It's free minus initial licensing for the OS. You can centrally manage multiple Hyper-V hosts rather easy with no extra licensing fees vs VMware vCenter. Having used both I still have a preference for VMware (especially for P2V situations), but for home/small offices Hyper-V is a great alternative. Hyper-V is included in Windows 8 and Windows 10 with minimal loss to functionality (mainly no Hyper-V replica).
Technical Support Specialist at PCMS Datafit
I'm able to save space by running multiple Operating Systems and Services on only one physical device, but I wish importing/exporting were more robust and more user-friendly.
What is most valuable?
How has it helped my organization?
I use this in my home lab, and I am able to save space by running multiple Operating Systems and Services on only one physical device.
What needs improvement?
I have not gotten to configure virtual SANs, but I wish there were more solutions for storage options. Virtual SANs aside, Server 2012R2 does provide a rather easy way to setup iSCSI targets with local storage. I wish importing/exporting were more robust and more user-friendly. Creating templates would be nice. I will say Hyper-V replica for clustering/failover is pretty sweet. P2V situations are a little more convoluted than with VMware, but still relatively easy. You just have to create a VHD image of the physical machine then attach it to a new virtual machine.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used it for one or two years.
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What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
No issues encountered.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
No issues encountered.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I run an i7 quad core with a total of 8 processing threads and 24GB of RAM. I have eight VMs on a Hyper-V host, but not all run at the same time. The most I’ve had run is five, and everything ran pretty smoothly.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support is very limited. Knowledge-base articles on TechNet and public forums are all that is really available.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
This is my first enterprise deployment of a virtual machine infrastructure. I used Hyper-V because it was already on my host OS.
How was the initial setup?
Deployment is easy, enable the feature using the wizard, reboot, and access the management console to start making VMs. Implementation is easy, if you can’t set it up yourself, you don’t belong in IT.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It's free, minus the license for the host OS.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I like VMware ESXi, I am aware they offer a free version as well. When I have time and resources, I would like to implement a new infrastructure using that. I’m very familiar with ESXi because we use that in our work infrastructure.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
IT Specialist at IPIC
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.
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.
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December 2024
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System Administrator at Sun Resorts
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.
Manager IT at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
Easy to set up and scalable, but is quite expensive
Pros and Cons
- "The initial setup is very easy."
- "The operating system is very, very heavy."
What is our primary use case?
We primarily use the product for multiple servers and for Dynamics AX, for example, the routing server, the load balancer, the application server, and stuff like that.
What is most valuable?
The initial setup is very easy.
The scalability is okay.
What needs improvement?
The performance of VMware was better, which is why I've moved away from Hyper-V.
The operating system is very, very heavy. Sometimes the system is pretty slow. Basically, the iOS performance is very slow, as compared to VMware. They must make the OS as simple and as smooth as they can to make it more user-friendly and faster.
The product is quite expensive.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for about one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The performance isn't that great. If can be slow.
The stability is okay. I'd describe it as between 50 to 60% stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is decent. I'd say that it can scale to 60 to 70%.
How are customer service and technical support?
We've had so many issues, however, we didn't really ask for help from Microsoft. We mostly did a lot of googling and worked to figure things out on our end.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I've recently moved over to vSphere.
How was the initial setup?
The product is not difficult to set up. It's not overly complex. It's pretty straightforward. A company shouldn't have any problems with its implementation.
What about the implementation team?
The first time I did an implementation, I needed help from Microsoft. They assisted us originally.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution is quite expensive when you compare it to other products. Microsoft solutions aren't cheap.
What other advice do I have?
I'm just a customer and an end-user.
I have used the Hyper-V for Dynamics AX for a while, however, recently I moved to a virtual machine, VM.
I'd rate the solution at a five out of ten. It's not the worst, however, it certainly is not the best either.
I would recommend Hyper-V to users, especially if they are dealing with a Microsoft OS.
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.
Sr. Programmer at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
A good hypervisor but it lacks proper backup features
Pros and Cons
- "It is good for small installations."
- "It would be nice if it was turned into its own product because that's the problem with it. It doesn't have a single place where you can manage things. You have to go into all different screens to be able to configure it. And then you have no idea what the performance is. It's really just a feature added to Windows, and Microsoft does not really have anything that pulls it all together well. Compared to VMware, it does not have everything collaborate on one screen."
What is our primary use case?
We primarily use this solution as a hypervisor.
What needs improvement?
They could turn it into a product because that's the problem with it. It doesn't have a single place where you can manage things. You have to go into all different screens to be able to configure it. It is hard to track what the performance is. It's really just a feature added to Windows, and Microsoft does not really have anything that pulls it all together well. Compared to VMware, it does not have everything collaborate on one screen.
In addition, the solution needs better ability to do backups.
For how long have I used the solution?
Three to five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Once it is setup, there is no problem.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is a hypervisor, so if you had more servers, you get more scale.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is not straightforward, it is a bunch of Microsoft parts that you have to arrange yourself. You have to set up the networking so that you have redundancy. You then have to go in, cluster two Windows servers, which is not so easy. The Hyper-V becomes simple, but it does not happen if the other things are not properly configured.
It takes roughly four hours to install.
What was our ROI?
There is no ROI for us, because it is a free product.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It is free for us so that was a prime factor for choosing this solution.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We are currently seriously considering migrating to VMware solutions.
What other advice do I have?
