Both are Type 1 hypervisors, run directly on the hardware and belong to the so-called microkernelized or monolithic. Hyper-V allows to create and manage multiple virtual machines (VM) and provides a virtualization platform on which any IT infrastructure can be built. Each VM has an isolated space, without interfering with each other. The ESXi hypervisor is included within VMware vSphere, a virtualization platform that contains a series of products needed to create a server virtualization infrastructure, such as VMware Workstation or vCenter.
HyperV comparison with Vmware
The two virtualization platforms can be managed with management tools. The difference in this case is that for Hyper-V there is free software such as PowerShell or Windows Admin Center. For vSphere it is normal to choose vCenter, which is paid, because also if we do not hire this product we will not have access to many advanced features, such as high availability, vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler, vSphere Storage DRS, vSphere Fault Tolerance, Cross-vCenter with Long Distance vMotion, VMware Host Profiles or vSphere Auto Deploy. But the truth is that many of these features are not available for the Microsoft hypervisor.
It should be remembered that Hyper-V comes within Windows Server 2019, and in the standard version most of the features of the hypervisor are included at no extra cost. In the case of vSphere, if we want to use all the functionalities, there is no other option than to acquire an Enterprise Plus license, whose price is higher. The two products have a free version that, in the case of Microsoft, includes all the functionalities, while VMware has limitations.
Before we delve into the analysis, I'd like to point out that VMware touts ESXi as a 32 MB hypervisor, yet the download is over 200 MB. So, are we too assume that the other 170+ MB doesn't count? I point this out because both Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 do have larger disk footprints, but also provide incredible value and capabilities that our customers desire such as driver compatibility with a vast catalog of hardware, widely used management interfaces, scripting capability (PowerShell anyone?), MPIO, High Availability, etc.
With VMware's own metrics in mind , I decided we should perform an apples to apples comparison. Specifically, over a 12 month period from June 30th 2008 to June 30th 2009 , comparing: Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 (R1) and VMware ESXi 3.5 in terms of numbers of patches, size of patches and availability. I specifically chose these versions because I wanted to take a reasonable, historical sample size (12 months) of both platforms. Both Hyper-V R2 and VSphere have RTM'd within the last 90 days and that wouldn't be statistically relevant.
VMware vs Hyper-V is the hot topic in the virtualization Market because more than half of all server workloads are virtualized currently. It will be expected to increase by 86% in 2016. So it is very important to understand the comparison and feature offering by leading Virtualization providers VMware vs Hyper-V. VMware is still a dominant force and Market Leader with a broad and sustainable market strategy. VMware as a Super Star has a number of emerging products for virtualization and VM storage, each tailored to meet specialized IT needs. This article helps you to understand features comparison between VMware vSphere 6.0 and Microsoft Hyper-v 2012 R2. VMware and Microsoft came in as number one and number two on the leaderboard for Virtualization offering. This article VMware vs Hyper-V helps you to understand comparison between VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-v features like Scalability, Hypervisor Features, VM Scalability, Clustering Features with Network and Storage.
Hyper V and VMware are both extremely powerful hypervisors on which you can run your enterprise data center production workloads. Each have various characteristics that make them unique. Each of these characteristics serve the basis on which many make the decision to go with one hypervisor or another for running their enterprise data centres.
Then the "discussion" of ease of management also greatly lies with access to education & training facilities in your location. Some people find vCenter easy to use while others find it daunting as there are much more detailed settings & config they can dig into. Hyper-v is usually managed by Hyper-v manager or by system center (SCCM). In short, which hypervisor preferred by admins usually depends on which they are trained with.
Hyper-v is typically SME only, it is rarely found in enterprise. vmware needs consideration in small environments. You need to understand what you are deploying and how it may restrict you. One thing I love about hyper-v in small environments is that it is just windows, i can map a drive to the server, copy data/vm-disks etc on and off. Can't do that in vmware, you can only go via it's interface to access the data store. It's restrictions like this that can be a hurdle in a small environment. But if you are starting from scratch with multiple hosts, a SAN and good backup then it will not be a problem. If you are licensing windows then effectively hyper-v is free. but esx (for anything more than basic) costs.
