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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
6.8
Hyper-V is cost-effective for budget-conscious organizations, offering value with Windows Server by reducing costs and enhancing ROI.
Sentiment score
7.0
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers fast ROI with cost savings on hardware, maintenance, energy, and improved operational efficiency.
Sentiment score
7.1
VMware vSphere increases ROI by reducing server needs, costs, and deployment time, improving efficiency and hardware utilization.
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
6.9
Hyper-V customer service is praised, but technical support experiences vary, with some relying on community help and finding response delays.
Sentiment score
8.1
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's customer service is praised for responsive, expert support, offering swift solutions and 24/7 availability.
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
6.4
Hyper-V is considered highly scalable, supporting various workloads, though scalability may depend on the version and architecture planning.
Sentiment score
7.9
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is scalable, user-friendly, and flexible, though some note limited storage per node.
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 proper management, but some users face issues; stability is often environment-specific, not inherent.
Sentiment score
8.2
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers high stability and reliability, enabling seamless scalability and maintenance with minimal downtime.
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 struggles with high costs, complex setup, limited features, performance issues, and lacks integration and compatibility compared to VMware.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure needs improvements in cost, performance, integration, backup solutions, and simplifying licensing, installation, and GUI.
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.
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 offers a cost-effective virtualization solution, especially for Windows Server users, with competitive pricing against alternatives like VMware.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers competitive pricing with favorable total cost of ownership, valued for its integrated solutions and features.
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.
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 offers affordable, scalable virtualization with seamless integration, dynamic memory, and extensive migration support, ensuring efficient management.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure provides high-performance storage, easy management, flexibility, scalability, automation, and robust disaster recovery with redundancy.
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.
It offers the stability needed for non-enterprise data centers and has improved over time.
The most valuable features of Hyper-V include high availability and management for virtual machine management.
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.
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
HCI
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…
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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
9%
Government
8%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
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
 

Questions from the Community

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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 Proxmox, VMware, Microsoft and others in Server Virtualization Software. Updated: August 2025.
865,140 professionals have used our research since 2012.