Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Hyper-V vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs VMware vSphere comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.0
Organizations find Hyper-V cost-effective, citing savings on hardware, electricity, and maintenance, with quick value realization and efficiency.
Sentiment score
6.8
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure delivers ROI by reducing costs and simplifying management, enhancing resource efficiency and minimizing downtime.
Sentiment score
7.1
VMware vSphere increases ROI by reducing server needs, costs, and deployment time, improving efficiency and hardware utilization.
You need only one physical server that can host several virtualized servers within the same physical server instead of having multiple physical servers.
We can say 10% is the approximate amount of savings because most of the things are automated and streamlined, so the manual work is eliminated in most cases.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.0
Hyper-V customer service receives mixed reviews, with satisfactory support often relying on Microsoft documentation and online resources.
Sentiment score
8.1
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's customer service is praised for quick, knowledgeable support and effective resolution despite some cost concerns.
Sentiment score
6.8
VMware vSphere support is efficient and knowledgeable, though delays occur for low-priority issues; community forums provide additional help.
Technical support from Microsoft is excellent, rated ten out of ten.
The technical support for Hyper-V is excellent
The technical support is very good
When we send an email, an engineer is assigned within 15 to 20 minutes, and we get on a call to resolve the issue.
Priority one issues are usually addressed by engineers within one to two hours.
Recently, support has been less friendly and slower, especially after the company was acquired by Broadcom.
If we have issues, the support tends to be unreliable
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.5
Hyper-V scalability depends on licensing and infrastructure, with mixed reviews but praised for new features and resource allocation.
Sentiment score
7.9
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers seamless scalability, allowing effortless, efficient cluster expansion to accommodate diverse business sizes and needs.
Sentiment score
7.4
VMware vSphere is praised for its scalable architecture, allowing efficient expansion with minimal downtime, despite potential hardware and licensing issues.
Hyper V can support over two hundred virtual processors and around 12 TB of memory.
The scalability of Hyper-V is great; I would rate it nine out of ten.
The scalability of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) deserves an eight out of ten rating, as there is no solution that is 100% efficient and there is always room for improvement.
Scaling is easy, whether it is hyperconverged or a three-tier architecture.
VMware vSphere is highly scalable in terms of the number of users and the number of servers it can handle.
It is a highly scalable solution.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Hyper-V is stable with dependable performance, though updates and I/O tasks can cause occasional instability and resource issues.
Sentiment score
8.2
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers outstanding reliability and stability, with minimal downtime and prompt support addressing minor issues effectively.
Sentiment score
7.9
VMware vSphere is highly stable and reliable, with minimal downtime and strong performance, widely regarded as a robust platform.
Automation is unavailable, and reporting is difficult.
Frequent Windows updates can impact stability compared to VMware ESXi.
Compared to VM, we find it most stable.
Regarding stability, I would rate Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) a seven out of ten.
It is a very stable hypervisor solution.
While they are generally stable, if outages occur, they tend to be due to brands like HP or Dell, not VMware vSphere itself.
I would rate the stability of VMware vSphere as eight out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

Hyper-V needs better user management, disaster recovery, interfaces, security, automation, cloud integration, and scalability for improved user experience.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure needs improvements in pricing, setup, integration, user interface, performance, and multi-tenancy features for users.
VMware vSphere's cost, stability, integration, and usability issues lead organizations to consider alternatives and seek improved solutions.
Hyper-V should ensure the features of VMware are covered within its platform.
Hyper-V could be improved by implementing the same set of features that other tools provide.
In future updates, I would like to see improvements in reporting and a resolution to some security weaknesses.
We hope Nutanix can integrate inside our current license module.
I would suggest that Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) should develop their own P2V (physical to VM) tools instead of requiring users to rely on third-party solutions.
They should add AI features in the future.
The cost changed from perpetual to subscription, and there is a need for alternative solutions.
Another area is the stability during upgrades from older versions to newer versions, where we face issues.
Sometimes, it is difficult to find documentation for specific tools and solutions.
 

Setup Cost

Hyper-V is cost-effective, especially for small enterprises, but additional costs can arise with management tools and licenses.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure provides competitive pricing and flexible licensing, offering good ROI and TCO benefits despite hardware costs.
VMware vSphere is reliable, but its high pricing and complex licensing can challenge budget-conscious enterprises compared to competitors.
Hyper-V is completely free and requires no licensing fee.
Hyper-V's licensing costs are lower compared to VMware, making it cost-effective for smaller workloads.
Until 2019, Hyper-V was a cost-effective solution because it was available as a free product.
The pricing is renewed every year, at almost $100,000 per year.
It costs more compared to VMware due to different licensing areas.
At first, it is cheaper than cloud services, so the cost is a major benefit.
Many customers are trying to avoid it due to its high cost.
Costs significantly increased from perpetual to subscription, with prices rising by two to three times over three to five years.
The solution is too expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Hyper-V provides cost-effective virtualization with dynamic memory, live migration, seamless Azure integration, and an intuitive management interface.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers high performance, user-friendly management, scalability, integration, and cost efficiency with seamless updates and monitoring.
VMware vSphere provides efficient virtualization with high availability, scalability, and robust performance, enhancing agility and minimizing downtime.
It is completely free, which is a significant advantage.
I have seen return on investment with Hyper-V because it is both time-saving and cost-effective.
It offers the stability needed for non-enterprise data centers and has improved over time.
When technology development or devops teams request server provisioning, the setup time has been reduced from hours to less than 20 minutes.
The replication method between Nutanix clusters is a valuable feature.
It is easy to use, and it's easy to maintain.
The vMotion feature is beneficial for online migration of virtual machines from one host to another without downtime.
The tool is highly available, which is crucial for implementing critical applications requiring 24/7 availability.
The high availability feature is significant.
 

