

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Hyper-V
January 2025
Learn what your peers think about Hyper-V. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability of the solution is satisfactory. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is highly scalable. Fifty eight users are using the solution. 

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is moderate. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

How was the initial setup?

Hyper-V's initial setup is straightforward. The deployment takes a day. 

What about the implementation team?

The solution can be implemented in-house. 

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

Hyper-V is expensive. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate the overall 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.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1613121 - PeerSpot reviewer
Test Environment Manager at a wireless company with 201-500 employees
Real User
Helpful import wizard, good reporting tools, and the replication feature works well
Pros and Cons
  • "The replication, creation, and import wizard, as well as the integration with reporting tools, are the most useful features."
  • "In my opinion, it would have been better to truncate the site-to-site replication."

What is our primary use case?

I work in an environment where we are required to use them, as well as for DevOps and a few other things like Helios and similar things. As a result, I use it for DevOps testing, infrastructure, and implementation within the product areas of my clients.

What is most valuable?

The replication, creation, and import wizard, as well as the integration with reporting tools, are the most useful features.

What needs improvement?

The WSUS could stand to improve a little bit. It is also foggy at times. Again, I use a wide variety of products and services, but going through each one would take much longer, but WSUS is an awesome Microsoft product that could use some improvement in terms of reporting tools and such. Even the additions and servers work is more difficult. Even the manual add is difficult, and reporting occasionally breaks into the endpoints, but that could be one to five servers when I'm checking a hundred to 200 servers.  I suppose it's insignificant, but when it causes problems with those minor details, it can be difficult. But, aside from that, it works well.

It does what it needs to do and is adequate for the time being. It completes tasks such as replication cycles and other similar tasks. That's probably the only way it can be. In my opinion, it would have been better to truncate the site-to-site replication. If it could have been a simpler process, or if there was another way they could have done it, it would be beneficial. For example, if I'm doing site-to-site replication, I would normally have to do that in terms of bandwidth; Cisco has some, and they have some different tools that would enable the packages to be smaller and faster, but maybe just Microsoft takes a while to do the site-to-site replication.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with Hyper-V for approximately 15 years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This solution is used by 10 administrators, and the product itself has 500,000, or 600,000 users.

How are customer service and support?

We have pretty good in-house expertise, we haven't needed to reach out for actual technical support.

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

I test products ranging from VOIP to Microsoft to virtualization, VMware, and Hyper-V. I am always testing products and then deciding whether to put them into production for use or scale operations.

In the last year, I would say it has been a voice over IP products as well as a couple of SBC products. This is also true for VM testing and Microsoft products, such as Hyper-V, and a couple of software for voice over IP integration.

Microsoft, as well as perhaps eight or nine others.

I also work with DevOps.

We haven't used the VMware solution to its full potential, and the reason for that is that the software that is currently used on that platform lacks certain features that would allow us to use VMware to its full potential, but it resides on the VMware platform.

What other advice do I have?

In order to obtain the products, we must go through a third-party vendor. We can't go directly to Microsoft.

I would rate Hyper-V an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Hyper-V
January 2025
Learn what your peers think about Hyper-V. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.
832,460 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Rouben Amirthasawmy - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator at Sun Resorts
Real User
Free and scalable but limited and lacking features
Pros and Cons
  • "The initial setup was very easy."
  • "Hyper-V doesn't have a lot of features and is limited compared to other virtualization software."

What needs improvement?

Hyper-V doesn't have a lot of features and is limited compared to other virtualization software.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been working with Hyper-V for more than ten years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Hyper-V is not stable - we've had many errors and have had to do a lot of patch fixes for it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Hyper-V is scalable.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was very easy.

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

Hyper-V is free-of-charge.

What other advice do I have?

Hyper-V is affordable, but if you have the budget, I recommend going with VMware. I'd rate Hyper-V as five out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Owner at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Low on resources, easy to tailer, easy to move things, and highly reliable
Pros and Cons
  • "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."

What is our primary use case?

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.

How has it helped my organization?

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.

