Hyper-V vs. VMware ESXi

Hyper-V

274 Reviews and Ratings

VMware ESXi

810 Reviews and Ratings

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
Hyper-V	Score8.6 out of 10	N/A	N/A	$24.95 per month
VMware ESXi	Score7.6 out of 10	N/A	A bare-metal hypervisor that installs directly onto a physical server. With direct access to and control of underlying resources, VMware ESXi partitions hardware to consolidate applications and cut costs.	N/A

Pricing

Hyper-V

VMware ESXi

Developer: $24.95
per month
Bronze: $49.00
per month
Silver: $89.00
per month
Gold: $135.00
per month
Platinum: $199.00
per month

No answers on this topic

Pricing Offerings
Hyper-V	VMware ESXi
Free Trial
No	No
Free/Freemium Version
No	Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

No setup fee

No setup fee

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Community Pulse
Key User Insights
	Hyper-V	VMware ESXi
Considered Both Products	Microsoft Verified User Chose Hyper-V Considering the maturity of ESXi, Hyper-V is something I would definitely consider using in future jobs or organisations. We selected Hyper-V after many years of using ESXi; several factors led us to this change, including a poor support experience with VMware, and the lower … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Hyper-V ESXi, to me, seems to do things better in almost every way. It is much quicker to deploy ESXi compared to Hyper-V. I also feel like Hyper-V requires more frequent updates so I'm not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing. Incentivized Helpful? Taner Imamoglu Senior Information Technology Specialist in Information Technology at Öksüt Madencilik Sanayi ve Ticaret A.Ş. (Mining & Metals, 501-1000 employees) Chose Hyper-V VMware is the pioneer of virtualization but when you compare it with Hyper-V, VMware lacks the flexibility of hardware customization and configuration options Hyper-V has also GPU virtualization still not adequate for both platforms. VMware has better graphical interface and … Incentivized Helpful? Borislav Traykov DevOps Team Leader in Engineering at Cognyte (Information Technology & Services, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Hyper-V The ease of use and essentially free license made the adoption of Hyper-V in some parts of my current and one of my previous organizations a no-brainer. For sure it's not the best product on the market, but it will do the job just fine in a lot of use cases. Automated … Incentivized Helpful? Brian Cook Information Security Officer in Customer Service at Unified Technology Solutions, Inc. (Information Technology & Services, 1-10 employees) Chose Hyper-V While many have additional features or lower overhead the ease of use and low-cost licensing make Hyper-V our preferred choice for most clients. And because we are mostly a Microsoft shop and it is built on Windows when we need to troubleshoot the hypervisor itself we already … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Hyper-V It is much cheaper and has at least the same functionality as what we use. It integrates better in our Windows environment and it works more familiar with similar tools that we already use. And it is on fewer vendors, much easier for support. Very happy with the switch from … Incentivized Helpful? Josh Justic President, Engineering Architect for Virtualization and Computing Systems. in Information Technology at NTCG, Inc. (Information Technology & Services, 11-50 employees) Chose Hyper-V Hyper-V is much cheaper and does not have the license requirement of VMware. Hyper-V is not a product that scales like VMware and not well suited to a large datacenter. Incentivized Helpful? Toni Lora IT Admin in Information Technology at Mepal (Building Materials, 51-200 employees) Chose Hyper-V I used VMware vSphere at another company. However, for infrastructure with only two virtual machines, the VMware license cost is not worth it, because with the Windows Server Standard license you have the possibility to install two virtual servers at no extra cost. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Hyper-V We selected Hyper-V because it was built in to Windows and had no licensing costs. The functionality was similar, VMware seemed like a more premium product, and had support. But those are the bare minimum when competing with an embedded solution. VMware is reported to be … Incentivized Helpful? James McCullough senior systems administrator advisor in Information Technology at NTT DATA Services (Insurance, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Hyper-V Hyper-V performs very well in environment running windows operating systems and performs well under various workloads. The replication and recovery features of hyper-v work well but lack some of usability of tools such as Zerto, VMware replication and site Recovery Manager to … Incentivized Helpful? Eric Oliveira Analista de sistemas sênior in Information Technology at General Motors (Automotive, 10,001+ employees) Chose Hyper-V Microsoft's virtualization with Hyper-V has given us a great opportunity to increase the availability of services, thus increasing the satisfaction of our end user. With Microsoft virtualization, we have increased availability as follows: Improved service levels. Reduced … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Hyper-V Hyper-V is powerful and virtualizes Windows exceptionally well, with less tweaking. It is also cheaper, and allows our clients to budget more for more frequent expansion. Its only real competitor in my opinion is VMware, and that is because vCenter is much more intuitive than … Incentivized Helpful? John Fester IT Manager in Information Technology at Travel Planners International (Leisure, Travel & Tourism, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Hyper-V Hyper-V is far superior to all other virtual host software I've ever used...PLUS IT IS FREE!!! Compared to Oracle Virtual Box, which is also free, Hyper-V is giving you enterprise-level security, management, features and deployment/failover functionality not found elsewhere. … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Hyper-V The alternative is VMware, which we also use on a cluster. As this also has a free version, it's a tough one to compare. For us the reason it was chosen was as Windows licensing allows for 2 VMs with the standard license, so fitted easily into our particular setup requirements. Incentivized Helpful? Adam Morrison Director of IT Engineering in