Hyper-V vs VMware Workstation comparison

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Microsoft Logo
41,921 views|34,526 comparisons
85% willing to recommend
VMware Logo
8,061 views|5,684 comparisons
95% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Sep 7, 2022

We performed a comparison between Hyper-V and VMware Workstation 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 say deployment is straightforward.
  • Features: Users of both products are happy with their stability and scalability.

    Users of Hyper-V like the solution’s ease of use, user friendliness, and the ability to do checkpoints and roll back to the checkpoint. Reviewers mention that its cloud integration could be improved, and they would like to see better disaster recovery capabilities.

    VMware Workstation users report that it is reliable and high performing but its interface could be improved.
  • Pricing: Users of Hyper-V are satisfied with the solution’s pricing. VMware Workstation users say that it is a low-cost solution.
  • Service and Support: Hyper-V users share mixed reviews on the technical support. VMware Workstation users report being satisfied with the level of the support they receive.
  • ROI: Users of both solutions report a positive ROI.

Comparison Results: The two solutions are very comparable and receive similar ratings in most categories. However, VMware Workstation users are more satisfied with the technical support they receive than are Hyper-V users.

To learn more, read our detailed Server Virtualization Software Report (Updated: April 2024).
768,415 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 most valuable feature is that it is user-friendly and easy to use.""The replication, creation, and import wizard, as well as the integration with reporting tools, are the most useful features.""The virtualized applications and real time audition of the VMA is quite a good feature.""It's good for what it does. If you have a small or medium-scale acclimatization, it's an excellent solution.""There are two very good things about this product including licensing and stability.""Using cluster with Hyper-V had a major impact on our protection environment. So all applications were virtualized using Hyper-V.""The initial setup was straightforward. It was easy to install.""The solution's technical support is the best."

More Hyper-V Pros →

"Instead of relying on dual-boot operating systems, I can utilize open-source tools within my infrastructure. This approach allows me to create an in-house cloud platform suitable for testing. VMware Workstation enables me to perform tasks across various operating systems using a single device. It has helped me save time.""The performance is good.""We are able to simultaneously run multiple operating systems in a single machine and have virtually no performance hit.""I like that it's easy to use. It's easy to deploy virtual machines. You have to insert your ISO and the image of your OS and configure it. They provide a step-by-step guide, and you have to follow it. In the end, you have to start the machine, and that's all you have to do. I liked that they synchronized the mouse, keyboard, and everything. When you finish the installation, it directly links to your laptop. This makes copying and pasting things from my laptop inside the virtual machine easy.""VMware Workstation has tons of third-party support, the largest partner ecosystem. VMware works with a ton of different vendors. They have plugins for almost everything. Other hypervisors lack the flexibility that VMware Workstation offers.""The technical support is good.""VMware Workstation allows you to run a virtual machine.""VMware Workstation’s most valuable features are backup and data transfer from one server to another."

More VMware Workstation Pros →

Cons
"The initial setup was complex. It was nearly six years ago, but I remember it was complicated.""We have our cluster connected to a Dell EMC VNX (SAN). The Hyper-V nodes are on Cisco UCS blades, and everything is interconnected via fiber. I attempted to use a virtual Fibre Channel connection to present a SAN volume to a VM but was not able to make that work.""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.""ometimes a server or machine shuts down and doesn't automatically restart.""I think the setup for the Virtual Network Manager could be improved.""I would love to see other options for connecting VMs to large data storage.""VLAN is not very easy to configure.""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."

More Hyper-V Cons →

"The solution should provide a guide on its installation.""They could include official support for macOS virtualization within VMware Workstation.""The solution freezes sometimes.""VMware Workstation has some network limitations which could improve, it is not as flexible as VMware NSX. Additionally, it could support operating systems better. I only run some Linux versions and Windows at the moment but it would be nice to be able to take whatever operating system you want and run it.""The GUI interface could be improved.""The product could provide the features available in Microsoft Hyper-V.""Installing VMware Workstation isn't so easy. It's highly complex compared to Windows. I rate it four out of 10 for ease of installation. Setting up a remote desktop only takes a minute or so, but the Workstation itself takes some time.""Lacks the ability to clone onto another system rather than starting from scratch."

