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43,215 views|35,838 comparisons
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63,421 views|41,688 comparisons
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Mar 20, 2022

We performed a comparison between Hyper-V and Proxmox VE based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: For the most part, users of both Hyper-V and Proxmox VE felt that deployment was relatively easy and didn’t take long at all to set up and deploy.

  • Features: Users of Hyper-V reported the best features to be its stability, ease of use, user-friendliness, and the ability to do checkpoints and roll back to the checkpoint. However, users also lament the need for better cloud integration, disastrous recovery capabilities, and instability if the load is too high.

    Users of Proxmox VE liked that the software is easy to use, has a simple setup and good performance, and has a good backup service. However, users didn’t like that certain processes weren’t automatic, like manually updating. They also felt that moving things to the cloud was difficult and, because it's a young solution, there are some bugs.

  • Pricing: Reviewers of Hyper-V felt the pricing was great, especially for customers working with budget restraints. Users of Proxmox VE found it very affordable.

  • Service and Support: Users of Hyper-V had mixed reviews when it came to technical support. Half of them found the support to be excellent, while the others felt there was room for improvement. Most users of Proxmox VE were happy with the support, though there were a few who thought it needed improvement.

Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Hyper-V and Proxmox VE seem to have a more or less rating among users regarding ease of deployment, pricing, and service and support. In terms of features, users of Hyper-V weren’t satisfied with the recovery capabilities and the instability if the stack became bloated. On the other hand, users of Proxmox VE didn’t like the need to update manually but felt that the solution was young. Therefore, the bugs they experienced will hopefully have a solution with a future update.

To learn more, read our detailed Hyper-V vs. Proxmox VE 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
"The simplicity and intuitiveness of the platform. It was a very simple adaptation, if you have any experience in virtualization.""I find that most of the competition is more or less the same. However, Hyper-V is, when you compare it to the older platforms like VMware, a little bit more advanced at this stage.""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.""The solution allows us to take advantage of our physical environment.""The solution is stable.""Hyper-V improved the infrastructure drastically, not only from a performance perspective but from a control/administration view as well.""The initial setup was straightforward. It was easy to install.""Hyper-V deployment is very user-friendly. It supports partial scripting and offers a UI for a smooth experience. There's also PowerShell scripting available for advanced users."

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"We had issues with this solution when it comes to resources. We have officially created four to five PMs and it just continues to make more resources even though they are delivered in the main post mode.""It allows us to create an individual VM along with the GPU for machine learning.""The solution has good high availability.""The virtualization is good.""The solution is extremely scalable.""The most valuable feature of this solution is performance.""The solution's most valuable feature is backups.""KVM hypervisor is a valuable part of the solution."

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Cons
"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.""Many vendors, such as Cisco and HPE, are discontinuing support for Hyper-V as they believe it does not have a significant market share.""The live migration feature needs 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.""I'd like to see better predictive diagnostics, so I know what's going on with the machines.""I think the console could use some improvement for the backups.""Hyper-V doesn't have a lot of features and is limited compared to other virtualization software.""There are bugs, and this should be resolved by Microsoft."

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"The compatibility with non-English operating systems needs to be improved.""The availability of the solution could be a bit better.""We had some challenges with management including volume and storage management. Setting it up properly and making it work, specifically shared storage between the virtual machines, is difficult.""If this solution could import directly from OVS format then it would make migration much easier.""The solution can be improved by making it more secure and scalable.""The solution needs to move to the cloud. It would be nice if they made it more robust there.""Separate physical network for Corosync/Heartbeat should be emphasized in the Quick Start or Getting Started documentation.""The initial setup has a pretty steep learning curve."

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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 →

  • "An excellent choice for budget sensitive operations.​"
  • "The cost is excellent."
  • "Proxmox is free software, but if you prefer the support and a more rested repository then you can pay for it."
  • "Zero - this is a free solution."
  • "The only thing you pay for is support and it is between $2,500 and $3,000 a year. It depends on the support plan you choose. Support is optional."
  • "I am not aware of the licensing cost, but there is a cost for support."
  • "It's an open-source solution that can be used free of cost."
  • "Because I'm using Proxmox VE for personal use and it's an AGPL license project, I can use it at home for free."
  • More Proxmox VE 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:For me the biggest impact is the cost of licensing in the case of VMware despite its overall intuitiveness and ease of handling and management. However, KVM-based Open Source solutions are becoming… more »
    Top Answer:I use Proxmox VE and have been very happy with it. In my opinion, it is a complete and stable solution with excellent tools for managing servers. It has a lot of different features, and I also love… more »
    Top Answer:The solution's most valuable feature is backups.
    Ranking
    Views
    43,215
    Comparisons
    35,838
    Reviews
    23
    Average Words per Review
    363
    Rating
    7.8
    Views
    63,421
    Comparisons
    41,688
    Reviews
    23
    Average Words per Review
    408
    Rating
    8.5
    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.”