In order to describe the processes involved with cross-hypervisor replication I am going to use the below example from my demo lab. In the lab I have 2 datacentres, Boston and London, each with a VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V environment and I have 4 Virtual Protection Groups (VPGs) replicating as per:
The cross-hypervisor replication in Zerto fully supports failover testing with no impact in production, or break in the replication. Thanks to this, I cannot recommend this feature enough to anybody replicating between hypervisors. You can use it to see how the VMs and guest OS behave in the target hypervisor without any impact, and then plan the steps needed to resolve the issues in advance of a migration or disaster recovery scenario.
If you are using a free VMware hypervisor, you should know that it comes with backup API disabled, meaning that backup will have to use the old, agent-based backup. Is there a free backup for VMware? Is there a free backup for Hyper-V? What is the best free backup for Hyper-V and VMware?
The cost comparison is now complicated: VMware ESXi remain licensed per socket (physical CPU), for Microsoft stating with Windows Server 2016 is now licensed also per core and there are again features difference between the standard and the datacenter editions.
Cisco Collaboration apps will explicitly indicate which Major/Minor versions they support (e.g. ESXi 4.0, 4.1, 5.0, 5.1, 5.5). There is no "or later" ... unlisted versions are not tested/supported.With a particular supported major/minor version (such as ESXi 5.1)...A Cisco Collaboration app will only specifiy a minimum maintenance release (e.g. 5.1 U1) if required by its guest OS or for hardware compatibility.A Cisco Collaboration app will only specify a MAXIMUM maintenance release if there are known incompatibilitites. To date this has never been the case, so if the hardware vendor supports it, it is allowed even if unlisted. Cisco recommendation is to use the latest Maintenance release supported by the hardware vendor.Cisco Collaboration apps do not prescribe or proscribe individual ESXi patches and updates. Cisco recommendation is to apply the latest patches and updates recommended by VMware and your hardware vendor. The following links can be used to determine if an individual Maintenance Release or patch "can" or "should" be deployed:VMware Compatibilty Guide ( ) for the the vSphere ESXi Major/Minor version supported by Cisco Collaboration.Server Vendor's hardware compatiblity information for the vSphere ESXi Major/Minor version required by Cisco Collaboration. E.g. for Cisco UCS, see the Server Compatiblity documents at _technical_reference_list.html.Always verify with server vendor if a hardware-vendor-specific ESXi image is required. E.g. you want to upgrade from 5.0 to 5.0 U3. If the server is Cisco UCS, you may need to use a UCS-specific image for U3 on vmware.com.Always verify with server vendor that the update is compatible with server model's bios/firmware/driver state. E.g. 5.0 U3 on UCS C220 M3 SFF, check the UCS interop matrix to see if any updates required before U3 will work on that hardware.Before applying a VMware upgrade or update to a host, always verify compatibility with each Cisco Collaboration app (At a Glance table at -collaboration.)Note that use of VMware vSphere ESXi 4.1 requires disabling the "LRO" setting (click here for details).For details on "legacy" virtualization support (i.e. 7.x of UC apps with VMware vSphere on limited 3rd-party servers), see the following links:Cisco Unity Virtualization Design GuideVirtualization Guide for Cisco Unified ICM/Contact Center Enterprise & Hosted 7.5(3)Virtual Machine Version (vmv)The vmv represents the version of virtual hardware. New ESXi versions may increase the latest vmv version, but new ESXi versions support older vmv versions (see vmware.com for information on compability of old vmv versions with new ESXi versions, such as this vmware.com KB article for compatibility for ESXi version with vmv version). Cisco Collaboration apps do not require or even use most of the new features in new vmv versions (e.g. larger VMs, more virtual HW options, etc.). Cisco Collaboration apps only require vmv4 functionality, so a newer vmv is usually transparent. To date, Cisco has not discovered any issues with Collaboration apps due to a newer vmv version. Cisco-provided/required OVA files will be for the specific vmv version used when testing the ESXi major/minor version (e.g. OVAs for ESXi 5.x include vmv7 and vmv8). For customers using vSphere Client instead of vCenter, it is NOT recommended to upgrade to a newer vmv. E.g. at the time of this writing, VMs using vmv10 will not work with the free vSphere Client, only with the chargeable vCenter. Otherwise, unless indicated NOT to by a Cisco Collaboration app, customers are free to manually upgrade the vmv to a newer vmv supported by the ESXi version. Cisco does not produce OVA files for newer vmv versions, or