More VMware Workstation Cons →

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 →

  • "The pricing is a bit steep in my opinion for testing and there are other options."
  • "Licensing costs are paid on a yearly basis."
  • "The licensing costs are cheap. I pay approximately $100 per year."
  • "The cost differs depending on the customer's requirement."
  • "VMware Workstation has a high price than competitors in the market."
  • "With a VDI solution, there is always extra cost running a VDI solution but it's not for cost purposes anymore. In the beginning, it was to save money on hardware but at the moment it's other aspects that are more important why you should use a VDI solution."
  • "Licensing fees are paid on an annual basis."
  • "The price of the solution per workstation is approximately 200 Francs annually. We pay a total of 800 francs. Everything is included in the price such as the support."
  • More VMware Workstation Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparison Review
    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:Hyper-V helps to make a replica server between two machines. It is very easy to learn.
    Top Answer:VM Workstation’s setup is so easy, you can use it almost instantly, it works well with Windows and Linux. We like VM Workstation primarily to test environments to determine how well a solution will… more »
    Top Answer:The initial setup is simple and takes only five minutes to complete.
    Top Answer:The solution’s performance is low. Also, support should be enhanced after Huiwei's acquisition. They are migrating all their clients to the new company. It takes too much time to load all the plug-ins… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    41,921
    Comparisons
    34,526
    Reviews
    29
    Average Words per Review
    399
    Rating
    7.7
    Views
    8,061
    Comparisons
    5,684
    Reviews
    28
    Average Words per Review
    346
    Rating
    8.6
    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 Workstation is part of a suite of robust Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) tools or Desktop Hypervisors that allows users to run Kubernetes clusters, containers, and Virtual Machines (VMs). Users have the option to choose between VMware Workstation Pro or VMware Workstation Player to ensure that they get the most out of their VMware Workstation experience.

    Workstation Player is best used as a command line or single graphical operation. It works very well for running different operating systems using a secure cloistered sandbox on a general consumer PC. Workstation Player is an industry favorite for use in an educational environment to better expand the knowledge concerning computer systems and global information technology. Workstation Pro is created for astute IT developers and professionals. The solution provides an intuitive next-generation interface and gives users the ability to seamlessly run several virtual machines at the same time. Users can easily create clones, configure virtual networks, connect to vSphere, and more, using a crisp, visually enhanced dashboard that provides full transparency to show multiple VMs and more.

    VMware Workstation solutions rely on components in next-generation 64-bit x86 CPUs to develop robust, secure VMs that are able to utilize many different operating systems and all of their applications. VMware Workstation’s modern technology intuitively links the physical hardware devices to the virtual machine's virtual resources enabling each VM to have its own I/O devices, memory, disks, and CPU in addition to the equivalent of a standard x86 actual machine. It easily installs onto the host operating system and is able to offer comprehensive hardware support by utilizing the device support from the original host.

    VMware Workstation Benefits

    VMware Workstation has many desirable benefits. Some of those benefits include:


    • Improved overall IT processes.
    • Better, more efficient deployment outcomes.
    • Enhanced application performance.
    • Better server availability.
    • Less physical hardware and additional devices needed.
    • Cost-effective.
    • Decreased outages or downtime.
    • Faster provisioning of applications and resources.
    • Reduced power consumption.
    • Reduced Environmental Impact.



    Reviews from Real Users

    Walter G., Owner at Secacon Gygli Engineering LLC says, “The most valuable feature of the VMware Workstation is the ease of creating a development environment. When you have different ongoing developments, you often need to create a lot of different development environments. With this workstation solution, you can have a development environment for all the things you develop.” 

    Toni L., CEO at Virtual Consultants Sverige AB says, “The most valuable features of VMware Workstation are the DirectX support; you can run Microsoft Hyper-V in virtual environments, which is good for me to test different installations. Additionally, you can set up different VLANs, and overall it is a complete solution.” 


