Hyper-V Reviews

Great Hypervisor with snapshot capability, and fail over clustering integration. Also possible to manage with Virtual Machine Manager.

P2V are not live, and there's some limitation on max hard drive space for VMs and the ability to recover VHD file space after files within the VM have been deleted.

Hyper-V definitely has its pro's, some of which are painfully apparent.- The first one is that it is a Microsoft product, which is baked into its Server 2008 and 2008 R2 platforms. You also have the option of a Hyper-V server core, which is only the Hypervisor (this allows for more resources to be dedicated to the individual VM's). - It has Powershell scripting support built in and also excellent Virtual Networking technology.- The VM's are portable. That means that each VM is stored in a single VHD file, which can be transferred to another server and configured and ready to run in less than a minute.- It fully integrates into the Windows environment, allowing access via MMC consoles to change settings and create/administer virtual machines remotely.

The only cons I can really think of are as follows:- Individual licensing costs for each server. - If you aren't using Hyper-V Core and are running Hyper-V on top of the full Server 2008 R2 platform, then you have less resources to allocate to your Virtual Machines. - Except through RDP, there is no way to access the VM's on alternative platforms (like Mac or Linux).I use Hyper-V almost exclusively for all my virtualization needs. From a Network Administrators viewpoint, specifically one catering to a Windows client base, there is no better choice than Hyper-V. Like I said before, it fully integrates into the Windows environment, allowing access via MMC consoles to change settings and create/administer virtual machines remotely.

All in all, Microsoft Hyper-V is an excellent platform and a great competitor for VMWare.

The proven technological prowess of Microsoft has produced yet another wonder for virtual machines - Hyper-V. The Windows Server 2008 R2 Hypervisor, is indeed a step towards the virtual world. Gone are those days where you start to scratch your head for low disk space and complicated hardware and networking solutions. The excellent features included in Hyper-V are dynamic memory management, better end user virtual performance, 3D Graphics enhancements, and good quality of media streaming. There is a significant change in Hyper-V for Live migration. This is a step taken by Microsoft to give tough competition to VMWare. Hyper-V with its 64 logical processors has got a new edge in its VM performances. There is a quantum change in previous releases of Hyper-V that is better in SP1 than in SP2.

To optimize the performance of your desktops and servers, you need to install extra RAM and multiprocessors to use Hyper-V. Hyper-V is useful for X64 platforms. VMware has got the edge over Hyper-V in the case of X86 platforms. The latest release of Hyper-V has got better scalability than its previous one. Hyper-V lags in the case of Maximum VM RAM (64GB), where VMware provides 255GB VM RAM. In its earlier version it has got also a smaller number of nodes that can be added in a single cluster which is 16. The number is 32 in the case of VMware.

Microsoft with its better reach and excellent customer support is always a preferable choice. Although VMware may still be leading the enterprise market, there is neck to neck competition between Hyper-V and VMware. Moreover, in its latest version, Hyper-V has enhanced some excellent features, like additional capability of Memory for VM, running up to 1TB. It has also increased the single VM RAM capacity up to 64GB. There is also an enhancement of 160 logical processors per Hyper-V host, 1024 virtual machines per host, 64 nodes per cluster, 4000 virtual machines per cluster, and 32 virtual processors.

Pros of Hyper-V are- 1) Dynamic memory allocation for the virtual machines by efficient usage real time memory distribution architecture 2) More number of virtual machines per Hyper-V host through VDI technology 3) One of the best features in Hyper V is of live migration of running virtual machines and instances to another server in case of a failure 4) Dynamic I/O redirection using cluster node connectivity 5) Inbuilt Powershell feature to automate backup instances 6) Good virtual network and networking support for enhanced utilization of resources

Few cons of Hyper-V are- 1) Licensing costs 2) Vulnerable to server failure 3) Lacks advanced features of virtualization platform 4) More consumption of CPU, memory and need more disk I/O bandwidth than physical servers

The hypervisor based server visualization product, launched from Microsoft along with Microsoft Server 2008 R2, greatly helps in managing high availability, load balancing, resource sharing, and fail over clustering. It is a reliable solution, from enterprises to small scale industries, to make the best use of server resources and reducing costs. It enables multiple instances of machines to run together on the same server, which maintains redundancy.

• The ROI on Hyper-V is enormous. It is cheaper than any other enterprises visualization tool. • Hyper-V Replica can replace SAN, especially where SAN might be overloaded. • It is dynamic and scalable.

It lacks a built-in cloning function, you have to use the traditional export/import.

Visualization technology brought succor to IT enterprises users. The cost of acquiring multiple servers and its general maintenance has been drastically reduced. One physical or hardware machine can host multiple visual servers Windows Server Hyper-V is one of the best visualization servers in the market today. The new Hyper-V’s dynamic memory feature is a big plus. It can automatically expand the memory allocation to accommodate more workload from different virtual machines. Other attractive features, that the new Hyper-V includes are, Live storage migration, utilization of up to 4TB memory per host RAM, Virtual Machine converter, replica services, RemoteFX, etc. I added the Hyper-V role in Windows Server 2008 R2 without any issue. Installation of the guest server was also smooth. Guest VM backup in Hyper-V is quite simple with great features such as, multiple destinations selection and Backup drive mirroring.

We are mainly using Hyper-V in the financial sector.

The ease of use of Hyper-V is the most valuable feature.

Hyper-V could improve the management tools.

I have been using Hyper-V for approximately ten years.

All the newer versions of Hyper-V are stable.

The solution could improve scalability.

The support from Microsoft is very slow.

The initial implementation was difficult because there are not enough management tools. The time it took was approximately three days.

We installed the Hyper-V on bare-metal hardware, created the VMs, and attached the storage, et cetera.

We have four to five staff members for the implementation of Hyper-V. The maintenance includes server management, creating VMs, and backups.

My advice to others implementing this solution is there are no implementation management tools available, they will have to do it all themselves.

I rate Hyper-V a seven out of ten.

We use Hyper-V for hardware virtualization.

I have found it difficult to manage more than one virtual machine.

I have been using Hyper-V for approximately seven months.

Hyper-V is not as stable as VMware and should be improved.

We have approximately 20 users using the solution.

The installation was straightforward.

We have a four-person team that consists of an administrator, network administrator, managers, and system administrator that does the maintenance and support of the solution.

I rate Hyper-V a seven out of ten.

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