It is good for small installations. If you are looking to do anything fancy, this is is not a good choice.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Works at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
A compatible, easily installable, scalable and stable solution which allows us to utilize our physical environment
Pros and Cons
- "The solution allows us to take advantage of our physical environment."
- "Traditional architecture, such as converged infrastructure, should be done away with"
What is our primary use case?
The solution serves our needs as an education entity in the UAE.
What is most valuable?
Both Hyper-V and VMware have similar features, including network utilization.
The solution allows us to take advantage of our physical environment. We save on cost and computing. It has good performance when compared with the physical, normal, traditional way of computing. The VMs are easy to deploy and to manage from a central administration portal, in respect of managing the workloads.
What needs improvement?
Traditional architecture, such as converged infrastructure, should be done away with. So, nowadays, we can save space, like space footprint. If one is using hyper-converged infrastructure, everything will be virtualized. So, basically, we can state that we are a completely software-defined data center once we move to the hyper-converged infrastructure. That is our target.
At present, Hyper-V can be managed by the SCVMM, but it doesn't have the portal. In VMware vSphere there is a portal, through which the VMs can be managed. Microsoft is providing Windows helping center, but it should be dedicated to a certain extent. It doesn't have full features when compared to SCVMM. So, it's better to have something similar to that.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using Hyper-V for more than five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
While every product comes with issues, the solution works for us.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is scalable.
How are customer service and technical support?
The technical support is the best.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was easy and pretty straightforward.
Since the solution is compatible with Azure Cloud and uses the same format, it will make it very easy for us to load the latter in the future, should we decide to do so.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Thanks to our enterprise agreement with Microsoft, Hyper-V is free for us.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
VMware vSphere licenses are very costly compared to Hyper-V because we have have our enterprise agreement with Microsoft, meaning that Hyper-V is free for us. We can use it without any problem.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend the solution to someone who is fully Microsoft, one who is looking to implement Microsoft environment in its entirety. I recommend the solution to someone who plans to go with a hybrid environment through Azure.
I rate Hyper-V as a ten out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: partner
Works at hadafq8
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.
Systems Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
You can automate the deployment of a new Hyper-V host, but the networking part is difficult to setup.
What needs improvement?
They need to make the initial configuration more straightforward, as the networking part is confusing.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used it for three years.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
I find out that for smaller shops, that have under 50VMs with a 1gb network, you don't need separate iSCSI traffic for your data. I know that all the best practices tell you to separate the traffic, but what I am seeing, is a much better Hyper-V performance if you keep ISCSI traffic with your data traffic. If you can use CIFS instead of the iSCSI, go with CIFS, HyperV loves CIFS.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We did have problems, and you need to make sure that the LUNs have enough space. If you run out of space, you will need to spend a few hours to bring the VMs up.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
If you know what you are doing, you can automate the deployment of a new Hyper-V host with a PXE boot and VMM.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
5/10.
Technical Support:It's 5/10 as it is like a lotto, you never know who you will get on other side. Sometimes you get an expert, and sometimes you get a beginner.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We previously used VMware. The primary reason to switch to Hyper-V was the cost, as Hyper-V is for free.
How was the initial setup?
The networking part is confusing for the beginners
What about the implementation team?
We did it in-house.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Hyper-V is free, however if you build clusters, you should get a manager to centralize the management. If you are big enough and you have some money, I strongly recommend System Center, which includes VMM and other great tools like Orchestrator. You can automate building your VMs and even your application tiers. Also with VMM, you can automate spinning up new Hyper-V hosts with PXE boot. I configured, I used it, and it works perfectly.
If you are small shop go with a third party Hyper-V manager like 5nine. It is cheap, they even have a free version, and also a converter from VMware is free. I am using it right now and it works great. It includes alerting.
If for some reason you cant get either, you can manage your clusters directly from fail over cluster manager. It is just more manual work than with the tools above.
What other advice do I have?
For the cost, it has almost the same features as VMware. If you are a Microsoft shop, then get Hyper-V with System Center to connect to Windows Azure and you are all set.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Sorry I have not had time to comment, I stay rather busy at my job and studies.
First, a little about my background.
I've only been in the IT field professionally for almost 2 years as of this comment. I graduated in May of 2013 with two Associate Degrees; Computer Network Management and Computer Network Engineering. I obtained my role of a Technical Support Specialist back in April of 2014, I started out with basic help desk support and quickly got thrown into the deep end of server management, virtualization, networking, and SAN technologies without warning or support. I may not be very experienced by most tech standards, but I certainly have a talent and aptitude for this career path. I have quite a few experienced techs who will attest to my abilities. My company's IT department consists of me and my boss. My boss handles high level infrastructure needs and planning where as my jobs consists of everything under the sun any my job constantly pushes my boundaries of experience.
I use Hyper-V at home to basically study for MCSA/MCSE certifications. I setup an AD infrastructure, DHCP, DNS, WDS, NPS, RRAS, as well as many other services and I have a virtual machine just for VPN connections to my office. I constantly use snapshots to test new services and I have a base VM that I exported and I copy when I need to setup a new one.
I was asked to write a review on Hyper-V so I did. I work with many software developers and I have turned them on to Hyper-V for home use on several occasions and have yet to hear anything bad about it. I do have a preference to VMware ESX and if asked to write a review on that, I would sing it praises. But as for Hyper-V goes, I think that it is viable alternative to VMware and best suited for home or small to medium business use, larger business could also use and would be complimented very well with the whole SCCM application suite.