test newer vmv versions since VMware indicates these are backwards compatible. Virtual Machine File System (VMFS)If ESXi 6.5, all applications support VMFS5 but only some support VMFS6 (check each application's virtualization page for details). Note: ESXi 6.0 only supports VMFS5.For older ESXi releases, the VMFS is transparent to Cisco Collaboration apps, but recommend using the latest version offered for the major/minor version of VMware vSphere ESXi you are deploying on. VMware ToolsVMware Tools are specialized drivers for virtual hardware that is installed in the UC applications when they are running virtualized. It is very important that the VMware tools version running in the UC application be in sync with the version of ESXi being used.If VMware tools status does not show "OK" from the viClient, the VMware Tools must be upgraded.It is important to understand that the UC application is not tied to the version of ESXi it is running on. For example, initial deployment of the OVA and UC application may have been done on ESXi 4.0 update 1. Then at a later time, you may upgrade the ESXi software to version 4.1 or migrate the vm to a host running ESXi 4.1 - once running on the different ESXi version, you will need to upgrade the VMware Tools running in your UC application to match the host it is running on. Software upgrades of the UC application will preserve the version of VMware Tools currently running.Which method to use: Early versions of the Collaboration applications required a COP file in order to upgrade the VMware Tools. Later, a CLI command was created to make the upgrades easier. Finally once the applications ran on newer embedded OS versions, it became possible to support automatic tools upgrades.For a given application/release, use ONLY the supported method(s) to upgrade the tools. The use of the wrong method almost certainly will fail and at worst may corrupt your virtual machine. ApplicationReleaseMethodUnified CM(includes standalone ELM)9.0 and later2 or 3Cisco Emergency Responder9.01, 2 or 310.0 and later3Cisco Unity Connection9.0 and later2 or 3IM and Presence Service9.x110.02 or 310.5 and later3Unified CCX9.0 and later1Unified CCE9.0 and later2Cisco Finesse9.1(1) and later1, 2 or 3Cisco MediaSense9.0(1) and later2 or 3Cisco Social Miner9.0 and later2Cisco Unified Intelligence Center9.0(1) to 11.6(1)1Cisco Virtualized Voice Browser11.5(1) and later2 or 3Method 1: CLI command Step 1 From the vSphere Client log in to vCenter, or your ESXi host, and go to the Hosts and Clusters view (Ctrl+Shift+H). Step 2 To mount the correct version of the VMware Tools software in the Guest virtual CD/DVD drive, perform the following sub-steps.a. Right-click the virtual machine that you are upgrading, and choose Guest > Install/Upgrade VMware Tools.b. In the popup window choose Interactive Tools Upgrade.Step 3 From the Unified CM CLI, enter the CLI command utils vmtools upgrade. ( For Cisco Unified Intelligence Center 11.0 and later enter CLI command utils vmtools refresh. See the Install and Upgrade guide for Cisco Unified Intelligence Center 11.0 and later for more details.)The system reboots twice. Monitor the virtual machine console from the vSphere Client to see the system status.Step 4 When the system is back up, the tools status is updated to OK from the vCenter Summary tab for the virtual machine that you upgraded.Step 5 After installation of the new version of VMware Tools is complete, remove the VMware Tools tar file from the virtual CD/DVD drive. (Usually, the VMware Tools tar file is called linux.iso). To remove the VMware Tools tar file, perform the following substeps.a. Right-click the virtual machine that you are upgrading, and choose VM > Edit Settings > CD/DVD drive.b. Choose Device Type as Client Device.Method 2: Upgrade from viClient Use the following procedure to perform this upgrade.Step 1 From the viClient, Initiate the tools upgrade by clicking on VM > Guest > Install / Upgrade VMware Tools (this can also be done by right-clicking on the VM).Step 2 Choose the automatic tools update and press OK. Step 3 The process will take a few minutes. The task should then be complete and the tools should be shown as "OK". No reboot is required. Method 3: Automatically check and upgrade VMware Tools at boot time To configure your virtual machine to automatically check the tools version during each VM power-on and automatically upgrade the tools if they are not up-to-date, use the following procedure.Step 1 Edit the VM settings by clicking on the Options tab, and select VMware tools. Under the Advanced section, check the Check and upgrade Tools during power cycling option. A check will now be performed each time the VM powers on to determine if the tools need to be updated. Updates are performed automatically.Note:If the tools do need to be updated, the VM may go through an additional boot cycle to update the tools. This will occur automatically. 2ff7e9595c
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