Information Technology at Pearl River Resort (Gambling & Casinos, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Hyper-V I would say Hyper-V would be a peer to VMWare. Features and stability are solid and full-featured for both products. Each have unique shortfalls that the other does not. VirtualBox is a great tool for desktop or laptop virtualization. It is not targeted as much for the … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Hyper-V The main reason we are looking into Hyper-V is the cost of VMware licensing and support. We running a lot of hosts and the cost of renewal every year is very high when compared to freemium and all-inclusive because we have an SLA. And the functionality of Hyper-V is very good, … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Hyper-V We use VirtualBox for non-production environments and pre-production testing because it's free. In our experience, we are not confident in VirtualBox for a production environment. On the flip-side, VMware is overkill for our needs and is too complex for our small I.T. dept to … Incentivized Helpful? Brian Sossamon Director of Technology in Information Technology at Charlotte Latin School (Education Management, 51-200 employees) Chose Hyper-V Both products are similar but Hyper-V was included in our licensing with Microsoft. Incentivized Helpful? Michael Haberkern Network Engineer Supervisor in Information Technology at City of Santa Maria (Government Administration, 501-1000 employees) Chose Hyper-V VMWare is superior to Hyper-V in a few areas. Live migration is much easier and better with VMWare, but VMWare is more expensive and you're subject to yearly maintenance and licensing fees. Incentivized Helpful? Aaron Pinsker Owner in Information Technology at Colorado Computer Care (Information Technology and Services, 1-10 employees) Chose Hyper-V On a Mac I have used both Parallels and VMware Fusion - both of which I like a lot, but they are Mac specific (and Hyper-V won't work on a Mac either). I have briefly used VMware Workstation on a PC, and found it very easy to use, but I do not believe it is nearly as feature … Incentivized Helpful? Kenneth Hess Senior Systems Analyst in Information Technology at CymSTAR, LLC (Defense & Space, 201-500 employees) Chose Hyper-V Hyper-V competes very well with RHEV--not just on initial cost but also on capabilities and on learning. I know I've written a lot about learning, but it's significant when you have embraced a technology that is so difficult to use that no one wants to administer it. I've used … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Hyper-V We're a Microsoft Gold Partner and build solutions based on Windows Server. So it was for us internally not a real option to use another virtualization technology as Hyper-V to host our internal infrastructure. As most of our internal infrastructure servers are based on … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Hyper-V If someone asked me to choose between the two I probably would go with VMWare. Maybe it is just personal preference but I am more familiar with VMware, it seems to be used across the industry more widely. We have also had to contact support before and they were helpful. However … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Hyper-V Installing Hyper-V from the same media as the windows servers. The default windows GUI makes Hyper-V easier to use for junior server managers. Hyper-V gives the feeling that you already know it, while other products like VMware and VirtualBox need their own learning curve before … Incentivized Helpful?	VMware by Broadcom Richard Potts Network & Systems Administrator in Information Technology at College Foundation, Inc. (Education Management, 51-200 employees) Chose VMware ESXi While running through a proof of concept with Hyper-V and VMware ESXi, I found VMware ESXi to be much easier to deploy, administer, and work with overall. Both products are good but I personally found ESXi to be more intuitive to use and the deployment options were also more … Incentivized Helpful? James Jakimowicz Senior Network Engineer in Information Technology at Synergy Fiber (Computer Networking, 51-200 employees) Chose VMware ESXi At the time we did our comparison we found that VMware scaled much better than Hyper-V, lighter weight, and much more reliable. My recommendation if Hyper-V is needed for anything such as Windows containers, is to use nested virtualization and installing Windows Hyper-V within … Incentivized Helpful? Luke Kuhlow Network Administrator in Information Technology at First National Bank and Trust (Banking, 201-500 employees) Chose VMware ESXi VMware ESXi excels in comparison to Microsoft's offering due to integration with Linux, its bare metal approach and its ability to function off of a thinner hypervisor. It allows for better integration with application appliances in my opinion due to its non-Microsoft nature. … Incentivized Helpful? Adam Friedli System Administrator in Information Technology at Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital (Information Technology & Services, 1001-5000 employees) Chose VMware ESXi While Hyper-V also can work very well and can have licensing benefits, it does rely on Windows in order to run. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it can add another layer of potential failure and might not be running on as low of a level as ESXi does. The footprint for H… Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose VMware ESXi It's hard to beat Hyper-V when it comes to ESXi. Although Hyper-V costs nothing to use, it does require a Windows license that permits you to operate at least two virtual machines (VMs) on the Hyper-V server. I found that VMware ESXi consumes fewer resources than any other … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose VMware ESXi VMware ESXi is a lot more robust and resilient than MS Hyper-V. However, Hyper-V is more convenient and economical because it comes with Windows Server. Incentivized Helpful? Terry Schultz IT Consultant in Information Technology at Makiska Media (Internet, 1-10 employees) Chose VMware ESXi VMware ESXi stacks up nicely against Hyper-V. VMware ESXi is a smaller footprint, the one thing Hyper-V has is cost it is free with the purchase of a windows license that allows you to run at least two windows VM's within the Hyper-V server. But VMware ESXi is still the leader … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose VMware ESXi Hyper-V utilizes more resources compared to ESXi and it gets affected when it is used to scale up and installation on Microsoft windows is easy however it does not stand to the ease of access of ESXi, a user of ESXi would find it difficult to migrate to another application. