We performed a comparison between Hyper-V and KVM based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below
Comparison Results: Hyper-V is the clear winner in this comparison it is easy to install, robust and high performing. Hyper-V, as a Microsoft product, also offers stable and ongoing customer support.
"It is a stable product."
"I think the cluster environment is a good feature of Hyper-V because, if something happens, then it will automatically move to some other mode. This is a great feature of the solution."
"The installation was straightforward."
"The initial setup is simple. There's not much to do. We input one command or just one or two clicks on the UI. Initial setup in the Windows environment for any software is not that difficult."
"One of the most valuable features of Hyper-V is ease to use."
"The most valuable features are ease of use, and it gets the job done in a straightforward manner."
"The Failover Clustering feature allows us to be able to make our most critical workload highly available."
"It's a stable product."
"The product is really good...One can get good performance because of kernel-based virtualization."
"The initial setup was simple."
"The key aspect is that the KVM directly interacts with the Kronos. There's no clear indication of indirect communication with Kronos. It is not linked to Kronos, and interaction is straightforward without any intermediaries."
"There is a strong emphasis on availability, and they have numerous API interfaces for distributed storage and the solution is quite known for its openness."
"The product's scalability is good...It's a very stable product."
"If you prefer command-line, there are all kinds of command-line options."
"I find the density of the product most valuable. It is density that a technologist can just assign page merging. This is what makes KVM one of the important players of the virtualization market."
"If you are a Linux desktop user, KVM is the solution to go with if you have to start virtual machines with Linux or other operating systems with almost zero extra configuration needed."
"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."
"I am using this solution with E-Notes. I heard that there will be future improvements in integration of the E-notes systems. This would be very helpful."
"Hyper-V needs to improve its support."
"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."
"There's room for improvement in Hyper-V. One area I've personally encountered issues with is live migration. Sometimes during live migrations, the process gets stuck in a certain state. This can happen with replication as well. It's not necessarily a major problem, but at times, the error messages aren't very informative. They don't clearly explain why the migration failed."
"The management interface is in need of the biggest improvement."
"It would be nice if they provided a free management console that we could use to manage all of the hosts for no additional fee."
"Hyper-V could benefit with improvements to their management interface."
"The product must provide better performance monitoring features."
"I believe KVM offers a unified answer, while ProxMark addresses orchestration. KVM lacks orchestration. If the aim is to centrally oversee multiple KVMs – let's say to freeze them – a centralized management solution is absent."
"Some things are pretty basic, and they could be more robust with more detail."
"The KVM tech support is really bad. They are not very responsive."
"The solution’s user interface could be improved and made more user-friendly."
"Monitoring and resolution could be improved."
"The speed is around thirty percent slower than another competitor. This would be something to work on."
"I have encountered difficulties in getting the tool's documentation."
Hyper-V is ranked 3rd in Server Virtualization Software with 134 reviews while KVM is ranked 4th in Server Virtualization Software with 39 reviews. Hyper-V is rated 8.0, while KVM is rated 8.0. 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 KVM writes "Delivers good performance because of kernel-based virtualization". Hyper-V is most compared with VMware vSphere, VMware Workstation, Proxmox VE, Oracle VM VirtualBox and Nutanix AHV Virtualization, whereas KVM is most compared with Proxmox VE, Oracle VM VirtualBox, VMware vSphere, VMware Workstation and Oracle VM. See our Hyper-V vs. KVM 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.