Hyper-V Reviews

Currently, we use the Windows Server 2022 Hyper-V server.

We started the virtualization and provide two virtualized environments or operating system environments in the Windows Server itself. We run in the virtualized environment under one single Windows Server license. We started our virtualization from one site on Hyper-V.

Most of the workload we usually have is in the Windows Server. We also leverage the Windows Server virtualization feature, allowing us to use the hardware efficiently and get multiple Windows installs based on the license. We use both Windows Server Standard and Data Center Editions. In the Data Center Edition, we can run unlimited virtual machines based on our hardware capabilities.

The generation feature is good. Hyper-V allows us to define generation one and generation two Hyper-Vs with some legacy boot features. I appreciate the easy  generation of virtual machines.

It is straightforward to set up the solution. 

It's a stable product.

We can scale the solution.

It's pretty much issue free, so we haven't needed technical support.

They need to make some improvements to compare to VMware on Nutanix. There should be a center manual console to manage all the Hyper-V servers and cross-host V-motion. There should be clustering, and the virtual data center should be created with that in mind. There should be similar offerings between different services available within the industry.

I'd like there to be a central management console and a central configuration tool to manage and configure multiple Hyper-V services. 

We'd like a template feature to help deploy VMs quickly.

I've been using the solution for more than seven years. 

It works well. It is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

It is scalable only in terms of licensing.

If you have the Data Center Edition license, you can scale up.

We use this product for 50 or more servers.

We do not have plans to increase usage at this time. 

We do not need to take general support from Microsoft. It's not a very complex product. We can troubleshoot ourselves.

I've yet to use a different solution. 

The solution is simple to set up. It's not overly complex. 

One Windows server administrator can handle the deployment and maintenance.

We handled the deployment ourselves, in-house. We did not need any outside assistance. 

Initially, we started our journey with the Alpha virtualization with Hyper-V. We can leverage multiple virtual machines, and we can create them with the help of Hyper-V. On Windows Server, with Hyper-V, we can get two virtual machines of Windows Server. However, we can also create other virtual machines like Linux. We can create a very dense environment that is very valuable to our organization.

The cost of the product actually comes under the Windows server purchase. A Windows Server standard license comes with Hyper-V. A minimum of eight core license units need to be purchased. The costs depend completely on your CPU and core central server.

Before committing to one solution, a new user needs to consider what they might do if, at some point, they need to migrate. Users need to consider sizing also before deployment, as well as disk format types. They should use Thin provisioning before the deployment of a VM, and not use Thick provisioning.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

What I understand from our people is that it's certainly better now than it was a few years ago. They keep improving. 

The pricing is pretty good. 

My understanding is it's easy to set up.

The only negative thing I heard was that the baseline price is very, very attractive relative to VMware, however, the vCenter counterpart, the thing that brings it all together, is quite pricey.

We could probably live without it since we are a relatively small operation, however, vCenter is very convenient. vMotion and so forth are nice to be able to do. However, in order to be able to do the counterpart to that in the HyperVision world, suddenly the cost differential diminishes dramatically. We're not considering a change anytime soon, yet things have changed even from the last two years ago when we last looked at this.

I don't have many insights on stability. I have read a few things, however, it's not really my space. 

Across all of our clients, we probably have a few hundred in use, however, the number of instances of our application that are operating on those virtual servers, I don't know. 

The only data point I have there in relation to the initial setup is a conversation with a guy who spends 90% of his time supporting VMware organizations. He's had some Hyper-V experience. He says, "It's straightforward and I see it growing." That's somebody who's in that who space telling me that just the last week.

The pricing is a function of how many cores you have or how many processors you have. Since we're a Microsoft partner and use tools to create and maintain the software that we sell subscriptions to, we get very attractive pricing. If whatever their counterpart to the vCenter licensing weren't an issue, it would probably be 20% of what we pay for VMware.

When you add the vCenter, counterpart back in, however, it comes to be probably 80%-85% of what you actually need. The last 10% or 15% is where it gets pricey. That's a lot to cover for us to do unless there's some other serious functional advantage - and our guys haven't seen that yet.

I'd rate Hyper-V a five out of ten. I'm not a user of it, so I'm not sure I'm qualified to rate it, however, the part of it that I was most interested in was the pricing notion. Microsoft does all sorts of interesting pricing things. I'm sure they have a good reason for doing it, however, to say, "We'll give you 80% of what you need for almost nothing and if you want the last 20%, you got to give us your left kidney" seems a little unusual.

I have one host, and I need to run several servers. I created an Active Directory server on it for access and upgrades.

It's very easy to use and very stable.

