Hyper-V Reviews

We basically use it to virtualize a service for email on-premise. We also use it to virtualize the apps, but it is mainly for virtualizing servers, such as SQL Server, Exchange Server, SharePoint, and CRM.

It has cut down the management role on the actual service itself because we only have four Hyper-V hosts. Recently we had two, but we've put in two all-flash Hyper-V hosts. We have all-flash storage. It is good storage with loads of RAM. Most of them have got three-quarters of a terabyte of RAM, and they all are dual 32-core processors. There is no lack of power or anything in them. Because our servers are virtualized, it means that we do have four rack servers.

It really reduces the load. By using replication, we can separate out the servers and put them at different locations. We have them attached to the 10 gig fiber. With the replication facility, even if we do lose a server, we can be up and running within seconds or minutes at worst.

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 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.

I have been using this solution for around 15 years.

It is very stable and very reliable. I never had any failures of any description with it, which is amazing. We might have had hardware failures on the host, but everything is redundant, so there is plenty of resilience there.

I haven't come across any scalability issues, but you need a fairly powerful host machine. 

Nearly all users are using Hyper-V in some way, but they're not aware that it is Hyper-V that they're using while logging in to the servers. The servers are all virtualized, except for the physical servers that are hosting Hyper-V. We have quite a lot of virtual servers. The gateway that they use is a virtualized gateway server. Email servers are all virtualized. All sorts of services and filling servers are all virtualized. Virtualization reduces the physical footprint.

I never had to use Hyper-V technical support from Microsoft. It has been pretty stable.

It is very straightforward, very simple, and very quick. It is very quick to set up a virtual machine. You can set it up in minutes.

Because we're an NGO or a charity, we get discount rates from Microsoft. The costs are not astronomical for us. To give you an example, Office 2019 would only cost 30 or 45 for us. We tend to use the on-premises version rather than the cloud version. The reason is that the subscription service works out more expensive after a few years than the on-premise version. We're not worried about having the bleeding edge stuff. We just want it to be functional.

I would advise making sure that you have the hardware that is up to the job. You should also have a clear plan of what you want to virtualize. Make sure that there is room for growth in terms of the physical hardware for the host, which is the server hosting Hyper-V. 

It is very robust. It doesn't consume as many resources as VMware, for instance. It is fairly slick. It is very functional and doesn't really present great challenges.

I would definitely rate Hyper-V a ten out of ten. 

I am a solution provider and Hyper-V is one of the products that I implement for my customers.

There are two very good things about this product including licensing and stability. 

If you have a lot of Hyper-V servers then you will need an additional product, which is the System Center Virtual Machine Manager, so that you can control the host environments of all of your virtual machines. 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.

There should be a way to restart the services and not the whole station, which would minimize downtime, especially when updating the operating system. This is a feature that everybody needs.

I started working with Hyper-V in 2012, between eight and nine years ago.

The product is very stable, in particular with the most recent version of Windows Server. This is true even in a cluster environment, and I have never found an issue with stability.

Obviously, when you are using Windows Server update, it will restart the server occasionally and you will have downtime, but it will be minimal. If you don't want to have any downtime then you will need multiple hosts in a cluster environment. You can move your virtual machines from one host to another, which means that you can restart the server and not affect the service. This can be important because sometimes, the restart process takes too much time to complete.

It is very easy to scale Hyper-V. However, it depends on the version that you have because if you have the Standard Edition then you only have three hosts. If you want more than three hosts then you will need a Datacenter version.

I have experience with VMware and one of the nice features is that you can restart a service after an update and everything goes live in seconds, rather than minutes.

These two technologies compete with each other, and in deciding which to use, I speak with users about their needs. I also speak with them about the knowledge of their technical team and the budget. These are all factors in the decision because I want to provide the best solution from both a technical and budget perspective.

The initial setup is very easy. All you have to do is watch a 10-minute YouTube video and you can deploy the hardware.

It can be deployed in different ways. If you need to have a virtual environment then it will be hosted on Microsoft Azure. If instead, you have your own private cloud then it will be hosted on-premises, on your physical servers.

The tricky part about this field is not the deployment. It's troubleshooting and finding solutions for issues. For just about any software, you can deploy anything. Even if you don't understand anything about the product, you can deploy anything from scratch and there is no issue with it. The problem is figuring how to solve issues and find solutions outside of the box. Almost all Microsoft issues are solved in this way. It's not about what you find online or in the documentation. Rather, you need to think outside the box. It's the hardest part about this field.

If you have the standard edition of Windows server then with each copy of the operating system, you have two virtual machines for free.