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for around 15 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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.

How are customer service and technical support?

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

How was the initial setup?

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.

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

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.

What other advice do I have?

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. 

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.
PeerSpot user
Works at hadafq8
Consultant
With the virtualization what we could achieve was maximum utilization of our resources.
Pros and Cons
  • "With each update, the security of this solution just gets better and better. It is very stable."
  • "We chose this solution because of the pricing and the simplicity of the product."
  • "The the only challenge for us was moving existing physical machines to virtual machines."

What is our primary use case?

My primary use case is for virtualization of all solutions from physical servers into other solutions for ease of management. 

What is most valuable?

With the virtualization  what we could achieve was maximum utilization of our resources. Previously we used to like have ten, fifteen physical service each one was utilized for a certain percentage and uh, not everything was utilized. I mean one service was maybe 20% utilization one was 90% utilization. So, there was no balance of utilization. With virtualization we can balance. In addition, we can be accurate at the with the solution or Hyper-V, this gives us a close decision I can move motion machines live from one physical machine to another.

What needs improvement?

I am able to give end users better performance and better response time and better availability.

The the only challenge for us was moving existing physical machines to virtual machines. The time taken was to migrate the physical machine to the virtual machine took about two months.

For how long have I used the solution?

More than five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

With each update, the security of this solution just gets better and better. It is very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have 250 employees and current users at any given point of time using this solution. One infrastructure has an ARCo database. Another has a Si database. The applications have a site exchange between them.

We have two employees who maintain deployment and management of the solution. One handles the database, and the other handles the application. We plan to scale to more users in the future.

How was the initial setup?

The time taken for integration was to migrate the physical machine to the virtual machine. We had to do this one by one.

The set up was very straightforward, you just follow the procedure, the documentation, and it is a breeze.

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

We chose this solution because of the pricing and the simplicity of the product.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I think that Hyper-V stands in the same ranking as VMware or Oracle in terms of solutions for similar needs.

What other advice do I have?

If you want to use a solution that does the job that is required, to the best of its ability, then Hyper-V is a great solution.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Ali Yazıcı - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Service Manager at Kuveyt Turk Participation Bank
Real User
Top 10
An easy to use solution, but we would like it to migrate virtual machines without interruptions
Pros and Cons
  • "One of the most valuable features of Hyper-V is ease to use."
  • "The technical support is good but it could improve by being faster."

What is our primary use case?

We use Hyper-V for test virtualization.

How has it helped my organization?

We used this product for our virtualization environment.

What is most valuable?

One of the most valuable features of Hyper-V is ease to use.

What needs improvement?

We would like it to migrate virtual machines without interruptions.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution needs to improve the stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Hyper-V can scale well.

We have approximately 1,000 users using this solution in my organization.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is good but it could improve by being faster.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

How was the initial setup?

The installation was not easy and it took approximately two days.

What about the implementation team?

We needed to have a consultant for the implementation. We have two administrators and one manager that does the maintenance of the solution.

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

There is a license required for this solution. I would recommend purchasing the support.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Hyper-V 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.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Freelancer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Real User
We can use hardware resources much more efficiently.
Pros and Cons
  • "I think all of these improvements are going in a good direction. For me, its direction is good and I'm very satisfied with this product."
  • "I am using this solution with E-Notes. I heard that there will be future improvements in integration of the E-notes systems. This would be very helpful."

What is our primary use case?

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).

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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

For how long have I used the solution?

More than five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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

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

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.

How was the initial setup?

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.

What about the implementation team?

In-house. To be precise by myself.

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

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

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Citrix Xen, but this solution has become too expensive.

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.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Service Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Consultant
Provides a redundant hosted solution to our clients, and the ability to load balance a cluster of servers so that resources are evenly spread.

What is most valuable?

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.

How has it helped my organization?

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

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

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.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No issues with scalability.

How are customer service and technical support?

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

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

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

How was the initial setup?

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.

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

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

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

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

What other advice do I have?

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.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We are a Microsoft partner.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Hyper-V Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: January 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Hyper-V Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.