TrustRadius Insights for Hyper-V are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Cost-effectiveness: Users consistently praise the cost-effectiveness of Hyper-V in comparison to VMware ESXi, making it a budget-friendly virtualization option that meets their financial needs. The lower upfront costs and potential savings on licensing fees are key factors driving user satisfaction with Hyper-V's affordability.
Efficient resource utilization: Many users have highlighted Hyper-V's efficiency in terms of speed of deployment and resource utilization. The automation and PowerShell accessibility contribute to streamlined operations and optimal resource allocation, resulting in improved productivity for IT teams managing virtual environments.
Disaster recovery features: The ability of Hyper-V to create backup copies of virtual machines for disaster recovery purposes has been well-received by users. This feature provides an added layer of security and peace of mind for maintaining business continuity during unforeseen events, demonstrating the reliability and robustness of Hyper-V as a virtualization solution.
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Hyper-V Reviews
14 Reviews
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
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Our company use Hyper-V virtualization software for production servers and replication of virtual machines between multiple physical hosts. It allows to isolate our VMs from hardware level and run multiple VMs on one host. For example, production software servers plus Domain controllers plus File shares all in one host computer.
Pros
virtualization of multiple machines
Replication
vhdd management
Cons
Tracking and alerts for replication status
Likelihood to Recommend
Hyper-V does the job well but minor improvements can be made such as replication alerts and status, for example email alerts.
VU
Verified User
Account Manager in Information Technology (11-50 employees)
It helps to setup, maintain and troubleshoot virtual machines to critical services like application and data servers, phone systems, email backup appliances, etc.
Pros
Built-in, free hypervisor
Easy remote access through Remote Desktop Services
Easy management through the Hyper-V console or remote via the Windows Admin Center
Cons
Almost impossible to upgrade between version 1 and version virtual machines
Basic built-in backup and replication services offered through the native Hyper-V console. Only Azure backup offerings available at the Windows Admin Center
If the Hyper-V feature is disabled, it's difficult to access your VMs Configuration Files and Virtual Hard Disks
Likelihood to Recommend
- In-house deployment of VMs for critical infrastructure. - No upfront cost of the appliances themselves. It's built-in and free for Windows 10/11 and Windows Server hosts. - Setup is straightforward since you only need to enable the feature within Windows. - Backup, Disaster Recovery and Replication services are almost universal compatible. In our case, we use Acronis Cyber Protect, but Veeam is suitable too.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (11-50 employees)
Hyper-V is our preferred hypervisor, as all our techs are familiar with the Microsoft universe already they quickly learn how to manage the software without a need to learn a second Operating System, this familiarity allows us to quickly roll out new systems as needed and to troubleshoot those systems the rare times it has been needed.
Pros
Ease of Use.
Low Entry Cost.
Quick Deployment.
Cons
Improved backup system.
Better central management.
Likelihood to Recommend
Small businesses that are trying to save costs when software requires a dedicated server are what we have found to be the most useful scenario for Hyper-V as more and more vendors are requiring dedicated server installs for their software. While I understand how this makes support easier for them a small business usually has more than enough horsepower with their existing systems to support these lines of business apps, as Hyper-V licenses are already included when buying windows servers this is often a no-cost option for clients.
Hyper-V is a very cost effective and useful hypervisor. Features like replication and live migration give Hyper-V great disaster recovery or replication options for small to medium size businesses without the need to purchase much more expensive solutions like VMware. Migration from physical servers to Hyper-V VMs is very easy using many off the self products from multiple vendors.
Pros
Virtualize resources, all for one physical server to host many Virtual Machines
Provide easy disaster recovery and replication
Very very cost effective.
Cons
Scaling for large environments. No comparable solution to VMWares vCenter.
Failover of a VM to more than one host is limited.
Likelihood to Recommend
Very well suited to small to mid size businesses. Great tools for replication and failover. Easy to implement using existing Microsoft technologies. No need for extensive training if the engineer is well versed with the Microsoft product stack.
Hyper-V is used across the whole organization. It solves the problem of agility, not having to purchase a physical for every function needed, saves money, allows for maintenance during business hours, etc.
Pros
Hypervisor
Populating with virtual machines
Redundancy and replication
Cons
Not so difficult to setup outside the normal usage
Storage spaces direct is quite difficult to understand and setup
Centralized dashboard
Likelihood to Recommend
Simple setups are really great when you want to put multiple VMs on the same physical hardware. You then could use replications of those VMs so that you would have a redundant copy of the VM. You can do this every 5 minutes. Probably not appropriate if you put all your servers in the cloud anyway.
