Hyper-V Reviews

We had deployed multiple Hyper-V clusters for various projects and even have the confidence to run it for highly critical production loads.

Hyper-V has become a real matured virtualization platform with Windows Server 2012 R2. The organization that I work for was having a virtualization environment on Windows Server 2008 R2. Since it was not optimally used due to the limitations with Hyper-V with Windows Server 2008 R2, we evaluated the possibility to get an environment on Windows Server 2012 R2. We had more than 30 racks with the majority of them running on physical machines. By the end of 2014, the number of server racks came down to 10 and we could confidently run majority of the workloads on Hyper-V. The organization has realized the benefits on smaller data center space, power, cooling, etc. apart from the benefit that the virtualization layer brings in. 

• Live migration
• P2V
• VM replica
• Snapshots
• VM export and import
• Dynamic memory, etc.

The advanced features, like Network Virtualization, have yet to be tested out, but I feel that they will be a game changer.

SCVMM needs to be more user-friendly. Without SCVMM, automating is not easy to use and we look forward to the upcoming versions of SCVMM becoming simpler and more admin friendly.

Just to be able to efficiently utilize our power hardware. Gone are the days of one pizza box for a two-core CPU. You've got dozens of cores in one box, and you can't use them all if you just run one thing on one server, so you've got to virtualize it.

The simplicity and intuitiveness of the platform. It was a very simple adaptation, if you have any experience in virtualization.

There is a hard limitation of 20 gigs per file with Dropbox, so you've got to overcome that by chunking the zip files into something smaller and manageable. But that's going to depend on the bandwidth. You can have an adverse effect as well, if somebody is just using a real small data pipe. Then, they could choke you with Dropbox. They've got to calculate it out.

I didn't give it a 10 out of 10 because sometimes remotely managing it isn't as simple as it could be. Basically, it just involves having to log directly into a box rather than doing something via remote command.

And there's also still a little bit of a learning curve, and as I'm learning additional things with some of the maintenance stuff - then scripting that and automating it - then I won't have to deal with it anymore.

In a way, it's still easier, in my mind, in comparison to when you do have to dig in deep on a VMware box.

Not as of yet. But what's being done is completely unsupported by Dropbox. The way that they view it is just "a file is a file." That's it. So, you synchronize files that are the actual backups - and it's just a file. But using them for a backup solution, they don't support anything other than it being a client application for a user; not as a service or anything else.

Not really, except for when they push out enough data that it requires additional dependencies that they didn't know about. Broke it on a Linux server, but that was just one time.

It's the luck of the draw. It's been as low as a three and as high as an eight out of 10.

VMware - the cost. Because Hyper-V is free, and you get a lot of the solutions that you've got to pay tens of thousands of dollars for with VMware. It's free under Microsoft. And they've really polished it in the past two years. It's pretty good.

It's very simple.

I was dropped into it, so I inherited a mostly completed environment, and then I finished it.

They had problems with the VMware running on their servers because they were using unsupported. It was before Dell released firmware for the controllers for the servers to stop complaining. Even though the drives were working fine, the controller was throwing a bunch of errors.

Plus, that version of VMware, at that time, didn't support TRIM, so then it had problems reclaiming space and stuff like that. Then it had to go over to Windows, which under Hyper-V supported TRIM. Now, VMware does support it, so it wouldn't be an issue, but it's already converted over. It's rock solid.

Don't knock Hyper-V until you actually try it.

I get a lot of people from the tech community, saying things like, "Hahaha, you're on Hyper-V?" And I reply, "Yeah. At first, I opposed it, but it's grown on me and I love it." I still run VMware at home, just because I already have it running on in my lab, but if I were to rebuild, I'd do it under Hyper-V. Why not?

You get more features for free.

You've got to actually really try it for a good six months to a year, and then it grows on you. It's like, "Wow! You can do all that?" Yeah. And more.

Hyper-V's gotten a lot better since 2012 and 2012 R2, and now the 2016 is light years again.

I use the solution for Jira visualization and Jira workload.

The solution is very user-friendly. Since we have an agreement with Microsoft, it is really easy to use and doesn't cost us much.