It is very easy to lear. Anyone with a basic IT background can configure and use Hyper-V with a little bit of knowledge about networking and IP configuration.

Sometimes a server or machine shuts down and doesn't automatically restart. I checked the settings and made some adjustments so that the machine will start when services are stopped. That solved the problem

I've been using it for two years on two servers - one for Active Directory and one for voice.

It's very stable.

On-premises, I use Hyper-V. 

On the cloud, I use VMware.

The initial setup is not difficult at all.

It's very easy to install on the storage or on the server.

I'm in a small company and handle all the IT work.

It's not expensive.

I definitely recommend it. It's easy to use and very reliable.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

Mainly, I use Hyper-V to analyze whether it fits the customer's needs as a solutions architect. First, we determine whether the customer is a Microsoft user. Then, we consider pricing and compare it against the features of VMware or AHV to determine which solution would be most helpful.

In terms of how the solution has helped the organization, I would say that cost-wise, it is a cheaper solution than VMware.

The virtualization aspect of the solution functions similar to VMware is one of its most valuable features. Even though it costs significantly less than VMware, it has enough features to compete with it, especially in terms of virtualizing VMs, data stores, NICs, and VNX.

Many vendors, such as Cisco and HPE, are discontinuing support for Hyper-V as they believe it does not have a significant market share. This poses a significant problem for our Hyper-V customers since several major vendors will no longer provide support for it.

Hyper-V doesn't need additional features. They just needed to be well-defined. So, people aren't using it as much as before, and so they need to market it better. Everybody knows VMware, but not a lot of people know Hyper-V.

I have been using Hyper-V for at least five years. Also, I don't remember the version of the solution I am using.

It is a stable product.

Even though Hyper-V is not as scalable as VMware, it can be considered scalable in general.

We don't have any plans in our organization to increase the usage of the solution. On the contrary, I see a decrease in its usage. Nowadays, we work with customers who are going to migrate to VMware from Hyper-V, even though we don't want them to do that. But there is nothing else we can do to stop them from our end. This downfall of Hyper-V is related directly to the fact that other vendors are not supporting Hyper-V anymore.

I rate the technical support an eight out of ten since it is embedded with Microsoft support. So, their support is okay.

Positive

The initial setup process for Hyper-V was not that hard. If one knows about Microsoft and virtualization, it's not a hard product to manage or install.

I have experienced an ROI using the solution, especially when considering SLED customers.

It is one of the cheapest products in the market. So, even though Nutanix gives away AHV, one still has to pay for Nutanix home.

My suggestion to those planning to use the solution is that they use it in a smaller or simpler environment, and it'll easily do the job for them while being cost-effective at the same time. Overall, I rate the product a seven out of ten.

We are an IT service company. We understand the technology and we provide Microsoft solutions, Linux, and Cisco solutions. We have a 360-degree relationship with Microsoft, Cisco, and two other companies. We are a premium partner with Microsoft. We use Hyper-V for virtualization and the consolidation of infrastructures. It is a cost-saving solution. We currently use 25% physical, and 75% virtual resources via Hyper-V, i.e. a ratio of 2.5 to 7.5. So we are using the virtual aspect to a greater extent.

It has provided a good cost-saving from the management perspective. It's easy to use, and understand. It's definitively great working on Microsoft Hyper-V. It was a great opportunity to really contribute while cutting down our company costs.

I would say that it's easy to use, and cost-effective. These are the two major factors why we like Hyper-V. I would say VMware ESX is the best, but Microsoft Hyper-V also is very good. It's easy to use and it's cost-effective compared to ESX.

Disaster recovery capabilities are the primary choice for improvement. There could also be improvements in virtualization, performance, management, monitoring, reporting, recommendations, integration, customization, and technical support. Performance and up-scaling are the most important areas in need of improvement.

We have experience with Hyper-V for about 10 to 12 years. I'm an IT manager who manages multiples things, like virtualization and email.

It's about 90% stable.

We would give it a scalability rating of 4 out of 5, compared to VMware ESX which in terms of scalability is excellent.

The support is not excellent, but it is very good. It could be improved.

The initial setup is straightforward, it's easy. I did it on my own without assistance.

We are a team of five to six members, who work on this product in-house. 

Microsoft Hyper-V is not expensive and is easy to set up.

We considered App-V for publishing, but it is a costly solution and is not for virtualization technology but as an end-user solution. It is for application publishing. We have also considered VMware ESX. The main difference between VMware virtualization and Microsoft Hyper-V is the VR capabilities of VMware ESX are better, but both are good.

We are very satisfied with Hyper-V. I would rate Hyper-V as 7 out of 10.