Hyper-V is being used by our organization to strengthen and solidify client networks. Hyper-V makes it much easier to schedule maintenance, but more importantly, recover from major software or hardware issues. Even with a major hardware failure, having Hyper-V in place makes a restore simple and quick.
Pros
Maintenance
Restores
Cons
Linux limitations
Supports a limited number of guest OS choices
Likelihood to Recommend
Hyper-V is well suited for a business that does not want to worry about upgrading their server hardware every few years. With virtualization, money can be spent on backups or other key areas of IT like end-user hardware. I really do not see any downsides to using Hyper-V in today's IT world.
We are currently using Hyper-V for the deployment of all of our servers. Our main servers house Hyper-V and we deploy 9-10 VM's off of each server and those servers host data for our cloud customers. I would consider Hyper-V to be the backbone of our company. I also personally use Hyper-V here for development and testing purposes. We are a software company so I often create a bunch of VM's for myself and other users to test new software or if we happen to find broken/bugs in our software. We are able to make a replica of the environment that is not running correctly and it will allow us to troubleshoot the issues without further messing up the production environment.
Pros
Virtualization - Hyper-V does this well and I feel like it might be the best and easiest software out there to use. I am able to spin up virtual environments very quickly. Hyper-V also has a "quick" add feature where you don't even need to have the OS ISO on your computer and you can choose between Windows 10, Server or Ubuntu.
Setup and Management - Hyper-V is pretty straight forward. When I first started using this it seemed a bit confusing, but after a couple of days of playing with it you end up finding out everything is pretty straight forward and really not that complicated.
Just turn off the VM and go into the settings and you can manage the Storage, Memory, and CPU's.
Setting a VM up on a Domain is super easy and you can create a static mac address for the machine so in Windows DHCP you can use that static mac address to give that VM an IP it can use every time it boots up.
I think the best feature is the ability to create "Checkpoints" - If you are going to be doing something over and over and you need to start from the same point with each test you can setup your VM the way you need it prior to testing. Create a Checkpoint. Do your tests and then revert back to the Checkpoint so the system will be exactly how you had it setup prior to testing. Then you can go on and do your second set of tests and so on.
Another great thing is the ability to just backup the vhdx file.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this review we run most everything from Hyper-V. I make weekly backup of the vhdx files which are the Virtual Environment files.
This is an extreme example, but if the building ever caught on fire I could go out and buy like 15 PCs at Best Buy and load up Hyper-V on them and just import the vhdx files and be back up and running fairly quickly.
Cons
The only issue I have with Hyper-V is I am unable to use Veeam on my Windows 2016 Server to backup my FreeBSD HAProxy VM.
There is some sort of checkpoint issue that I have been unable to figure out, but it works just fine on my Windows 2012 Servers. I do believe this is a Microsoft issue and not a Veeam issue though.
Another thing that could be useful that Hyper-V does not have would be some sort of GUI that shows the status of all the VM's on a given server to help us manage them easier and know what is going on. However, I do have Zabbix for this and that does a good job at monitoring all my servers.
Likelihood to Recommend
A specific scenario where Hyper-V is well suited would be for environment testing purposes. Let's say you want to learn or test a new OS for a product or just for learning purposes. You are able to boot up this OS in just a few mins on Hyper-V and then begin working, testing and learning with no money out of your pocket. You don't have to go out and build or buy a new PC (assuming your current PC has enough memory and CPU usage for a single VM.).
I do not think there is a scenario where this would not be appropriate. This is not really a piece of software that you need to install to do other things. If you are enabling Hyper-V you are using it to create a virtual environment. The only time you really wouldn't use this is if your application would be better off running in a docker/container setup.
I use Microsoft's Hyper-V to run a number of critical virtual machines for my organization, including domain controllers, servers running WSUS, and servers providing remote access. What I like best about it is it comes with Windows--I don't have to buy anything extra to use it. It's easy to configure, very stable, and offers all the features I need to power my servers. I also take advantage of Hyper-V Replica, which allows me to have the flexibility of planned or unplanned failover to another system running Hyper-V when I need to take a system offline for updates or in the event of a hardware issue. Again, no extra licenses to buy and really easy to configure.
Pros
Allows you to dynamically add storage, memory, and networking, all without powering down the VM.
You can set VM resources to adjust dynamically in response to what other VMs are doing, including weighting VMs based on the criticality of their functions. This is a great feature to ensure VMs "behave" themselves when dynamic resource allocation is utilized while ensuring that VMs that are spiking in utilization can automatically ramp up their resources to match the load.
The Replica feature means you don't have to invest in expensive and complicated clustering technology if your goal is simply to achieve resiliency against hardware failure. Replica works really well, is easy to set up, and can even be placed in a remote location.
If you're a Windows SysAdmin, Hyper-V is intuitive to deploy, monitor, and manage.
