We performed a comparison between Hyper-V and VMware VSphere based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: VMware VSphere is the winner in this comparison. It is easy to deploy, reliable, robust, and has excellent customer support. Hyper-V does come out on top in the pricing category, however.
"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."
"One of the most valuable features of Hyper-V is ease to use."
"I like that it's easy to use."
"The most valuable features are ease of use, and it gets the job done in a straightforward manner."
"The most valuable feature is that it's an end-to-end solution."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the storage virtualization."
"The solution has good scalability."
"Microsoft's a good name for legacy support and solutions"
"It is very stable and scalable, and implementation is straightforward as well."
"Reduces downtime."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The solution is easy to use, has high performance, and good virtualization."
"vRealize Operations Manager is the most valuable feature, but it is not embedded in vSphere; it is a part of vSphere. It is used for forecasting and checking the consumption of CPU, memory, and other resources. It has the capability to do the forecast based on the history and give advice on consumption. VMware vSphere is easy to use and easy to implement. Its learning curve is not sharp. Any engineer with little or medium knowledge of hypervisors and virtualizations can implement vSphere with a few clicks."
"The product is very easy to install."
"VMware vSphere is easy to scale. We haven't had any problems scaling what we're scaling now."
"The scalability is good."
"One of the network problems I face is I cannot introduce other security layers on top of Hyper-V as you can in VMware. When it comes to the network the VMware is more flexible than Hyper-V."
"VMware has antivirus protection that covers the entire VM. If Microsoft could have something similar to this in Hyper-V, that would be great."
"The technical support is good but it could improve by being faster."
"The management of Hyper-V could improve, there is a lot to improve in that area."
"In an upcoming release, they can improve by having better cloud integration. We are all moving towards the clouds and the integration is only through the Azure Stack, there should be tools built in to move the VMs natively to the cloud and infrastructure. Additionally, they could provide some form of multi-cloud integration."
"In general, based on my little experience with Hyper-V, I see a lot of obstacles. I think it falls behind the other competitors."
"Hyper-V could improve by making it easier to manage."
"I also use VMware which I find to be more scalable and stable overall."
"The installation is complex and you need to have a good understanding in regards to what you are doing when you are setting it up."
"The improvement is more from a licensing perspective rather than from a feature functionality perspective. There could be more flexibility and fewer model options to make it easier to sell. Today, there are so many different options available, and sometimes, it is not really clear which one is the right version or the right model to propose."
"They must work on the price, as well as the technical support."
"The reporting could be improved."
"I recommend that VMware vSphere continue to release more features."
"I'm using vSphere at a high level. Sometimes, I find it challenging to integrate different networks, but I think it's just my lack of knowledge."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"One problem that needs fixing is when we run the backup for the servers, the servers become inaccessible to everybody on-site while it is creating a snapshot."
Hyper-V is ranked 3rd in Server Virtualization Software with 44 reviews while VMware vSphere is ranked 1st in Server Virtualization Software with 134 reviews. Hyper-V is rated 7.4, while VMware vSphere is rated 8.8. 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 VMware vSphere writes "An easy way of providing near-zero downtime services". Hyper-V is most compared with Proxmox VE, KVM, Oracle VM VirtualBox, VMware Workstation and Citrix Hypervisor, whereas VMware vSphere is most compared with Proxmox VE, VMware Workstation, KVM, Nutanix AHV Virtualization and RHEV. See our Hyper-V vs. VMware vSphere 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.
It depends. I would say both for the present. I cannot avoid using both anyway. Most of the security apps I use require a vmware hypervisor whereas hyper-v serves better for the microsoft apps.
I have been working with proxmox vm's and so far they are great. Not to mention other alternatives like xen server. A lot more options (and less expensive) then the big 2 hyper-v and vmware. make sure to include these options when making a decision.