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose VMware ESXi The main issue I found with Hyper-V is that it has to run on top of Microsoft Windows. This obviously uses a considerable amount of resources, even without "Desktop mode". With ESXi running on a linux based OS, this allows the maximisation of the available resources and a much … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose VMware ESXi VMware ESXi is a better solution for medium and small-sized businesses. It does not require any pre-requisites most of the time. Also, VMware offers more RAM per VM than Xenserver (Citrix). And, VMware supports more operating systems whereas Hyper-V supports only a few … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose VMware ESXi VMware have been in the sector from the start and it shows. Others are catching up but as the market leader you know what you're getting and the assurance that their support is on hand should you need it. Competitors such as Hyper-V are running them close and FreeSAN is an … Incentivized Helpful? Michael Haberkern Network Engineer Supervisor in Information Technology at City of Santa Maria (Government Administration, 501-1000 employees) Chose VMware ESXi If you're strapped for cash or tied to Microsoft completely, then Hyper-V might be for you. I have used both and having VMware ESXi at the host and kerel level is much more fluid and makes sense. I would estimate 80% of enterprises run VMware ESXi vs any other Level-1 or 2 … Incentivized Helpful? Tom Blazek IT Manager in Information Technology at Rancilio Group North America (Wholesale, 11-50 employees) Chose VMware ESXi I think VMware ESXi is a better solution than Hyper-V was at the time. Mainly because you don't need to run a Windows OS to run ESXi. I also think the integrations available with [VMware] ESXi are superior[.] Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose VMware ESXi I haven't had confidence in Hyper-V since they had issues with hosts losing access to storage in a cluster. I understand that issue is resolved now but it's difficult to build trust in a product when you have been impacted by downtime in the past. Incentivized Helpful? Tim Enders Senior Systems Engineer in Information Technology at Loyola University Maryland (Higher Education, 1001-5000 employees) Chose VMware ESXi When we bought VMware ESXi ten or so years ago, there weren't a lot of other competitors in the market. Nutanix didn't exist yet, and Hyper-V was in its infancy. Since then, Hyper-V has matured, and other products like Nutanix have come on the market as more fully developed … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose VMware ESXi Hyper-V is a viable solution, but in my experience the management toolkit has always been its Achilles heel. vCenter provides everything in one UI, whereas Hyper-V requires multiple tools to accomplish similar tasks. Licensing costs are higher with VMware, mostly because they … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose VMware ESXi At the time of implementation, VMware ESXi (and the rest of the VMware virtualization suite) had far better functionality and capabilities than other products on the market, particularly Hyper-V. It was chosen as it appeared to be the best fit for our environment in terms of … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose VMware ESXi For me, it makes no sense to run Hyper-V on top of a server install. VMware ESXi seems to run smoother and more efficiently. Incentivized Helpful? Branden Beachy Network System Administrator in Information Technology at Goshen Community Schools (Primary/Secondary Education, 1001-5000 employees) Chose VMware ESXi We have considered Hyper-V from time to time, but it seems that Microsoft has always been a step or two behind ESXi when it comes to features and reliability. The gap has definitely narrowed in recent years, but there would have to be a hugely compelling reason to switch to Hyp… Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose VMware ESXi Building and operating in a virtual environment would be impossible without a reliable and efficient virtualization platform, such as VMware and Hyper-V. Before deciding which platform to choose for conducting your business operations, consider the differences in VMware and Hype… Incentivized Helpful? Brendon Brown eComerce Director in Information Technology at Island City Media (Retail, 1-10 employees) Chose VMware ESXi ESXi continues to lead the pack in compatibility, simplicity, reliability, support, everything. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose VMware ESXi The vSphere management interface is going to be web-based and you access that through a web browser by browsing to the IO address of the VMware ESXi host itself and then from there you'll be prompted for a login screen. Incentivized Helpful? Arvind Kumar Senior Consultant - VMware & Infrastructure in Information Technology at Versetal Information Systems (Information Technology & Services, 10,001+ employees) Chose VMware ESXi Easy to manage, standard licenses and bundle licenses are customizable, provides a much more stable infrastructure. Cost-effective, Comes with special features like HA, DRS, FT. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose VMware ESXi Much more reliable and well-integrated than competitors, with a solid central management console. Citrix is having good performance but requires a specific kernel to leverage, HyperV is good only for windows OS. Incentivized Helpful? Toby Wenzel Infrastructure Team Lead in Information Technology at California Public Utilities Commission (Government Administration, 1001-5000 employees) Chose VMware ESXi VMware ESXi is by far easier to use and the feature set is generations ahead of competitors. Incentivized Helpful?
	Would buy again
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Delivers good value for the price
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Happy with the feature set
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Lived up to sales and marketing promises
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Implementation went as expected
No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic

