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Hyper-V

Score8.4 out of 10

274 Reviews and Ratings

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What is Hyper-V?

Categories & Use Cases

Key Features

Learn about the best (and worst!) features Hyper-V has to offer, as determined by TrustRadius' reviewers.
Based on 274 ratings of Hyper-V's features
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Top Performing Features

  • Hypervisor-level security

    Hypervisor-level security including antivirus and anti-malware

    Category average: 8.4

  • Virtual machine automated provisioning

    Automation of virtual machine provisioning through use of vm templates

    Category average: 7.8

  • Live virtual machine backup

    Ability to backup vms without interrupting service

    Category average: 8

Areas for Improvement

  • Live virtual machine migration

    Downtime minimization by migrating live vms between hosts and across clusters

    Category average: 7.9

  • Management console

    Management console for central administration of vm environment

    Category average: 8

Reviews

What users are saying about Hyper-V.
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Hyper-V easy start into virtualization world

Incentivized
Verified User
Account Manager in Information Technology (11-50 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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

Return on Investment

  • Saving $ on server hardware by running multiple server VM at once
  • License savings for Microsoft licensing

Usability

Alternatives Considered

VMware ESXi, VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation Pro and AWS Organizations

Other Software Used

VMware ESXi, AWS Backup, AWS Certificate Manager, AWS Service Catalog

Built-in, Free Hypervisor

Incentivized
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (11-50 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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

Return on Investment

  • No upfront cost giving that you have already workstations and servers you can use it on
  • In-house deployment so costs are reduced to the antivirus/backup solution of your choice
  • In-house migration of VMs between hosts so the cost is only for a new host

Usability

Alternatives Considered

VMware Workstation Player and VMware Workstation Pro

Short review on Hyper-V

Incentivized
Taner ImamogluView profile
Senior Information Technology Specialist in Information Technology at Öksüt Madencilik Sanayi ve Ticaret A.Ş. (501-1000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Hyper-V in our organization for Virtual servers with various roles and also for virtual clients for test applications.
Our scope of use case has two main cases first having virtual servers to update/upgrade servers easily/revert changes or bring servers back online from backups and also having virtual clients for testing new applications, group policy rules, and other organizational changes

Pros

  • Editing configuration of virtual machines.
  • Installing Windows operating system based VM client computer easier than rivals.
  • Efficient resource use and management.

Cons

  • Able to use usb drives for operating system installation without needing .iso file.
  • Dedicated gpu virtualisation could be easier for VMs.
  • The console interface could be improved and shows a small thumbnail of running machines.

Most Important Features

  • Based on windows OS environment.
  • Easy to install and remove.
  • Efficient resource management.
  • Clean and easy user interface.

Return on Investment

  • With Hyper-V implementing new software or rules on a test, beds take fewer resources and time which is a great bonus.
  • Virtual SAN management and Virtual Switch management make it easy to manage network and storage options.
  • Editing the disk option made us resize disks on the fly and saved us maintenance, production time, and costs.

Alternatives Considered

VMware ESXi

Other Software Used

VMware ESXi, Citrix Workspace

Usability

Hyper-V is great for the right scenarios. Remains basic, but does the job and is easy to use.

Incentivized
Borislav TraykovView profile
DevOps Team Leader in Engineering at Cognyte (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Hyper-V comes with specific Microsoft licenses to our organization so we use it as a "freebie" which makes it more desirable in some cases than any other virtualization solution simply because we don't need to pay hefty Enterprise-grade licenses. We do use Hyper-V in a rather simplistic way - host servers and guest VMs on each one. However, for this purpose alone we are pretty satisfied with what we get. In a previous company, I was a part of the efforts for automated provisioning of VMs in Hyper-V and even though it required A LOT of reading semi-internal documentation and some in-depth posts, we got it running in a pretty stable state.

Pros

  • Easy to use GUI - very easy for someone with sufficient Windows experience - not necessarily a system administrator.
  • Provisioning VMs with different OSes - we mostly rely on different flavors of Windows Server, but having a few *nix distributions was not that difficult.
  • Managing virtual networks - we usually have 1 or 2 VLANs for our business purposes, but we are happy with the outcomes.

Cons

  • Hyper-V is very slow to adapt to trends in infrastructure and its features are very basic when compared to the offerings from VMWare and some other companies.
  • For instance, VMWare has implemented a built-in Kubernetes cluster provisioning feature (that comes with a specific license that costs extra of course).
  • Hyper-V's infrastructure monitoring is very basic and altering is non-existent. It's up to the system administrators to either create or install separate monitoring & alerting solutions.
  • Hyper-V cannot handle some virtualization needs all that well - my example is with VM backups and snapshots. Both of these are supposed to fulfill specific needs, but there are a number of gotchas in each of those cases (easily corruptible VHD files, gradually growing in size snapshots) that an administrator needs to address occasionally - administration overhead where you would not expect it.

Most Important Features

  • Licensing and cost - you can have a deal with Microsoft and get Hyper-V licenses as a part of a bigger licensing contract. Thus, Hyper-V can be an Enterprise-grade solution that you get essentially for free which may even include support from Microsoft.
  • Ease of use by less experienced people - the GUI is very easy to navigate and use. I have used Hyper-V on multiple workstations and my experience translated easily to managing Hyper-V on physical servers.
  • Stability - Hyper-V provisioned VMs are pretty stable.

Return on Investment

  • Because Hyper-V licenses were essentially free, that allowed us to have multiple Hyper-V-based hosts for our business needs.
  • Ease of use - the people who manage Hyper-V were able to do so very quickly because of the ease of use of the product.

Alternatives Considered

vSphere, VMware ESXi and OpenVZ

Other Software Used

VMware vCenter Server, Microsoft Teams, Jenkins

Low cost and familiar solution

Incentivized
Brian CookView profile
Information Security Officer in Customer Service at Unified Technology Solutions, Inc. (1-10 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Most Important Features

  • Ease of use.
  • Speed of deployment.
  • Low cost of licensing.

Return on Investment

  • Low/no cost makes ROI very attractive.
  • The fact it already exists on most server installs means little to no downtime for deployment.
  • Minimizes costs as upgrading RAM is much cheaper then additional servers.

Alternatives Considered

VMware vCenter Server, VMware ESXi and Citrix Hypervisor (formerly XenServer)

Other Software Used

Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365), Microsoft Windows, WordPress

Usability