Hyper-V Reviews

We use Hyper-V for our on-premise servers, and we have a couple of Hyper-V desktops that remote salespeople use to log in remotely. They have an on-premises station they can remote into and utilize everything at our other office. We replicate everything there, so if anything happens to our facility here, we can get spun up at our other location.

There are 40 people in our organization. We have sales engineers, technicians, and our standard office staff. Three servers are running off of Hyper-V, including our SQL server for our main CRM and QuickBooks databases, our central files storage server, and another files server that holds our backup domain controller. Then we have another domain controller that handles some other internal things. That is pretty much our organization in a nutshell.

We plan to expand usage of Hyper-V. For example, we have a terminal server that isn't on Hyper-V at the moment. It is session based, and we're working on transitioning over. Also, we got a brand new server two weeks ago, so we're transitioning everybody off of the terminal server to local Windows 10 and Hyper-V VMs. 

Everyone will have their own desktop environment versus having a session-based terminal. That way, if there's an emergency patch update or something like that for one person on the terminal server, we don't have to take the whole terminal server down. We can take down that person's desktop. We'll deploy as many as 12 additional Hyper-V desktops running in that. 

That will be our future deployment based on what we've seen in the Hyper-V desktop environment and its performance. It runs great. All users who have already transitioned to that environment are enjoying it compared to the old terminal server that we had.

We were running three servers, but Hyper-V enabled us to shrink everything down into a single server running NVMe drives in it. Using Hyper-V's virtualization, we can operate all our servers on one physical server. We're seeing better performance off of that thanks mainly to the NVMe drives. 

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.

Hyper-V is more cost-effective for the size of our business One of the Hyper-V's biggest advantages over VMware is the cost. We are a small business, so Hyper-V allowed us to virtualize everything we need without breaking the bank.

The most significant issues have with Hyper-V are the snapshots, local backup, and retention. VMware handles their backups are a lot better. I'd also like to see the ability to virtually hook an input-output device directly to the Hyper-V and the VMs, whether it be a card reader or disk drive. This is something you can do in VMware. 

We still use customer or software solutions that come on a disk. I often have to rip the data and transfer it over. If I could just throw it in my disk drive and link my disc drive to that VM, that would be beneficial, or if I had a card reader that I could hook straight in. It's not a make-or-break thing, but that would make everything a little bit easier on some installs.

We've been using Hyper-V in production for about three years now.

Hyper-V has been highly stable. I'm impressed with the performance. Granted, this was my first Hyper-V install, so I was a bit worried about it, but with the hardware platform that we have it on, everything's been excellent stability-wise, and I haven't had any issues with that server. It's been up and working for the past six months. I only had to reboot once to do an update. Everything has been working great.

Hyper-V is less scalable than VMware. It's excellent for smaller environments like ours, but VMware is still the go-to solution if you want to scale up.

Hyper-V's management platform falls short in terms of scalability, especially when handling multiple Hyper-V servers. VMware has a central console to pull in all your VM servers, so you can easily manage them all through one console. You can manage servers in Hyper-V's admin centers, but it's not as scalable. It's doable with a couple of Hyper-V servers, but it becomes harder to manage when you get over two or three Hyper-V servers.

I've never had to deal with their technical support. Everything has gone smoothly with Hyper-V. When I had a few minor issues, I was able to find solutions on the Microsoft forum.

We had VMware ESXi, but it came down to what we needed as a business. Hyper-V was the best bet for the cost. It all boiled down to cost and ease of deployment. 

The Hyper-V setup was straightforward. I transitioned all three of our servers by myself on New Year's Eve. I came in at 8 a.m. and had all three servers transitioned over to Hyper-V within about six hours. The initial setup for VMware took a little longer. 

First, we needed to get the Hyper-V server in place. Once we had that in place, we transitioned from the bare-metal servers to the Hyper-V transition for our initial servers. We used a solution — I believe it was called StarNet or something like that — to do our initial conversion from bare-metal to VM. 

Over the next six months, we spun up our new servers and did conversions because we were running server 2008. Once we had everything on the VM's, we split up the new VM servers and transitioned to the server 2019 platform.

We have two IT staff members for deployment and maintenance. I do 90 percent of the maintenance. The other IT person does little things as needed, but Hyper-V requires little maintenance.

By implementing Hyper-V and cutting down on servers, we have seen a cost reduction. If we stuck with the bare-metal servers, we would see an initial cost for the server hardware of about $4,000 or $5,000. And in the long term, we'll save money on electricity and overall server maintenance of the servers. About five years out, we'll either break even or save over the cost of bare-metal servers.