I like that you can specify the boot order of the VMs when you power on the Hyper-V server. You can also stagger the "on" state of each VM so you don't overwhelm the host, and you can specify what happens to each VM after the host reboots.
Cons
For me, checkpoints have been a sore spot over the years. These are system snapshots, where you can roll back the system to a previous point in time if you encounter issues after installing updates, applications, or making changes to the system. I'm using Server 2016 and haven't tried them in this version, but earlier versions created all sorts of issues if you ran into a scenario where you needed to recover a VM. I don't use these, instead relying on Veeam backups.
Moving VMs from one server to another could be easier. To be clear, I'm not talking about Replica, but actual VM migration.
Likelihood to Recommend
Hyper-V scales really well, so if you have a lot of compute capacity (lots of RAM and CPUs) and ample storage, you can run dozens of VMs on a single server. This makes it extremely cost-effective. Throw in Hyper-V Replica, which you don't have to have an identical server to accomplish, by the way, and you can achieve disaster recovery for a fairly modest cost.
Note that Hyper-V Replica is not a substitute for backups, because if you have an issue with the primary VM's software, for example, that will be copied over to the replication server. Ditto for altered or deleted files. But for a small- to medium-sized business, Hyper-V represents a robust virtual environment solution with disaster recovery built-in. Large enterprises will likely need to employ a clustering solution for desired system resiliency and performance--Hyper-V Replica is not meant for that. But for the SMB, you're getting a full-featured hypervisor for the cost of the Windows license--if you're going to be running Windows Server anyway, it really makes for an affordable solution.
We use Hyper-V across our whole organization. We have multiple Windows and Linux servers running as virtual machines on Hyper-V. Almost all servers are run as virtual machines. It allows us to easily spin up new servers as needed, and easily decommission older servers.
Pros
Hyper-V is very easy to administer. Day-to-day operations are done through the Hyper-V Manager, which is simple and intuitive to use.
It allows complete servers to be easily be backed up to either local storage or cloud storage (or both). You can restore whole virtual machines as well as individual files if needed.
It is simple to create a checkpoint of a virtual machine before any changes are made or updates applied and changes can be easily rolled back if needed.
Hyper-V does require adequate CPU and memory and should be used with fast storage, so plan ahead.
Cons
It would be nice if there was a way to upgrade virtual machines from generation 1 to generation 2.
Also, better support for older operating systems.
Likelihood to Recommend
It has been a superb environment for the virtualization of our infrastructure. We have gone from many separate, stand-alone servers to primarily virtual machine based servers without any problems. We have reduced hardware costs, allowed much easier scale-ability, and provided more comprehensive backup and disaster recovery plans with few hindrances.
I currently use Hyper-V with two clients to virtualize a number of different functions. Specifically, I have VMs acting as domain controllers, Linux servers, and a QuickBooks server. Using Hyper-V to virtualize these machines allows for more easy management, especially if a restart is required, as that can be done remotely without worry of the machine not turning back on. In addition, the entire VM can be backed up and restored in the case of a catastrophic failure. Finally, using Hyper-V allows me to have multiple single purposes machines running on a single higher powered physical machine.
Pros
Hyper-V is deeply integrated with Windows Server, and works with the built-in Windows Server backup software, as such a 3rd party backup solution is not required.
In general, Hyper-V is easy to set up. There are a number of different options to choose from, but they are laid out in a logical manner and explained fairly well within the Hyper-V interface.
Hyper-V's virtual disks (.vhdx) are extremely flexible and robust. They support dynamic resizing, i.e. you can create a 1TB disk that will show up as 1TB within the VM, but on the real machine the vhdx will only be as big as the amount of data within the VM.
Microsoft provides a plethora of support documents for Hyper-V usage.
Cons
Hyper-V's support for non-Windows based OS' (i.e. Linux) is only OK. You can certainly virtualize a Linux machine, but it's integration with the rest of Windows is limited, and it's performance is only OK.
Adding an external hard drive (USB or otherwise) to a VM is clunky at best, as it requires the physical to be set to offline via the Disk Management snap-in before it can be added to the VM.
Backing up a VM can be lesson in frustration at times. While a VM can be easily backed up using Windows Server backup - when an issue arises with the backup, it can be very difficult tracking down exactly what the issue is.
Likelihood to Recommend
Virtualizing a Windows Server via Hyper-V works really well. I especially like using it to virtualize a domain controller that requires 100% up time. While you can use Hyper-V on a regular non-server version of Windows Pro, it isn't as tightly integrated and some features aren't available (such as being able to be backed up using built-in software). Finally, I would NOT recommend using Hyper-V to virtualize a non-Windows OS machine.