    Proxmox VE is a complete virtualization management solution for servers. It is a powerful open-source platform and supports two virtualization technologies - KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) for virtual machines and LXC for containers. Proxmox VE has a central user interface that allows you to manage not only VMs and containers, but also storage resources, network configuration, and high availability for clusters. It is enterprise-ready and is valued for its scalability and maximum flexibility, enabling you to virtualize very demanding workloads. Proxmox VE makes it possible for you to easily install, manage, and monitor hyper-converged (HCI) data centers.

    Proxmox VE Key Features

    The Proxmox VE platform has many powerful features, including:

    pen-source software, high-available clusters, command line, fencing, a web-based management interface, flexible storage options, REST API, live/online migration, storage replication stack, software defined storage, virtualized networking, backup and restore, two-factor authentication, role-based administration, and VM templates and clones.

    Proxmox VE Benefits

    Some of the biggest benefits of Proxmox VE are:

    • Central management: To manage all tasks of your virtual data center, you can use the central, web-based management interface.

    • Unique multi-master design: Proxmox VE allows you to carry out maintenance tasks cluster wide, from any node.

    • Minimize downtime: With the integrated live/online migration feature, you can move running virtual machines from one Proxmox VE cluster node to another, without any downtime or noticeable effect from the end-user side.

    • Granular access: Using Proxmox VE’s role-based permission management system helps you define granular access to all objects.

    • Multiple authentication sources: Proxmox VE supports multiple authentication sources, including Linux PAM, an integrated Proxmox VE authentication server, LDAP, Microsoft Active Directory, and OpenID Connect.

    • Several storage options: The Proxmox VE storage model is very flexible and the web interface allows you to add multiple storage types (LVM Group, iSCSI target, NFS Share, SMB/CIFS, Ceph RBD, Direct to iSCSI LUN, GlusterFS, CephFS).

    • Collaboration with Ceph: Proxmox VE fully integrates Ceph, giving you the ability to run and manage Ceph storage directly from any of your cluster nodes.

    • Scheduled backups: With Proxmox VE, backups can be scheduled so that they automatically run on specific days and times, for selectable nodes and guest systems.

    • IT infrastructure protection: Proxmox VE has a built-in firewall that works to protect your IT infrastructure. The firewall is completely customizable, allowing complex configurations via the GUI or CLI.

    Reviews From Real Users

    Here is some feedback from some of our users who are currently using the solution:

    A PeerSpot user who is a director at a tech services company says, “The most valuable features of Proxmox VE are the ease of containerization. Overall the solution is generic, feature-rich, and has compatibility.”

    Another PeerSpot user who is a head of IT operations at a tech services company mentions that "In addition to the virtualization, the firewall and the routing functions that it provides are valuable."

    Deepen D., director and CTO at TechnoInfotech, expresses that "The feature that I have found most valuable is that its storage container, LVM, and everything else work out of the box."


    Sample Customers
    Large customer base from all industries, all over the world. Two major Hyper-V customers are Telefonica and EmpireCLS.
    Municipality of Trento, SwitchMIA, inDenova, Valmeita City Council, Alpha IT AS, Grupo Inversor Veracruzano S.A.P.I. de C.V. (GRIVER), Laut und Schoen, IT-Services - Hamburg e.K., KMI Learning, Dynacom Tankers Management Ltd., Serwise AG
    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
    Government13%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Retailer13%
    University8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company15%
    Comms Service Provider14%
    Government8%
    Educational Organization7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business47%
    Midsize Enterprise24%
    Large Enterprise28%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business21%
    Midsize Enterprise37%
    Large Enterprise42%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business68%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise17%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business30%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise51%
    Buyer's Guide
    Hyper-V vs. Proxmox VE
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Hyper-V vs. Proxmox VE 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 Proxmox VE is ranked 1st in Server Virtualization Software with 24 reviews. Hyper-V is rated 8.0, while Proxmox VE is rated 8.6. 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 Proxmox VE writes "An open-source server management platform with a useful Software RAID feature, but backup and recovery could be better". Hyper-V is most compared with VMware vSphere, VMware Workstation, Oracle VM VirtualBox, KVM and Nutanix AHV Virtualization, whereas Proxmox VE is most compared with VMware vSphere, Oracle VM VirtualBox, KVM, Nutanix AHV Virtualization and Citrix Hypervisor. See our Hyper-V vs. Proxmox VE 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.