I support smaller organizations (SMB) and Hyper-V has a compelling business case there. Not just in cost, which is obvious, but in complexity. Hyper-V, especially in 2012R2 and 2016 editions, has all the core features that most small and medium businesses will need, without the cost or complexity that VMWare can bring.
As you add more features, or look for a larger ecosystem for support, VMWare continues to have advantages over Microsoft, but the gap is narrowing.
Clearly, the growth of Azure helps Microsoft's virtualization efforts.
For me for both of them are good
As most have said there are a variety of different things you need to consider when choosing a hypervisor. Both VMware and Hyper-V have their strengths and weaknesses as well they have matured significantly over the past 3-5 years. Hyper-V is catching up to VMware in many aspects but is still not fully parallel in features.
I have used both but not the latest 2012R2 Hyper-V as I used 2008R2 version. I currently administer 2 large clusters of VMware and think if you are a large enterprise with multiple sites then VMware is the way to go. When you get in to the SMB and Medium sized businesses then it all depends on what you are looking for in the way of features, etc.
In the end comparison and evaluation are the best methods to choose the product that is right in your situation because it is different in most companies.
I have used VMWare since version 1.0 when it ran on top of Windows, Hyper-V (2008r2 and 2012-r2), Parallels Viruozzo and Citrix Xen. There are several factors that I consider, and cost is not always the leading factor.
1) the types of VM's I need to use
2) Disaster recovery and backup, including other servers that are not virtualized
3) skill set of admins and the future plans of the organization
4) needs for downtime and how to mitigate scheduled and unscheduled downtime
5) overall performance
6) ability to expand/grow solution.
Case in point. A former client brought me back to take over their IT director role three years later. (Dec 2012). I inherited a three host ESXi running 4.1, without a SAN and one host being AMD processor (other two were Intel). There were a host of issues as the environment was not maintained properly.
Move forward to June 2015. The AMD host was rebuilt as a Windows 2012-r2 server running StarWind iSCSI SAN and exposed 4TB as secondary SAN storage. A Dell MD3220i unit was added as primary SAN storage. The total number of hosts grew to 7 (seven), two Dell R620's (144GB RAM), 3 Dell R710's (120GB, 120GB, 96GB) at the data center, with two more R710's at the main office.
Total storage grew from 6TB (totally utilized) to more than 16TB, all hosts running ESXI5.5 (with 6.01 update planned). Total VM's grew from 80-90 to 140+. Full HA at the data center. Use of all of the nice vCenter tools including Update manager. Replication of critical VMs' to the data center or the main office for DR. Most of the other VM's were development servers and DR was not a huge issue with those systems.
I had zero downtime upgrading from 5.1 to 5.5. With 5 hosts in the data center, in an emergency, critical functions could be run on 3 hosts. I could not do this as easily with Hyper-V and maintain a cross section of Ubuntu, CentOS and W2008r2, 2012-r2 guests running.
I prefer Citrix for VDI over VMWare. My only reasons to use Hyper-V are for cash strapped organizations or not-for-profits that have strict cost controls.
Citrix Xen all the way!
Hi,
I've used both. vMware definitely has a more stable solution, but Hyper-V has growed in the last 5 years and now is so mature as vMware. The first Project that I implemented, around 2003/2004 with Virtualization it was Vmware ESX Server on a 3 servers IBM xSeries Clustering Infrastructure. Later, when Hyper-V becomes free, I swapped to Hyper-V but had lots of problems, mainly with VM's becoming frozen and unresponsive. I abandoned Hyper-V on Production Systems, but as it was cheap (free), I used that environment on Test and Development Services. Production were in VMWare Clustering and T&D on Hyper-V Clustering. Later I migrated the vMWare Clustering from Clustering Dell branded Servers to an Oracle UCS infrastructure with vMWare (vSphere now it's 5). At my opinion, for T&D and Temporary Servers/Services, Hyper-V is a good solution for your budget. But VMware conquered me through the Experiences I had in the past.