If you have a Windows Datacenter license then you have unlimited virtual machines for free. This is much better compared to ESXi or VMware, where each virtual machine requires its own license. In the Windows Datacenter, you can have as many as you want.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Hyper-V acts as the hypervisor for our virtualization platform. We are using it on a three-tier infrastructure and it manages our VMs that store our files and applications. 

The most valuable feature is that it's an end-to-end solution.

It's not completely stable because your stack becomes bloated.

We have been using Hyper-V since 2008.

Stability-wise, it is okay but not great. I'd say that it works but it's not perfect.

Hyper-V is limited when it comes to scalability. If you have a data center license then you can scale up or down, or use the main virtual machines on the server. However, if you have a normal, or standard license, you can only run two virtual machine instances.

We have approximately 1,000 users.

I have not had much experience with technical support.

We previously used vSphere but we switched because VMware costs a lot and we have a small environment.

The installation and initial setup are very easy. It takes about five minutes to deploy.

We implemented it ourselves. We have three people in our team for deployment and maintenance.

Our licensing fees are paid for as a package with the Microsoft Enterprise Agreement. We have to pay for our data center licenses.

This is a fairly expensive product because it balances the needs of security.

In summary, this product is not perfect but it works. At this point, we have not yet decided how long we will continue using it. This is something that we'll decide, moving forward.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

In our administration, we don't have new computers or new servers, but we want to optimize our scientific work. We're using it with two devices for scientific work and administration work.

Microsoft's a good name for legacy support and solutions.

We have our scientific network, and it's run off the university sever, and we need two servers to optimize our scientific work, such as the mathematics work. Then you have to work with Python and Java, and the Microsoft Windows desktop system isn't the best option for this kind of work. Use the Hyper-V as your basic layer, for binding and administration of the systems to the hardware. In the virtualization yo can combined the best of Linux, Unix and Microsoft Windows.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Microsoft an eight.

We are just exploring the possibilities to see if it was a better alternative to VirtualBox, for running on a Windows host.

I think the setup for the Virtual Network Manager could be improved.

I have only just started using this solution. It's been one to two weeks.

I am using the version with Windows 10 Pro.

It's too early to tell at the moment. We are still new to using Hyper-V.

We have not yet explored this area. At the moment, I am the only user.

I have not contacted technical support.

I am currently using VirtualBox and Hyper-V on different VMs.

The initial setup was straightforward. It was easy to install.

It took an hour to get the on-premises system running.

I completed the setup and implementation.

It's still too early to know if I would recommend it or not.

I am still in the processing phase, so depending on how it goes, we may continue to use this solution. At this point, we intend to use it.

With what I know so far, I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We use Hyper-V for production, testing, and development.

It's a core infrastructure solution, so it's not a user-solution. It's for server virtualization. It's actually deployed virtually for other services that need to deploy virtual machines using it.

We plan to keep using this solution in the future.

I have been using this solution since 2008.

Hyper-V is both stable and scalable; however, I also use VMware which I find to be more scalable and stable overall.

The support with Microsoft is great.

We use VMware, but Hyper-V is much cheaper; however, VMware is more robust, more scalable, more agile for us. It was a mix of both because we wanted to be able to see our way through technology skills.

The initial setup was quite easy.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of seven. If it were a little more flexible and stable, I'd give it a higher rating.

We are using Hyper-V to host a few Linux virtual machines.

The most valuable features are ease of use, and it gets the job done in a straightforward manner.

The management interface is in need of the biggest improvement. There are a few gaps in there when I compare with VMware.

Some additional monitoring features would be helpful.

We have been using Hyper-V for the past four or five years.

We have a few support applications that run on top of this solution, so we just have a handful of people who use it. I would say that there are five or six users.

At this point, we do not have plans to increase usage.

I have not personally been in contact with technical support.

The installation was straightforward and I don't think that we had any major issues there. I think that it took approximately one day to deploy.

The implementation was done by our in-house IT people. We have one system administrator that takes care of maintenance.

For what we use this product for, it is pretty basic and it is good enough for our purposes.

Our main complaint is about the administration interface.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We use Hyper-V for managing our virtual infrastructure.

The most valuable feature is that it is user-friendly and easy to use. All you have to do is mount the VM and start it.

There is a problem with high-availability if the load is too high.

I have been working with Hyper-V for eight years.

The stability is generally good, although it depends on the size of your workload.

Scalability really depends on how much you want to expand.

The technical support from Microsoft is good and they're able to easily assist you.

The licensing is good for a data center environment.

Hyper-V is a product that I recommend.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.