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54,592 views|44,604 comparisons
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69,002 views|42,721 comparisons
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Mar 20, 2022

We performed a comparison between Hyper-V and Proxmox VE based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: For the most part, users of both Hyper-V and Proxmox VE felt that deployment was relatively easy and didn’t take long at all to set up and deploy.

  • Features: Users of Hyper-V reported the best features to be its stability, ease of use, user-friendliness, and the ability to do checkpoints and roll back to the checkpoint. However, users also lament the need for better cloud integration, disastrous recovery capabilities, and instability if the load is too high.

    Users of Proxmox VE liked that the software is easy to use, has a simple setup and good performance, and has a good backup service. However, users didn’t like that certain processes weren’t automatic, like manually updating. They also felt that moving things to the cloud was difficult and, because it's a young solution, there are some bugs.

  • Pricing: Reviewers of Hyper-V felt the pricing was great, especially for customers working with budget restraints. Users of Proxmox VE found it very affordable.

  • Service and Support: Users of Hyper-V had mixed reviews when it came to technical support. Half of them found the support to be excellent, while the others felt there was room for improvement. Most users of Proxmox VE were happy with the support, though there were a few who thought it needed improvement.

Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Hyper-V and Proxmox VE seem to have a more or less rating among users regarding ease of deployment, pricing, and service and support. In terms of features, users of Hyper-V weren’t satisfied with the recovery capabilities and the instability if the stack became bloated. On the other hand, users of Proxmox VE didn’t like the need to update manually but felt that the solution was young. Therefore, the bugs they experienced will hopefully have a solution with a future update.

To learn more, read our detailed Hyper-V vs. Proxmox VE Report (Updated: May 2023).
708,830 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"For me, the setup of Hyper-V was an easy process, which took only one hour from start to finish.""The solution is stable and the cost is reasonable.""I like that Hyper-V comes for free with Windows Server. You don't need to buy the license, and you only have to pay for the management aspect in System Center.""The solution is easy to configure.""My understanding is it's easy to set up.""It's good for what it does. If you have a small or medium-scale acclimatization, it's an excellent solution.""There are some products that you can mount over Hyper-V that provide the features that, in today's Hyper-V, are not present.""The most valuable feature of the solution is the storage virtualization."

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"The virtualization is good.""Its compatibility is most valuable.""In addition to the virtualization, the firewall and the routing functions that it provides are valuable.""It's been a stable solution.""The solution has good high availability.""The solution is extremely scalable.""It allows us to create an individual VM along with the GPU for machine learning.""Proxmox VE is very lightweight, and it doesn't take a lot of memory on the device."

More Proxmox VE Pros →

Cons
"If I want to create a cluster of around five to 10 physical servers Hyper-V does not get integrated with any kind of virtual sense, such as vSense.""VMware has antivirus protection that covers the entire VM. If Microsoft could have something similar to this in Hyper-V, that would be great.""Hyper-V could improve by making it easier to manage.""Some of the interfaces need improvements, like the virtual switch or virtual VLAN interfaces.""The only negative thing I heard was that the baseline price is very, very attractive relative to VMware, however, the vCenter counterpart, the thing that brings it all together, is quite pricey.""Hyper-V requires improvement with manageability.""I'd like to see better predictive diagnostics, so I know what's going on with the machines.""The operating system is very, very heavy."

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"We find it difficult to find the root cause of the issues.""It might be interesting to have the ability to integrate with other cloud solutions.""The virtualizer in Proxmox VE could improve.""The solution needs to improve its stability.""The only issue I have with Proxmox VE is updating it. You have to manually update it or you have to have a way to update it automatically.""Its user interface can be improved. In the version that I am using, not all functions can be performed by using the UI. There can be some improvement on that. I'm assuming that it has already been improved in the latest version.""A feature which should be added is the ability to encrypt the main installation.""The solution can be improved by making it more secure and scalable."