Mindshare comparison

Server Virtualization Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Hyper-V15.2%
VMware vSphere16.8%
Proxmox VE16.1%
Other51.9%
Server Virtualization Software
HCI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)9.6%
VxRail15.8%
VMware vSAN13.9%
Other60.7%
HCI
Server Virtualization Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VMware vSphere16.8%
Proxmox VE16.1%
Hyper-V15.2%
Other51.89999999999999%
Server Virtualization Software
 

Featured Reviews

Ananth Narayana Rao - PeerSpot reviewer
Cost-effective and good for small workloads while addressing update-driven challenges is needed
I use Azure Monitor and other monitoring solutions to support clients in Accenture's managed services. We support multiple environments, primarily on cloud platforms like Azure and AWS, and also on-premises environments with operating systems like Windows, Linux, and Solaris, among others…
MahendraPanchotiya - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers a unified platform, reduces downtime, and simple updates
Nutanix offers a unified platform for managing databases, virtual machines, and applications. This simplifies management by consolidating everything into a single interface. While Nutanix may have a higher upfront cost compared to other hypervisors, it can significantly reduce the resources needed for infrastructure management. With our previous hypervisor, we needed nearly ten IT personnel. Nutanix has allowed us to streamline our team to just three members. We use a combination of database technologies, including SQL databases and web servers such as IIS, BHP, and NGINX. Nutanix features helped our organization reduce downtime. I don't recall the last time we had downtime related to Nutanix because it is such a stable product. Nutanix, a reliable product, helps us streamline our processes, which in turn improves company revenue. We began to see the benefits after two years, with a 40 percent reduction in operational costs. We migrated 200 servers from AWS to Nutanix. Nutanix may not consolidate applications, but it helps us run them more efficiently on its platform. Updating is simple with one click. I would rate the updating processes 10 out of 10. Adding compute and storage on demand is not difficult. However, we need to factor in the existing and new firmware and software requirements.
Neeraj Mehra - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamlines virtualization and has features like high availability and vMotion
The primary use case is for virtualization, including the implementation of vSphere, vCloud Foundation, vCloud Director, and cloud automation with vSphere My customers, particularly SMBs, mainly utilize High Availability (HA), DRS, and vMotion features. The vMotion feature is beneficial for…
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Server Virtualization Software solutions are best for your needs.
869,089 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user234735 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 10, 2015
Hyper-V 2012 R2 vs. VMware vSphere 5.5
I was won with Hyper-V 2012R2 recently and the table below based on customer RFP (edited). This articles all about technical, there is not related with TCO/ROI, licensing cost, “political”, etc. Another to noted is the Windows Server 2012 licenses is based on 2 socket CPU, meanwhile…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business68
Midsize Enterprise37
Large Enterprise46
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business91
Midsize Enterprise76
Large Enterprise82
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business173
Midsize Enterprise137
Large Enterprise256
 

Questions from the Community

How does KVM compare with Hyper-V?
KVM is better. But let's just look at the software instead of judging. Hyper-V was a free solution from Microsoft to ...
How does Proxmox VE compare with Hyper-V?
One of the best things about Proxmox VE is that it is open-source and very inexpensive. You get all of the same featu...
What do you like most about Hyper-V?
The initial setup is not difficult at all. It is very easy.
What is the biggest difference between Nutanix Acropolis and VMware vSphere?
We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interfa...
How do I choose between Cisco Hyperflex HX Series and Nutanix Acropolis AOS?
Cisco HyperFlex HS series vs Nutanix Acropolis AOS Cisco HyperFlex gives extended hyper-convergence functions from ...
Which would you choose - Nutanix Acropolis AOS or VMware vSAN?
We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interfa...
What is IOMMU?
DEEPEN DHULLA did explain well IOMMU. IOMMU has to be activated at the bios level. It exists on Intel and AMD platfor...
Why KVM??? Help please!
We use VMware and KVM. We find that KVM is a lot simpler to use and it provides the virtualization we need for Linux...
Proxmox vs ESXi/vSphere: What is your experience?
For me the biggest impact is the cost of licensing in the case of VMware despite its overall intuitiveness and ease o...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Nutanix Acropolis AOS, Nutanix AOS, Nutanix Acropolis
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Large customer base from all industries, all over the world. Two major Hyper-V customers are Telefonica and EmpireCLS.
St. Lukes Health System, the City of Seattle, Yahoo! Japan, Sligro, Empire Life, Hyundai AUS, and many others.
Abu Dhabi Ports Company, ACS, AIA New Zealand, Consona, Corporate Express, CS Energy, and Digiweb.
Find out what your peers are saying about Broadcom, Proxmox, Microsoft and others in Server Virtualization Software. Updated: September 2025.
869,089 professionals have used our research since 2012.