In recent years, virtualization technology is becoming more accepted by many corporations and organizations as virtualization makes a single piece of computer hardware possible to be shared among several virtual machines. In this way, virtualization help ease the massive cost of equipment and resources and improve working efficiency. Whether your company has put this technology into practice, it is essential to consider virtualization technology in working scenarios.
A hypervisor is computer software, firmware, or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines. Currently, two significant hypervisors dominate the virtualization market - Hyper-V vs. VMware.
This article will provide you with more knowledge about what Hyper-V is, what VMware is, and their differences.
Hyper-V, briefly known before its release as Windows Server Virtualization, is a native hypervisor designed by Microsoft in 2016. So, what is Windows Hyper-V?
Hyper-V is a virtualization software to virtualize different operating systems on a single machine. It provides a virtualization platform where you can build IT infrastructure of any level of complexity.
There is an obvious partition and other child partitions in Hyper-V. The leading Operating System runs in the parent partition. Each child partition is a virtual machine, a complete virtual computer with a guest OS and programs. The virtual machines share the same hardware resources as the host. A single Hyper-V host can have many VMs created on it.
There are several pros and cons of Hyper-V you need to know:
Advantages of Hyper-V
Disadvantages of Hyper-V
VMware proposed virtualization technology in the 1990s. The basis of the virtualization technology method is the ESX/ESXi bare metal hypervisor for x86 architecture. The hypervisor can be used for performing multiple virtual machines. It can share resources from the same physical server, such as CPU, RAM, and network interfaces.
VMware products support virtualization, software-defined data centers, and cloud infrastructure management. VMware vSphere is its central server virtualization platform, which enables the deployment and management of VMs on a large scale. Practically, vSphere encompasses a set of virtualization products, which include the ESXi hypervisor, vSphere Client, VMware Workstation, vCenter, and others. All these products combined constitute the VMware infrastructure, which enables centralized virtual environment management.
By using VMware, you must keep the advantages and disadvantages in mind:
Advantages of VMware
Disadvantages of VMware
If you want to know other information about VMware license key, you can read the following article:
How to Find VMware License Key: View Reliable Ways to Locate VMware Workstation
Finding VMware license key comes with re-installing or installing software on a new computer.
Hyper-V and VMware enjoy many features that differentiate them from one another. In addition, each virtualization platform has many advantages and disadvantages to consider when deciding between the two.
In making the comparison, let's take a look at the following areas: supported operating systems, security, scalability, networking, and price.
With virtualization, the whole point of the capabilities afforded by the hypervisor is running guest operating systems. Let's look at Hyper-V vs. VMware in the space of supported operating systems by each hypervisor.
Hyper-V
In addition to Windows operating systems, Hyper-V can support:
VMware
New guest operating systems that VMware supports include:
Hyper-V also provides robust security features. However, VMware is an enterprise-grade virtualization solution, and its security features are naturally more robust.
Hyper-V
VMware
Scalability is essential for any business when choosing between hypervisors that will run their production workloads. The table outlines the Hyper-V vs. VMware scalability differences as follows:
System | Resource | Microsoft Hyper-V 2019 | VMware vSphere 6.7 Free |
---|---|---|---|
Host | Logical Processors | 512 | 768 |
Physical Memory | 24 TB | 4TB | |
Virtual CPUs per Host | 2048 | 4096 | |
VM | Virtual CPUs per VM | 240 for Generation2 64 for Generation1 |
8 |
Memory per VM | 12 TB for Generation2 1 TB for Generation1 |
6128GB | |
Maximum Virtual Disk | 64 TB for VHDX format 2040 GB for VHD format |
62TB | |
Cluster | Maximum Nodes | 64 | N/A |
Maximum VMs | 8000 | N/A |
Microsoft Hyper-V provides networking via Windows Server. Windows Server virtualized networking features include:
VMware provides NSX-T for virtualized networking, which supports the following features:
It is difficult to compare the pricing of Hyper-V vs. VMware because VMware ESXi is licensed per socket (physical CPU), while Hyper-V has been licensed per core since 2016. The table below shows the differences in terms of pricing of Hyper-V vs. VMware.
Editions | Pricing | |
---|---|---|
Hyper-V | Windows Server Datacenter |
US $6,155 |
Windows Server Standard | US $972 | |
Windows Server Essentials | US $501 | |
VMware | VMware vSphere Standard | US $995 |
VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus | US $3,495 | |
VMware vSphere with Operations Management Enterprise Plus (effective until February 1, 2019) | US $4,525 | |
VMware vSphere Platinum | US $4,595 with 1 year VMware AppDefense Subscription |
A reliable and efficient virtualization platform is essential for building and operating in a virtual environment, such as VMware and Hyper-V. When deciding which platform to choose for conducting your business operations, consider the differences between VMware and Hyper-V regarding supported operating systems, security, scalability, networking, price, and the advantages and disadvantages each has.