VMware Hyper-V Quick Comparison Advantages Disadvantages

Savas Papadopoulos | IT | No Comments

Hyper-V may be more suitable for small business and more economic, as it’s more likely you’ll find junior admins skilled on Windows than other operating systems.

Chances are VMware’s vSphere products are aimed too much at the corporate users and may be too complex and bulky for small business users. Hyper-V’s integration with Windows is definitely a plus, since almost all IT people are familiar with Windows interfaces.

A more technical comparison follows below. I focused on capabilities that are of interest to SMBs:

 

Live Migration of Virtual Machines

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: Yes

VMware vSphere Hypervisor: No

VMware vSphere Enterprise: Yes

 

VM OS App Monitoring

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: Yes

VMware vSphere Hypervisor: N/A

VMware vSphere Enterprise: No

 

Maximum Virtual Disk Size

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: 64TB

VMware vSphere Hypervisors: 2TB

Maximum Pass Through Disk Size

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: 256TB+

VMware vSphere Hypervisors: 64TB

 

Multipathing aka MPIO

Hyper-V: Yes

VMware vSphere Hypervisor: No

VMware vSphere Enterprise: Yes

 

High Availability

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: Yes

VMware vSphere Hypervisor: No

VMware vSphere Enterprise: Yes

 

 

Native 4-KB Disk Support

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: Yes

VMware vSphere Hypervisor: No

VMware vSphere Enterprise: No

Offloaded Data Transfer

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: Yes

VMware vSphere Hypervisor: No

VMware vSphere Enterprise: Yes

 

 

Quality of Service Control

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: Yes

VMware vSphere Hypervisor: No

VMware vSphere Enterprise: Yes

Simultaneous Live Migrations

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: Yes, no limits

VMware vSphere Hypervisor: N/A

VMware vSphere Enterprise: Up to 8

 

Live Storage Migration

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: Yes

VMware vSphere Hypervisor: No

VMware vSphere Enterprise: Yes

 

Shared-Nothing Live Migration

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: Yes

VMware vSphere Hypervisor: No

VMware vSphere Enterprise: Yes

 

Network Virtualization

Hyper-V: Yes

vSphere Hypervisor: No

vSphere Enterprise: VXLAN

 

Incremental Backups

Server 2012 Hyper-V: Yes

vSphere Hypervisor: No

VMware vSphere Enterprise: Yes

 

VM Replication

Hyper-V: Yes

VMware vSphere Hypervisor: No

vSphere Enterprise: Yes

 

See Also