More Proxmox VE Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Hyper-V is cost-effective and is a one-time purchase. Microsoft has multiple licensing options available, such as a subscription model and an outside purchase model that customers can choose as per their requirements."
  • "There is a perpetual license to use the solution and there are additional fees for support."
  • "There is a license required to use Hyper-V and there are bundle packages you can purchase making it cheaper than other solutions, such as VMware. Additionally, if there is a lot of guest OS that requires Windows, then Microsoft becomes cheaper."
  • "Thanks to our enterprise agreement with Microsoft, Hyper-V is free for us."
  • "I think I'm okay with the cost. There are no monthly or yearly costs or additional costs."
  • "I recommend Hyper-V to customers with budget constraints."
  • "The licensing costs depend on the environment you have. If you have an environment of less than 10 or 30 VMs, It's nice to have a Hyper-V, but if you have more than 100 or 200, I would recommend using VCenter, VMware virtualization, especially for an on-premise solution."
  • "Hyper-V is more cost-effective for the size of our business One of the Hyper-V's biggest advantages over VMware is the cost. We are a small business, so Hyper-V allowed us to virtualize everything we need without breaking the bank."
  • More Hyper-V Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Because I'm using Proxmox VE for personal use and it's an AGPL license project, I can use it at home for free."
  • "Proxmox is free."
  • "The way the licensing of Proxmox is structured, you can use it for free. It is an open-source solution, and you can use it for free, but if you do need support, then you have to pay for the support. So, you can use it in a way that you don't have to pay anything, which is a plus point for me. For people or users who have huge and more intense use cases, the advice or the recommendation is to always pay for support. In case something goes wrong, you can fall back on the team that will attend to your request. For me, at the moment, the cost is zero."
  • "To use Proxmox VE there is not a license required. However, you can purchase a support license, which you access, but it doesn't change the functionality of the solution."
  • "Proxmox VE is affordable. It's cheaper than Hyper-V, Huawei Desktop Protocol, and Huawei Desktop Cloud."
  • "There is an annual license to use Proxmox VE and it is approximately $90. There are not any additional costs."
  • "This is a free open-source solution."
  • "We are using the free community version of Proxmox VE."
  • More Proxmox VE Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:KVM is better. But let's just look at the software instead of judging. Hyper-V was a free solution from Microsoft to virtualize Server or Client OS as it is a feature on Windows Server since 2008… more »
    Top Answer:One of the best things about Proxmox VE is that it is open-source and very inexpensive. You get all of the same features as with the more well-known products. Proxmox VE is very easy to deploy - it… more »
    Top Answer:The solution is very user-friendly.
    Top Answer:For me the biggest impact is the cost of licensing in the case of VMware despite its overall intuitiveness and ease of handling and management. However, KVM-based Open Source solutions are becoming… more »
    Top Answer:I use Proxmox VE and have been very happy with it. In my opinion, it is a complete and stable solution with excellent tools for managing servers. It has a lot of different features, and I also love… more »
    Top Answer:The tool has very good performance.
    Ranking
    Views
    54,592
    Comparisons
    44,604
    Reviews
    42
    Average Words per Review
    423
    Rating
    7.4
    Views
    69,002
    Comparisons
    42,721
    Reviews
    23
    Average Words per Review
    515
    Rating
    8.3
    Comparisons
    Learn More
    Overview

    Hyper-V is a hardware virtualization tool that allows users to create virtual computer environments with multiple operating systems on a single physical server. Each virtual machine has computer parts, such as memory, processor, storage, and networking, and acts like a standard computer - running its own operating system and software programs. Each component of the virtual machine can be configured to meet your specific requirements.

    Hyper-V creates a cost-effective, stable, and productive server virtualization environment by running multiple operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, and more, in parallel on one machine or server. Each virtual machine runs in its own isolated space, which means you can run many virtual machines simultaneously but independently of each other. This helps prevent problems such as a crash affecting the other workloads and enables different users to separately access various systems.

    Benefits of Hyper-V

    • Simplify application testing: With Hyper-V you can easily add and remove operating systems from your virtual machines, enabling you to run and test your applications on each of them all from one single computer.

    • Minimize resource usage and scalability: Virtual machines are easier to manage than physical hardware and less expensive. You can also maximize your server use by allocating its resources more efficiently than you can with physical hardware alone.

    Hyper-V key features:.

    • Replication and migration: Hyper-V can replicate virtual machines for backups onto different sites. Hyper-V also provides a migration tool for moving a virtual machine from one Hyper-V host to another without causing any downtime.

    • Remote connection: Hyper-V’s remote connectivity tool allows administrators to remotely access a virtual machine.

    • Security: Hyper-V keeps virtual machines secure from malware attacks, unauthorized access, and data breaching attempts.

     Reviews from Real Users

    Hyper-V stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its flexibility, its replication capabilities, and the fact that its virtual machines utilize a small amount of resources..

    Liam L., the owner of a tech services company, writes, “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.”

    Kevin E. an IT director at Homeland Technology Group, LLC, notes, “We've probably seen a 50 percent speed increase on our SQL server. Hyper-V has also significantly reduced our downtimes with faster boot-up and reboot. If we have to reboot a server, there is maybe two or three minutes of downtime. When we were on a bare-metal server, it could be five to ten minutes due to the total boot time.”