TrustRadius Insights
	Hyper-V	VMware ESXi
Highlights	Research Team Insight Published April 24, 2020 Hyper-V and VMware Exsi are both server virtualization software designed to reduce the need for physical systems. Both solutions allow for server partitioning, so users can create multiple virtual servers that can each run multiple instances of different operating systems. Both VMware Exsi and Hyper-V are very popular with mid-sized businesses. VMware Exsi tends to be more popular with larger enterprises, perhaps due to its excellent stability and compatibility with other VMware software. Hyper-V is more popular with smaller businesses, likely due to its lower costs and simple migrations. Features Hyper-V and VMware Exsi both offer the essential server virtualization features, but they also each have some standout features that set them apart. Hyper-V allows for quick deployments. Users can get new virtual servers set up in mere minutes. Quick server deployment may be important for organizations that will need to set up new servers often or have a limited amount of staff to handle all server deployment. Hyper-V also offers strong security features with the windows software it is packaged in with, Windows Active Directory. Lastly, it is effortless to create snapshot backups using Hyper-V, allowing new users to minimize data loss when mistakes are made. VMware Exsi offers extreme stability for its virtual servers. Users are unlikely to experience a crash due to software error when using VMware Exsi. Businesses that utilize VMware technologies such as vSphere can also benefit from VMware Exsi’s seamless integrations with VMware software. Limitations Hyper-V and VMware Exsi both offer robust features for server virtualization, but they also have a few limitations that are important to consider. Hyper-V has limited support for operating systems besides Windows. Though there are options for setting up Linux servers, it is not as easy or versatile as VMware Exsi. Hyper-V is also not quite as stable as VMware Exsi. Though Hyper-V crashes are still rare, and backup screenshots mitigate risk, crashes are more likely to occur compared to VMware Exsi. VMware Exsi can be challenging to implement with some hardware as not all hardware is compatible with it. Additionally, VMware Exsi is not as user-friendly as Hyper-V, which is comparatively straightforward. Lastly, VMware Exsi doesn’t have backup features that are as robust as Hyper-V. As a result, care must be taken to avoid data loss when rollbacks are necessary. Pricing Hyper-V offers a free pricing package with limited features. This package is ideal for smaller businesses with smaller virtualization needs. Pricing for Hyper-V is dependent on organizational requirements but can stretch as high as $4,000 or more. The cost of Hyper-V can also increase based on what support the business needs. VMware Exsi is available for free as part of the vSphere Hypervisor package, which includes essential tools for server virtualization. Additionally, the vSphere enterprise packages include VMware Exsi along with other VMware software, licensing, and support. Licensing for the vSphere package starts at $995.00 and can reach as high as $5395.00. Support and software subscriptions start at $270.00 per year and can reach as high as $2769.00 per year.