The feature of native integration with Azure is good.

The solution should improve its native integration with other public cloud solutions.

I have been using the solution for the past 10-15 years.

The solution is very stable.

The solution is very scalable. However, we do not have a big cluster. At the moment, we do not have any plans to increase the usage of the solution.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. We did not have any issues at all.

We get ROI on the product.

Since we have an agreement with Microsoft, the solution is not very expensive.

If someone plans to implement Hyper-V, they should seek an agreement with Microsoft to get a better value for the product. I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

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 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.

The initial setup is very easy.

The scalability is okay.

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.

I've been using the solution for about one year. 

The performance isn't that great. If can be slow. 

The stability is okay. I'd describe it as between 50 to 60% stable. 

The scalability is decent. I'd say that it can scale to 60 to 70%.

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. 

I've recently moved over to vSphere. 

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.

The first time I did an implementation, I needed help from Microsoft. They assisted us originally.

The solution is quite expensive when you compare it to other products. Microsoft solutions aren't cheap. 

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.

I am a solution provider and Hyper-V is one of the products that I implement for my customers.

There are two very good things about this product including licensing and stability. 

If you have a lot of Hyper-V servers then you will need an additional product, which is the System Center Virtual Machine Manager, so that you can control the host environments of all of your virtual machines. It would be nice if they provided a free management console that we could use to manage all of the hosts for no additional fee.

There should be a way to restart the services and not the whole station, which would minimize downtime, especially when updating the operating system. This is a feature that everybody needs.

I started working with Hyper-V in 2012, between eight and nine years ago.

The product is very stable, in particular with the most recent version of Windows Server. This is true even in a cluster environment, and I have never found an issue with stability.

Obviously, when you are using Windows Server update, it will restart the server occasionally and you will have downtime, but it will be minimal. If you don't want to have any downtime then you will need multiple hosts in a cluster environment. You can move your virtual machines from one host to another, which means that you can restart the server and not affect the service. This can be important because sometimes, the restart process takes too much time to complete.

It is very easy to scale Hyper-V. However, it depends on the version that you have because if you have the Standard Edition then you only have three hosts. If you want more than three hosts then you will need a Datacenter version.

I have experience with VMware and one of the nice features is that you can restart a service after an update and everything goes live in seconds, rather than minutes.

These two technologies compete with each other, and in deciding which to use, I speak with users about their needs. I also speak with them about the knowledge of their technical team and the budget. These are all factors in the decision because I want to provide the best solution from both a technical and budget perspective.

The initial setup is very easy. All you have to do is watch a 10-minute YouTube video and you can deploy the hardware.

It can be deployed in different ways. If you need to have a virtual environment then it will be hosted on Microsoft Azure. If instead, you have your own private cloud then it will be hosted on-premises, on your physical servers.

The tricky part about this field is not the deployment. It's troubleshooting and finding solutions for issues. For just about any software, you can deploy anything. Even if you don't understand anything about the product, you can deploy anything from scratch and there is no issue with it. The problem is figuring how to solve issues and find solutions outside of the box. Almost all Microsoft issues are solved in this way. It's not about what you find online or in the documentation. Rather, you need to think outside the box. It's the hardest part about this field.

If you have the standard edition of Windows server then with each copy of the operating system, you have two virtual machines for free.

If you have a Windows Datacenter license then you have unlimited virtual machines for free. This is much better compared to ESXi or VMware, where each virtual machine requires its own license. In the Windows Datacenter, you can have as many as you want.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

I use this solution for some of my virtual machines.

It allowed us to add on servers and fix things in an expedient manner.

I find the hardware and the cost reduction most valuable.

The backup has room for improvement. 

It is a pretty stable solution. 

I have not scaled it because I am not running it in a cluster environment anymore. I do know that the clusters work and that Hyper-V can easily scale for an organization's greater needs.

Microsoft tech support is horrible.

The initial setup was straightforward. It took a day to deploy. 

The Hyper-V pricing and licensing are very good. 

I looked at Hyper-V vs AHV, which is a Nutanix product. Nutanix Acropolis is a hyperconverged product that does a lot of next-level type of virtualization software. 

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.