With VMware’s VMworld conference coming up in a few weeks, followed shortly by Microsoft Ignite, this seemed like a good time to discuss the topic of which company’s hypervisor is a better fit for your organization.
You will notice that I did not say that I was going to discuss which hypervisor is better. There are two reasons for this. First, talking about whether VMware or Hyper-V is the better hypervisor is kind of like starting a discussion on whether Google or Apple make a better mobile operating system. There are strong opinions on each side, and arguing which one is better would likely ignite a flame war.
The other reason why I do not want to approach this topic from the standpoint of figuring out which hypervisor is best, is because regardless of what some tech pundits may suggest, both VMware and Microsoft make a very capable hypervisor. That wasn’t necessarily the case back in the days of Windows Server 2008, but Hyper-V has had plenty of time to mature and does just as good of a job running enterprise-class workloads as VMware does. As such, the question is not which hypervisor is better, but rather which is a better fit for your own organization’s needs.
One of the first things that you should consider when deciding on which hypervisor to use in your existing infrastructure. In other words, you need to think about things such as the operating systems that are currently running on the machines that you intend to virtualize, and what types of cloud resources you are currently using.
The reason why operating system selection is important is because VMware and Microsoft do not necessarily support the same guest operating systems. Microsoft supports running current versions of Windows and certain flavors of Linux on Hyper-V virtual machines, but other operating systems tend not to be officially supported. VMware on the other hand, supports a huge variety of guest operating systems, including various flavors of Mac OS X.
Having said that, Hyper-V may be the better choice if most of your virtual machines will be running Windows. This is especially true considering the fact that a Hyper-V server running under a Windows Server Datacenter Edition license is entitled to run an unlimited number of Windows Server guests.
It is also worth considering the types of cloud resources that your organization uses. VMware has a strategic partnership with Amazon, so if you use the AWS cloud there may be advantages to deploying VMware in-house. Similarly, the Microsoft Azure cloud natively runs on Hyper-V, so if your organization uses Azure then it may make sense to run Hyper-V in house.
While I am on the subject of infrastructure, it may also be worth considering whether you run any of the Microsoft System Center products in house. System Center Virtual Machine Manager is the preferred management tool for Hyper-V. This tool meshes very well with the other System Center products, and may, therefore, be a good fit for your organization if you are already using System Center.
There are also other, more subjective things that are worth considering when deciding between VMware and Hyper-V. For example, you should consider the documentation that is available for each hypervisor, as well as the quality of technical support that you can expect to receive from each company. I personally think that VMware has slightly better documentation that Microsoft, but that’s only because the documentation is a bit better organized, making it easier to find what you’re looking for. Of course, that’s just my own opinion. I can also tell you that I have engaged with both company’s support departments, and have found both of them to be knowledgeable and helpful.
One more thing that is worth considering if you have never worked with either hypervisor, is ease of use. In my opinion, Hyper-V is the easier of the two hypervisors to use. Of course that could be because I grew up using Windows. I have never taken the time to count hypervisor features, but the VMware interface seems to expose a greater number of configuration options and settings than the Hyper-V manager does. On one hand, this means that VMware could potentially allow for more granular configuration (again, I am speculating based on my own use). At the same time however, I have also found the VMware environment to have a much steeper learning curve because of its complexity.
If you are new to server virtualization, then Hyper-V is probably going to be the easier platform to learn. In fact, Hyper-V is even included with certain editions of Windows 10, which means that you can try it out before committing to anything (You can also try out the VMware hypervisor by downloading a vSphere trial). At the same time, however, there are those who view Hyper-V as being a “starter hypervisor” because of its simplicity, and greatly prefer to use VMware.
As stated at the beginning of this article, the VMware and Microsoft hypervisors are both very capable, and are suitable for use even in the largest enterprises. The question, therefore, is not which hypervisor is the best, but rather which will be the better fit for you.
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