Features

Hyper-V

VMware ESXi

Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Hyper-V and VMware ESXi
Feature	Hyper-V 8.6 71 Ratings	VMware ESXi 8.2 128 Ratings
Virtual machine automated provisioning	9.059 Ratings	8.0116 Ratings
Management console	7.071 Ratings	9.0128 Ratings
Live virtual machine backup	9.063 Ratings	8.0112 Ratings
Live virtual machine migration	8.565 Ratings	8.0116 Ratings
Hypervisor-level security	9.465 Ratings	8.0117 Ratings

User Ratings
	Hyper-V	VMware ESXi
Likelihood to Recommend	8.0 (72 ratings)	9.0 (129 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	8.0 (6 ratings)	10.0 (6 ratings)
Usability	8.0 (8 ratings)	9.0 (6 ratings)
Availability	9.0 (1 ratings)	10.0 (2 ratings)
Performance	9.0 (1 ratings)	9.0 (2 ratings)
Support Rating	7.5 (16 ratings)	10.0 (55 ratings)
In-Person Training	8.0 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Online Training	9.0 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Implementation Rating	5.0 (3 ratings)	10.0 (3 ratings)
Configurability	9.0 (1 ratings)	10.0 (2 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model	- (0 ratings)	5.1 (2 ratings)
Ease of integration	7.0 (1 ratings)	10.0 (2 ratings)
Product Scalability	9.0 (1 ratings)	10.0 (2 ratings)
Vendor post-sale	9.0 (1 ratings)	10.0 (2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale	9.0 (1 ratings)	10.0 (2 ratings)