We performed a comparison between Hyper-V and KVM based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below
Comparison Results: Hyper-V is the clear winner in this comparison it is easy to install, robust and high performing. Hyper-V, as a Microsoft product, also offers stable and ongoing customer support.
"The solution allows us to take advantage of our physical environment."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"The solution is stable."
"It's good for what it does. If you have a small or medium-scale acclimatization, it's an excellent solution."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from how my company uses Hyper-V for replication."
"The most valuable feature is being able to do checkpoints then roll back to the checkpoint because that's what we need to test the software. We're testing the installation and then we roll it back and retest it."
"I like that Hyper-V is like a virtual environment. I like to use VMware because of the resource requirements. In Sri Lanka, most of the customers use the Hyper-V GUI. When installing the interface with the Windows version, we also install the Hyper-V feature on the server. This is because they require more features and memory. There are so many features that they have embedded in Hyper-V that are useful."
"It is very easy to install. It can be done in a day."
"The product is really good...One can get good performance because of kernel-based virtualization."
"It is an easily scalable solution."
"I like that this is an open-source solution. It is very powerful, and it's easy."
"The GUI interface makes the management of KVM easier than ever before."
"It is easy to use, stable, and flexible. It is a pretty mature product, and it is faster than VirtualBox."
"The initial setup was very easy."
"Documentation and problem-solving troubleshooting are the most valuable features. Performance (when fine-tuned and with "special" HW) is awesome, equal to or more than other enterprise closed-source solutions."
"Very cost-effective."
"There is a problem with high-availability if the load is too high."
"In terms of performance, when compared to VMware, it is much slower."
"It would be nice if they had video acceleration, they got rid of that and VMware has video acceleration."
"Status and availability became an issue and need."
"The management interface is in need of the biggest improvement."
"Microsoft increased the price for this solution when adding the Storage Spaces Direct feature."
"The solution should be compatible with different systems."
"The technical support is good but it could improve by being faster."
"Monitoring and resolution could be improved."
"Technical support is not top-notch."
"The solution should be more user friendly. We are struggling with the command lines."
"One problem I have is that it's not very scalable when it comes to resizing the VM disk dimensions. For example, if you have initially set a virtual drive to 10 GB and you want to upgrade it to 15 GB, it's not that easy."
"I have previously used VMware and KVM is easier to use. However, they both have their strengths depending on their use cases. They are mostly equal. One of VMware's advantages is it has better support."
"Some things are pretty basic, and they could be more robust with more detail."
"KVM is very difficult to manage and run on daily operations."
"The virtual manager and the graphical QEMU for KVM need some improvement."
Hyper-V is ranked 3rd in Server Virtualization Software with 134 reviews while KVM is ranked 4th in Server Virtualization Software with 39 reviews. Hyper-V is rated 8.0, while KVM is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Hyper-V writes "It's a low-cost solution that enabled us to shrink everything down into a single server ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of KVM writes "Delivers good performance because of kernel-based virtualization". Hyper-V is most compared with VMware vSphere, VMware Workstation, Proxmox VE, Oracle VM VirtualBox and Nutanix AHV Virtualization, whereas KVM is most compared with Proxmox VE, Oracle VM VirtualBox, VMware vSphere, VMware Workstation and Oracle VM. See our Hyper-V vs. KVM report.
See our list of best Server Virtualization Software vendors.
We monitor all Server Virtualization Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.