    Proxmox VE is a complete virtualization management solution for servers. It is a powerful open-source platform and supports two virtualization technologies - KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) for virtual machines and LXC for containers. Proxmox VE has a central user interface that allows you to manage not only VMs and containers, but also storage resources, network configuration, and high availability for clusters. It is enterprise-ready and is valued for its scalability and maximum flexibility, enabling you to virtualize very demanding workloads. Proxmox VE makes it possible for you to easily install, manage, and monitor hyper-converged (HCI) data centers.

    Proxmox VE Key Features

    The Proxmox VE platform has many powerful features, including:

    pen-source software, high-available clusters, command line, fencing, a web-based management interface, flexible storage options, REST API, live/online migration, storage replication stack, software defined storage, virtualized networking, backup and restore, two-factor authentication, role-based administration, and VM templates and clones.

    Proxmox VE Benefits

    Some of the biggest benefits of Proxmox VE are:

    • Central management: To manage all tasks of your virtual data center, you can use the central, web-based management interface.

    • Unique multi-master design: Proxmox VE allows you to carry out maintenance tasks cluster wide, from any node.

    • Minimize downtime: With the integrated live/online migration feature, you can move running virtual machines from one Proxmox VE cluster node to another, without any downtime or noticeable effect from the end-user side.

    • Granular access: Using Proxmox VE’s role-based permission management system helps you define granular access to all objects.

    • Multiple authentication sources: Proxmox VE supports multiple authentication sources, including Linux PAM, an integrated Proxmox VE authentication server, LDAP, Microsoft Active Directory, and OpenID Connect.

    • Several storage options: The Proxmox VE storage model is very flexible and the web interface allows you to add multiple storage types (LVM Group, iSCSI target, NFS Share, SMB/CIFS, Ceph RBD, Direct to iSCSI LUN, GlusterFS, CephFS).

    • Collaboration with Ceph: Proxmox VE fully integrates Ceph, giving you the ability to run and manage Ceph storage directly from any of your cluster nodes.

    • Scheduled backups: With Proxmox VE, backups can be scheduled so that they automatically run on specific days and times, for selectable nodes and guest systems.

    • IT infrastructure protection: Proxmox VE has a built-in firewall that works to protect your IT infrastructure. The firewall is completely customizable, allowing complex configurations via the GUI or CLI.

    Reviews From Real Users

    Here is some feedback from some of our users who are currently using the solution:

    A PeerSpot user who is a director at a tech services company says, “The most valuable features of Proxmox VE are the ease of containerization. Overall the solution is generic, feature-rich, and has compatibility.”

    Another PeerSpot user who is a head of IT operations at a tech services company mentions that "In addition to the virtualization, the firewall and the routing functions that it provides are valuable."

    Deepen D., director and CTO at TechnoInfotech, expresses that "The feature that I have found most valuable is that its storage container, LVM, and everything else work out of the box."


    Offer
    Learn more about Hyper-V
    Learn more about Proxmox VE
    Sample Customers
    Large customer base from all industries, all over the world. Two major Hyper-V customers are Telefonica and EmpireCLS.
    Municipality of Trento, SwitchMIA, inDenova, Valmeita City Council, Alpha IT AS, Grupo Inversor Veracruzano S.A.P.I. de C.V. (GRIVER), Laut und Schoen, IT-Services - Hamburg e.K., KMI Learning, Dynacom Tankers Management Ltd., Serwise AG
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Outsourcing Company9%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization17%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Comms Service Provider10%
    Government8%
    REVIEWERS
    Government18%
    Computer Software Company18%
    Retailer18%
    University12%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Comms Service Provider16%
    Government9%
    Educational Organization7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business48%
    Midsize Enterprise26%
    Large Enterprise27%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise26%
    Large Enterprise51%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business69%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise16%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business28%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise53%
    Buyer's Guide
    Hyper-V vs. Proxmox VE
    May 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Hyper-V vs. Proxmox VE and other solutions. Updated: May 2023.
    708,830 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Hyper-V is ranked 3rd in Server Virtualization Software with 45 reviews while Proxmox VE is ranked 2nd in Server Virtualization Software with 24 reviews. Hyper-V is rated 7.4, while Proxmox VE is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Hyper-V writes "It's a low-cost solution that enabled us to shrink everything down into a single server ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Proxmox VE writes "Feature rich, good compatibility, and impressive fuctionality". Hyper-V is most compared with VMware vSphere, VMware Workstation, Oracle VM VirtualBox, KVM and Citrix Hypervisor, whereas Proxmox VE is most compared with KVM, Oracle VM VirtualBox, VMware vSphere, Nutanix AHV Virtualization and Citrix Hypervisor. See our Hyper-V vs. Proxmox VE report.

    See our list of best Server Virtualization Software vendors.

    We monitor all Server Virtualization Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.