There's no annual cost for the Hyper-V server version 2019. If you add up the other solutions we have on there, it totals up to around $3,000 a year.

I would rate Hyper-V around 8.5 compared to VMware. The ease of use is there, but VMware has more options and scalability. However, VMware has a lot more upfront and yearly costs. Hyper-V is a great solution and an excellent way to virtualize your servers and everything. It's a good fit for a small business.

If you're converting from Hyper-V or vice versa, make sure you run a couple of tests of your conversion strategy. I did run into one little snag the first time. The server wouldn't boot properly, but that came down to a permissions issue. Make sure you thoroughly test any server or VM's you're converting over. Test to see that everything boots back up. Also, make sure all your virtual switches are set up correctly because you sometimes run into some networking issues within the VM if you don't configure those 100 percent correctly.

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. 

It is an affordable platform than VMware for hosting older versions of Microsoft Windows like Windows XP and Windows NT.

They should include a few more hardware components for integration with servers. It would work great for the Hyper-V environment. Additionally, they should consider cloud virtualization features. 

We have been using Hyper-V since 2016.

The product worked well for hosting a few Microsoft solutions.

It is a scalable platform. We have 100 users for it.

We have used VMware before.

The initial setup process is easy. It takes about two or three hours to complete. We have to follow the installation documentation. It requires one person to maintain.

The product's price is low. We have to pay a one-time cost.

I rate Hyper-V an eight out of ten. I advise others to go for it if they have an interactive environment.

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're using the mail correspondence and other applications which are running using Hyper-V.

The solution offers many useful features. 

It's a very manageable product. 

The deployment was pretty quick. It's also easy to set up. 

It is a stable and scalable solution. 

They could work on lowering the cost of the solution. 

I started using the solution in 2022. I've used it for six to eight months so far.

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

The product scales well. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so. 

There are maybe 400 or more users on the solution, and there are between 300 and 500 users in our environment.

It can actually connect to PC users, and 200 PCs are connected now.

We have used technical support in the past without issue. 

The initial setup is not overly complex, and the deployment time is rather fast. It offers a straightforward implementation. We had some requirements for configuration setups, et cetera, and were able to implement them as required. We had one project set up and then set up another. 

We did not use an integrator or consultant when we set up the solution. We could handle the process ourselves. 

You do need to pay for a license in order to use the solution. It is a bit expensive and could be cheaper. 

We do plan to look into other options in the future. 

The solution is easily manageable, and the setup process isn't too bad. Therefore, I would recommend the solution to others. I'd rate the product ten out of ten overall. 

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. 

I use Hyper-V for virtualization.

I've been using Hyper-V since 2012.

We've had many issues with Hyper-V's stability, including resource crunches and memory leakage.

It's straightforward to scale Hyper-V, but the automation isn't great. Hyper-V doesn't understand 80%/20%, so you need another technical resource to work on the coding voice, and we had to deploy a script for that.

Hyper-V's technical support is good - they're responsive and sort cases based on criticality and category, so they get dealt with quickly and by the correct team. The only thing I didn't like was that we had to send them log collections from our data center to review.

Neutral

The initial setup was straightforward as the deployment was done through the SCVM Manager. This allows the user to create virtual machines without any need for IT support. Deployment is nothing but installing the operating system on one physical server, so it takes between an hour and a half and two hours, and altogether, the project takes a month to a month and a half.

Hyper-V is included in the Microsoft Azure license for no extra cost. However, they charge for technical support calls on an hourly basis.

I would recommend Hyper-V to others because it has good capacity and requires little maintenance. I would give Hyper-V a rating of eight out of ten.

In our environment, we have a special custom configuration for the Hyper-V switches we use. We have a full-scope VM in our environment and especially for certain Cisco configurations, such as the spam folder in the Hyper-V. It is really difficult to configure from scratch. In this scenario, the agent is really helpful for us, for the restoration. The community edition provides a free, low-cost package solution.

The solution could improve by having virtual restore.

I have been using Hyper-V for approximately five years.

The solution is highly stable.

We have ten hosts that use the solution.

The support is very good.

I have previously used VMware and Citrix Xen.

The installation is simple, and it took us approximately 45 minutes.

I did the implementation myself. There is only one senior engineer required for support of Hyper-V.

The licensing costs depend on the environment you have. If you have an environment of less than 10 or 30 VMs, It's nice to have a Hyper-V, but if you have more than 100 or 200, I would recommend using VCenter, VMware virtualization, especially for an on-premise solution.

VMware virtualization is our main solution, but we use Hyper-V because of the licensing and the cost-effective solution, and on the remote offices we only have fewer than 10 servers.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Hyper-V a nine out of ten.