Hyper-V vs VMware vSphere comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Apr 28, 2022

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.

  • Ease of Deployment: Users of both solutions report that the initial setup and deployment is straightforward and fast.

  • Features: Users of both products are happy with their stability and scalability.

    Hyper-V users report that it performs well and is user-friendly but utilizes a high amount of memory and resources.

    VMware VSphere users say it is flexible and easy to use and has good virtualization, and fast data recovery. A few VMware VSphere users say that the solution should improve its security and monitoring features.
  • Pricing: Hyper-V users agree that it is a low-cost solution, whereas most VMware VSphere users feel it is an expensive product.

  • Service and Support: Most users of both solutions report being satisfied with the level of the support they receive.

  • ROI: Both Hyper-V and VMware VSphere users are satisfied with the ROI.

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.

To learn more, read our detailed Hyper-V vs. VMware vSphere Report (Updated: March 2024).
763,955 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
"It is an affordable platform.""The most valuable feature of the solution is the storage virtualization.""It is good for small installations.""With each update, the security of this solution just gets better and better. It is very stable.""I find the ease of use the most valuable asset of the solution.""The support with Microsoft is great.""It is a great advantage for any company that is using a Microsoft Windows server.""We chose this solution because of the pricing and the simplicity of the product."

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"An important vSphere feature from a security perspective is VM encryption. As is the right thing to do in this day and age, security needs to be the number one concern for any IT operator. While there are security solutions which can be delivered at the physical, hardware layer, they don't necessarily address all of the requirements from an encryption perspective. Being able to have VM-centric, VM-level encryption is a great feature of vSphere.""The product offers good stability.""Its scalability potential is good.""The pricing of the product is reasonable.""The most valuable features are the seamless HA with vMotion and being able to run vCenters in HA mode.""Once you have everything configured, it is relatively straightforward.""The solution is also very simple and efficient to manage. Features that have made it simple and easy to manage include the newer VAMI for the V-center appliance, it's very easy to see what version we are at, and very easy to upgrade to the next version. The fact that we can now use VCHA at the appliance level just decreases our chance of having an outage because so many of our customers rely on the API interface for V-center.""What I like about it is being able to see my entire organization, especially with some of the newer enhanced links. All of my data centers show up in one view and I can see every server that's running. I also get performance statistics so if there are issues, major problems going on, I can see them."

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Cons
"The initial setup was complex. It was nearly six years ago, but I remember it was complicated.""The corrupted volume is a problem.""Hyper-V requires improvement with manageability.""Sometimes it is a mess, and it is getting hanged. It should be something that could be easily fixed. It made us have to deal with fixing the bugs.""Hyper-V isn't a lightweight solution like VMware. Management could be more straightforward. Even as far as disk management tools are concerned, it would be better if that could be made simpler. The same applies to performance.""When it comes to Hyper-V the worst thing is it's based on the Windows operating system. For the installation of Hyper-V, you're supposed to install the right operating system. For me, it's strange.""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 my opinion, read the documentation carefully. If you do not, you will have problems."

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"VMware vSphere could improve on the automation features and the ease of use of the solution in many areas, such as the interface. However, VMware is doing lots of great things.""Where I think there is room for improvement is in the HTML5 interface in vCenter. What it lacks, for me, is integrating to VMware's other products, especially NSX.""We are provided with a mini dashboard that has been improved in the latest version but it still could be better. The monitoring is now available on the vCenter dashboard and the vROps has been added to the basic version that had to be purchased separately before. A complete dashboard has always been provided with some competitors, such as Nutanix.""An area for improvement is that when comparing VMware to Nutanix, Nutanix has higher availability, like clustering for virtual machines. That is a good idea and VMware could profit from something like that for higher availability installations.""The Web Client is too slow.""I would like to see AI in future releases.""The support is good, but it's slow.""It would be nice if it had auto-scaling, no need to select CPU or select database size. Let it auto-scale, let it use the features that VMware has, instead of having to preselect."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "It's cheap, but not the best."
  • "Once we bought the datacenter version of the server, we did away with worrying about the cost of licensing our VMs separately"
  • "It comes with all the features and goodies inside the box, so you do not have to purchase anything else."
  • "We did not have to pay extra money for the Failover Clustering feature."
  • "We chose this solution because of the pricing and the simplicity of the product."
  • "I do not have any comments about pricing or licensing of the product."
  • "Microsoft recently tacked on a higher price for their software to use the storage migration in the Storage Spaces Direct array. That was just terrible."
  • "The pricing isn't too bad, because you can do the bare metal hypervisor, and it is pretty fair. Other competitors are more expensive."
  • More Hyper-V Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "My advice when it comes to pricing is that pricing is a bummer, especially when it comes to SnS coverage."
  • "Purchase only the cheaper solution with support. I don’t recommend high-end licenses."
  • "Pricing needs to be competitive since Microsoft Hyper-V has come a long way; they are both around the same price range."
  • "VMware is consistently expensive and their pricing arrogance is what will drive us and other customers away."
  • "Start with the lowest and upgrade if, and only if, absolutely necessary."
  • "Compared with other vendors’ products, the pricing of the license is slightly lower. The annual S&S price is very affordable."
  • "The product is worth what you pay for it. I definitely feel like I"m getting good value."
  • "​The only issue with vSphere might be with the cost of the tools and the software.​"
  • More VMware vSphere 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 and… 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 product is easy to manage. It improves our VM management.
    Top Answer:DEEPEN DHULLA did explain well IOMMU. IOMMU has to be activated at the bios level. It exists on Intel and AMD platforms. It is used a lot inside virtualization platforms like VMware VSphere. It… more »
    Top Answer:We use VMware and KVM. We find that KVM is a lot simpler to use and it provides the virtualization we need for Linux and Windows. For us, VMware does not offer any advantage. Moreover, KVM is free.
    Top Answer:We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface that allows you to talk directly to your VM from the present software. We found… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    43,215
    Comparisons
    35,838
    Reviews
    23
    Average Words per Review
    363
    Rating
    7.8
    Views
    44,230
    Comparisons
    36,500
    Reviews
    17
    Average Words per Review
    366
    Rating
    8.9
    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.”

