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's a stable product."
"We chose this solution because of the pricing and the simplicity of the product."
"Live migration, SMB3."
"The solution is easy to configure."
"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."
"This is the best solution for customers with budget constraints."
"The most valuable feature is that it is user-friendly and easy to use."
"The most valuable feature of Hyper-V is the replica service."
"Good screen and keyboard sharing feature."
"KVM is stable."
"I like that this is an open-source solution. It is very powerful, and it's easy."
"The most valuable feature of KVM is its stability."
"This solution is open source and easy to configure."
"I like that it's easy to manage. It's also more powerful when it comes to security than others. That point of view is the one consideration. The other consideration is that it's cost-effective."
"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 tool's most valuable feature is backup. The product makes it easy to manage virtual machines. Other tools require third-party applications like VMware and vSphere. However, KVM doesn't require these applications."
"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."
"The technical support is good but it could improve by being faster."
"Hyper-V is hosted on OS but if your OS scratches you are in big trouble. In addition, if a host fails, automatically the machine and the virtual machine should boot from another source. Those type of features would benefit Hyper-V."
"We'd like a template feature to help deploy VMs quickly."
"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."
"The interface could be more user friendly. In addition, the documentation and security could use improvement."
"The Hyper-V management console could be improved to make it easier. It should be a little bit more granular. Various virtual switches could also be improved to make virtual desk management slightly better. The replication could be improved slightly. The checkpoints or snapshots could be improved to make it a bit more transparent to the user."
"The solution could improve by having virtual restore."
"Its resource usage can be improved."
"Lacks high availability across clusters as well as support for Apache CloudStack."
"The stability of this solution is less than other products in the same category."
"One problem I have is that it's not very scalable when it comes to resizing the VM disk dimensions. For example, if you have initially set a virtual drive to 10 GB and you want to upgrade it to 15 GB, it's not that easy."
"The initial setup of this solution is more difficult than some of the competing products and it could be improved."
"The virtual manager and the graphical QEMU for KVM need some improvement."
"Monitoring and resolution could be improved."
"The speed is around thirty percent slower than another competitor. This would be something to work on."
Hyper-V is ranked 3rd in Server Virtualization Software with 30 reviews while KVM is ranked 4th in Server Virtualization Software with 15 reviews. Hyper-V is rated 8.0, while KVM is rated 8.0. 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 KVM writes "Reduces OpEx and is easy to maintain, along with low memory usage and a minimal interface". 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.