The primary use case involves the creation and management of virtual machines. Within this framework, various types of virtual machines can be established, ranging from Windows-based systems to those dedicated to specific applications such as SQL servers.

I appreciate its stability and user-friendly management interface.

The area that requires attention is the noticeable slowdown in performance. A singular interface for administration control, allowing centralized management of all aspects, would be preferable. Enhanced visibility and reporting capabilities are desired for better insights and analysis.

I have been using it for more than fifteen years.

It offers good stability capabilities.

It provides high scalability.

I appreciate the technical support as it is prompt and highly efficient.

We still use Nutanix as well as Hyper-V.

The initial setup was straightforward.

Deployment was done in-house and it was completed in ten minutes.

The license is free.

Overall, I would rate it ten out of ten.

I value the simplicity of configuration because it has worked as expected for my client.

The weakness of Hyper-V is in its interaction with iSCSI protocols. I had a bad experience with iSCSI, but that is storage not from Microsoft and is a very particular storage option that I chose long ago.

I would like to see a more granular configuration of the iSCSI protocol without going to the registry to configure it. Instead, there should be a user interface to quickly configure the parameters of iSCSI communication.

I've used Hyper-V since 2012.

The product is stable.

The product is scalable with respect to the client. But maybe, in absolute terms, it might not be scalable at all.

I think their support is quite good. I had the opportunity to open a few tickets with them and was satisfied.

Positive

The initial setup for Hyper-V was straightforward. It took about one week to set up the infrastructure from zero. The implementation strategy was to virtualize a number of roles in the virtual machine but also consolidate all the roles in case of migration. The virtual machine is already clear with all the roles, and I just have to upgrade the single role on the virtual machine.

Hyper-V's price is a good point because it's within the overall license cost. I don't have to pay extra for Hyper-V, And that's a good point. Hyper-V's price is essentially zero because it's a feature of the operating system that I can enable and disable at will.

Whether I would recommend this product for enterprise companies is a good question. The simplicity is a point in favor of the solution. But the performance could be better to compete with solutions like VMware. I'm working with technical partners now, and I tend to accept what they suggest to me and forward it to the final customer. I'm a professional freelance consultant, so I don't have much power for the final customer. But if it was up to me, I would keep Hyper-V.

Hyper-V's advantages over its competitors are its simplicity and fast implementation. I rate Hyper-V a nine out of ten.

This solution is mostly being used to deliver flexibility, high availability, and redundancy to accommodate production demand on an as-needed basis.

The main driver is consolidation, which is then complemented with the above-mentioned items. Hyper-V is a cost-effective platform that helped many companies I've been involved with to reduce data center administration and licensing costs drastically.

Once the platform is in place, it helps to control resources more accurately and on a consumption basis. By using the VMM (Virtual Machine Manager) you have full control of the fabric, workloads, templates and many more resources. Running Hyper-V Core also increases security and reduces update time-frames, which also helped us to increase our uptime and overall service delivery expectations. 

Hyper-V improved the infrastructure drastically, not only from a performance perspective but from a control/administration view as well. This directly affects the products and services offered on the platform. Our customers can increase or decrease resources on their workloads at any given time, which means we give them more control. That positively affects costs, reducing them for the customers. 

In most recent times, the live migration that is available for non-clustered environments was a massive benefit. Microsoft Storage Spaces can be used as an iSCSI provider for Hyper-V, which can help for a cost-effective cluster. Dynamic resource allocation is a great benefit that helps service providers to reduce costs and increase host density. 

I believe further improvement can be made on the cluster manager side, not specifically Hyper-V related. There are some storage problems which do occur in high load systems, especially SQL workloads. These do not necessarily affect uptime, but it can evolve into a larger problem if not attended to. Otherwise, the product is fantastic.

It is very stable. There are some minor problems, as there is with all software applications, but they are not problems that affect the platform in such a way that your customers are affected. If managed properly according to standards and Microsoft's recommendations, it works. It stays online and is very reliable.

Hyper-V is easily scalable. Adding additional hosts, storage or event sharing workloads between clusters (Not sharing the same cluster nodes) is made possible with the recent versions of Windows Server.

I have used Hyper-V since it was launched and upgrading to the newer versions is purely a matter of staying up to date with the latest features to help our customers benefit.

Do not immediately think of massive SANs and expensive servers. Instead, start small then evaluate and test properly to understand how workloads are treated. Microsoft, with Server 2019, gives you a massive number of tools to do this cost-effectively. 

We did evaluate other options before choosing this solution. VMware has always been a good platform but in terms of costs, it is very expensive. The other 'freeware' options are also great but did not tick our boxes in terms of features and contractual agreements.