    VMware vSphere is a powerful and complete server virtualization platform that allows its users to create and manage virtual data centers and machines. VMware vSphere is designed to help IT departments set up and run applications using the most cost-effective computer resources. By using vSphere, organizations save the time and energy necessary for purchasing infrastructure and software and reduce ongoing maintenance and operational burdens on IT teams.

    Infrastructure administrators and network operators can access and manage the vSphere server by using a web-based cross-platform client application or via the vSphere client tool provided with vSphere. 

    VMware vSphere provides visibility into VMs and enables its users to carry out operations to manage VMs. This includes tasks such as:

    • Powering VMs on and off
    • Launching the VM console
    • Shutting down guest operating systems
    • Settings configurations
    • Taking system snapshots

    VMware vSphere Benefits

    Some of the benefits of using VMware vSphere include: 

    • Reduced costs: Since VMware applications are run on a server, it is not necessary to spend large amounts of your organization’s money on hardware, software, and infrastructure.
    • Increased productivity and customer satisfaction: VMware is able to operate multiple complex processes simultaneously. With all your applications being managed and run on the cloud, downtime, failures, and application errors are rare. VMware easily scales up and down to meet your computing needs. The high availability that VMware provides allows your IT staff to focus on other issues and keeps your customers satisfied with the service they receive.
    • Unlimited access to your VMs: VMware’s user-friendly cloud-based interface allows any employee to work from any location at any time.
    • Enhanced security: VMware’s security tools deliver full visibility into your entire system. This keeps your applications and data more secure, in any type of environment. VMware provides multiple protective tools including antiviruses and anti-malware, as well as backup and recovery services.

    VMware vSphere Features

    Below is a list of some of VMware vSphere’s key features:

    • Transferable virtual machine images: Export and import virtual machine images from your local environment. This gives users the ability to set up and configure their systems locally and only upload them to the server once everything is working properly. VM images can be moved back and forth between vendors, ensuring that your company is never tied up to a specific cloud vendor.
    • User-friendly interface: Using VMware’s intuitive console, you can easily create, manage, share, and deploy virtual machines.
    • API integration: VMware’s APIs support integration with third-party applications for data protection, multipathing, and disk array solutions.
    • Distributed power management: Automate efficiency by continuously optimizing server power consumption within each cluster.

    Reviews from Real Users

    VMware vSphere stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. A few major ones are its virtualization abilities, its flexibility and availability, and its user-friendly interface.

    Felix D., an Automation project administrator, DCS, I&E at Centennial Cayman Corp, writes, “The connectivity is fantastic, and many functions can run together in one server. If you need to scale, we can continue to add components or modules. It's a beautiful virtual solution that has many advantages over physical hardware, where you have to use devices and wiring to connect all your projects.”

    Sample Customers
    Large customer base from all industries, all over the world. Two major Hyper-V customers are Telefonica and EmpireCLS.
    Abu Dhabi Ports Company, ACS, AIA New Zealand, Consona, Corporate Express, CS Energy, and Digiweb.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Computer Software Company10%
    Outsourcing Company8%
    Energy/Utilities Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization29%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    Government7%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Energy/Utilities Company10%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Computer Software Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization25%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Government7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business47%
    Midsize Enterprise24%
    Large Enterprise28%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business21%
    Midsize Enterprise37%
    Large Enterprise42%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business30%
    Midsize Enterprise25%
    Large Enterprise45%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise34%
    Large Enterprise46%
    Buyer's Guide
    Hyper-V vs. VMware vSphere
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Hyper-V vs. VMware vSphere and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Hyper-V is ranked 3rd in Server Virtualization Software with 30 reviews while VMware vSphere is ranked 2nd in Server Virtualization Software with 14 reviews. Hyper-V is rated 8.0, while VMware vSphere is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Hyper-V writes "Enables the creation of secure, isolated virtual environments for running applications and allows seamless transfer of virtual machines between nodes without impacting users". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSphere writes "Offers a suite of software components for virtualization including ESXi, vCenter Server, and other software". Hyper-V is most compared with VMware Workstation, Proxmox VE, Oracle VM VirtualBox, KVM and Nutanix AHV Virtualization, whereas VMware vSphere is most compared with Proxmox VE, VMware Workstation, Oracle VM, KVM and Nutanix AHV Virtualization. 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.