Hyper-V Reviews

It makes it easier to deploy services. All services tend to migrate onto the server house without having problems now. It is hardware independent.

We find the most valuable feature is just hosting the VM. The replication I do with other software.

It might make it easier to move VMs across Hotmail hosts. This application process may make it a little bit easier.

I have not had problems with the stability of the solution. 

I am using the free version of the solution. There are some limited features, and it is not too scalable. But, I am sure the full version is much better for scaling.

We have plans to migrate to the full version in the future, as we have a greater need for usage.

I never had the need to contact technical support.

It was a straightforward setup. The deployment basically took two days. We prepared the hosts, migrated to the new hosts, turned off the old hardware and then we had one machine with all of the servers running. Previously we had five machines running the infrastructure, and now we have one.

Hyper-V is free in my case, and by purchasing Windows servers 2019, Hyper-V is already included. It provides the same operating systems for competitors that charge a lot more for the same results.

I use the free version of Hyper-V.

VMware has a comparable solution, but their price is too expensive for my needs. 

The reason we use this solution is because we can do a lot more with rate configurations, and large span networks. It's a lot easier doing that versus with some of the KVM based hypervisors.

We use it for testing new software. We especially use it for software updates because half of the time we're running an accounting program. It updates, and then breaks something else. This way we can run a couple of different VM's with a setup similar to what we use on all of the desktops. So, that way, you can test it without actually causing downtime.

Some of the things we run have to have a very specific Linux bistro, and you can't get it
all in Hyper-V.

I find the ease of use the most valuable asset of the solution.

An improvement I suggest is having more guest operating systems.

It is a very stable product.

We previously used a Linux KVM based hypervisor called Proxmox.

The pricing isn't too bad, because you can do the bare metal hyper-visor, and it is pretty fair. Other competitors are more expensive.

Make sure to do your research before you choose a solution. Be sure it fits your needs. 

Our primary use of this solution is for production of our office business needs.

It needs to improve the handling of the amount of storage available. We currently have around 400 users. 

We have 400 users of this solution, and use three staff members for deployment and maintenance.

We previously used a regular Windows 2012 server before using Hyper-V. 

I do not have any comments about pricing or licensing of the product.

We use this product primarily for virtualization.

We can perform maintenance on equipment during the day because we can live migrate all of the machines from server A to server B, and then work on server A. This saves us a lot of time. It used to require working after hours for us to do this.

I think the management tools have room for improvement.

I find that this solution is very stable.

It is very scalable. We used four staff members for deployment, and that was sufficient for our needs.

We infrequently have a need for technical support help. 

The initial setup was very straightforward for our organization. Once we understood it in the lab, it took maybe two weeks to completely understand it and document it. Then, we could send it out to our global branches.

We are a not-for-profit, so I do not see any ROI for us.

Microsoft should have not required a data center license for the new feature of Storage Spaces Direct. There is a new feature that comes with Hyper-V called "Storage Spaces Direct"  What that storage does, it allows you to use the storage in host A and use the storage in host B, and make them work together like they're one shared storage array. The computers don't know that they're putting data on server A or B. To them, it looks like one big pool of disks. Before, we used to have to buy a separate storage array, external to the servers, and tie the servers to that array. But this new feature that comes with Hyper-V let's us use the storage inside the servers, it saves money. But Microsoft tacked on a higher price for their software to use that feature, and that was just terrible. We would be using that feature more if it did not demand a data center license.

We do also use VMware vSphere. But, we use Hyper-V more. Some people have different desires. Some people want a Lexus, and other people are happy with a Honda. Both are great cars, but one is a lot more expensive.

I would like to see deduplication and compression in a future roll-out of the product.

My primary use case is for virtualization of all solutions from physical servers into other solutions for ease of management. 

With the virtualization  what we could achieve was maximum utilization of our resources. Previously we used to like have ten, fifteen physical service each one was utilized for a certain percentage and uh, not everything was utilized. I mean one service was maybe 20% utilization one was 90% utilization. So, there was no balance of utilization. With virtualization we can balance. In addition, we can be accurate at the with the solution or Hyper-V, this gives us a close decision I can move motion machines live from one physical machine to another.

I am able to give end users better performance and better response time and better availability.

The the only challenge for us was moving existing physical machines to virtual machines. The time taken was to migrate the physical machine to the virtual machine took about two months.

With each update, the security of this solution just gets better and better. It is very stable.

We have 250 employees and current users at any given point of time using this solution. One infrastructure has an ARCo database. Another has a Si database. The applications have a site exchange between them.

We have two employees who maintain deployment and management of the solution. One handles the database, and the other handles the application. We plan to scale to more users in the future.

The time taken for integration was to migrate the physical machine to the virtual machine. We had to do this one by one.

The set up was very straightforward, you just follow the procedure, the documentation, and it is a breeze.

We chose this solution because of the pricing and the simplicity of the product.

I think that Hyper-V stands in the same ranking as VMware or Oracle in terms of solutions for similar needs.

If you want to use a solution that does the job that is required, to the best of its ability, then Hyper-V is a great solution.

We run the majority of our production servers from our Hyper-V 2012 R2 Cluster. 

• It was our first step into virtualization around five years ago. 
• It allows for quick deployment of servers and workloads.

• Live motioning of VMs, which I consider to be a standard function. 
• When upgrading clusters from Windows Server 2012 to 2012 R2, we were able to live motion VMs from one cluster to another.

I would love to see other options for connecting VMs to large data storage. 

We have our cluster connected to a Dell EMC VNX (SAN). The Hyper-V nodes are on Cisco UCS blades, and everything is interconnected via fiber. I attempted to use a virtual Fibre Channel connection to present a SAN volume to a VM but was not able to make that work.

It works very well. Its performance, stability, and redundancy are all very dependable.

Providing development and test environments for risk management applications. A variety of standard images were created and could be applied as needed.

Hyper-V provided freedom to spin up development and test environments. As projects were created, an environment could be created and applied.

Reasonably easy to use. Snapshots could be prepared and deployed as a developer needed them. As well, environments could be disabled or removed.

It needs additional administration and monitoring capabilities. Status and availability became an issue and need. 

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.