    “Having a user-friendly interfaceis important for me. I'm not a coder, even though I do a little bit of programming. Also, I don't use the command-line interface when I can avoid it. When I do have to use it, I look up what I'm supposed to type and then type it.” A PeerSpot user who is a Chief Technical Officer at a construction company.

    are Workstation is part of a suite of robust Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) tools or Desktop Hypervisors that allows users to run Kubernetes clusters, containers, and Virtual Machines (VMs). Users have the option to choose between VMware Workstation Pro or VMware Workstation Player to ensure they get the most out of their VMware Workstation experience.

    Workstation Player is best used as a command line or single graphical operation. It works very well for running different operating systems using a secure cloistered sandbox on a general consumer PC. Workstation Player is an industry favorite for use in an educational environment to better expand the knowledge concerning computer systems and global information technology. Workstation Pro is created for astute IT developers and professionals. The solution provides an intuitive next generation interface and gives users the ability to run seamlessly several virtual machines at the same time. Users can easily create clones, configure virtual networks, connect to vSphere, and more using a crisp, visually enhanced dashboard that provides full transparency to show multiple VMs and more.

    VMware Workstation solutions rely on components in next-generation 64-bit x86 CPUs to develop robust, secure VMs that are able to utilize many different operating systems and all of their applications. Vmware Workstation’s modern technology intuitively links the physical hardware devices to the virtual machine's virtual resources enabling each VM to have its own I/O devices, memory, disks, and CPU in addition to the equivalent to a standard x86 actual machine.VMware easily installs onto the host operating system and is able to offer comprehensive hardware support by utilizing the device support from the original host.

    VMware Workstation Benefits

    Vmware Workstation has many desirable benefits. Some of those benefits include:


    • Improved overall IT processes.
    • Better, more efficient deployment outcomes.
    • Enhanced application performance.
    • Better server availability.
    • Less physical hardware and additional devices needed.
    • Cost-effective.
    • Decreased outages or downtime.
    • Faster provisioning of applications and resources.
    • Reduced power consumption.
    • Reduced Environmental Impact.



    Reviews from Real Users

    “The most valuable feature of the VMware Workstation is the ease of creating a development environment. When you have different ongoing developments, you often need to create a lot of different development environments. With this workstation solution, you can have a development environment for all the things you develop.” Walter G., Owner at Secacon Gygli Engineering LLC

    “The most valuable features of VMware Workstation are the DirectX support; you can run Microsoft Hyper-V in virtual environments, which is good for me to test different installations. Additionally, you can set up different VLANs, and overall it is a complete solution.” Toni L., CEO at Virtual Consultants Sverige AB

    A Chief Technical Officer at a construction company says,“Having a user-friendly interfaceis important for me. I'm not a coder, even though I do a little bit of programming. Also, I don't use the command-line interface when I can avoid it. When I do have to use it, I look up what I'm supposed to type and then type it.” 

    Sample Customers
    Large customer base from all industries, all over the world. Two major Hyper-V customers are Telefonica and EmpireCLS.
    Akademiska Hus
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Computer Software Company10%
    Outsourcing Company8%
    Energy/Utilities Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization30%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    Government7%
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company20%
    Computer Software Company20%
    Construction Company8%
    University8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company15%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    Government9%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business47%
    Midsize Enterprise24%
    Large Enterprise28%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise37%
    Large Enterprise42%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business48%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise30%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise57%
    Buyer's Guide
    Server Virtualization Software
    April 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Proxmox, VMware, Microsoft and others in Server Virtualization Software. Updated: April 2024.
    768,415 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Hyper-V is ranked 3rd in Server Virtualization Software with 134 reviews while VMware Workstation is ranked 2nd in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) with 41 reviews. Hyper-V is rated 8.0, while VMware Workstation is rated 8.8. 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 VMware Workstation writes "An easy-to-manage solution that has really good customer support compared to other market players". Hyper-V is most compared with VMware vSphere, Proxmox VE, Oracle VM VirtualBox, KVM and Nutanix AHV Virtualization, whereas VMware Workstation is most compared with VMware vSphere, KVM, Proxmox VE, Oracle VM VirtualBox and VMware Fusion.

    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.