Hyper-V vs. VMware: Which Is the Better Choice?

Introduction

In recent years, virtualization technology has been embraced by many businesses and organizations because it enables a single piece of hardware to be shared among multiple virtual machines. This helps reduce the high costs of equipment and resources and boosts productivity. Whether your company has already implemented this technology or not, considering virtualization in your workplace is crucial.

A hypervisor is a piece of computer software, firmware, or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines. Currently, there are two major players in the virtualization market: Hyper-V and VMware.

This article will shed more light on what Hyper-V is, what VMware is, and the differences between them.

What is Hyper-V?

Hyper-V, previously code-named Windows Server Virtualization, is a native hypervisor; it can create and run virtual machines on Windows. So, what is Windows Hyper-V?

Hyper-V is a virtualization technology that enables you to run multiple operating systems on a single physical machine. It provides a virtualization platform on which you can build any level of IT infrastructure complexity.

In Hyper-V, there is a distinct parent partition along with one or more child partitions. The boot operating system runs in the parent partition. Each child partition is a virtual machine with a complete virtual computer that runs a guest operating system and applications. The virtual machines share the hardware resources with the host. A single Hyper-V host can create multiple virtual machines.

Here are some pros and cons to consider about Hyper-V:

Advantages of Hyper-V

- It has the backing of Microsoft, which is committed to improving the hypervisor. - It runs Microsoft's Azure public cloud, which is stress-tested every day. - The Microsoft ecosystem is deeply entrenched in enterprise IT departments. - Customers can benefit from enterprise-license agreements.

Disadvantages of Hyper-V

• It has a lot of catching up to do with VMware.
• It is less mature and feature-rich than VMware.
• VMware is way ahead in security solutions and software-defined networking.
• Storage Spaces Direct still needs work and feature enrichment.

VMware is an American company that provides software for virtualization and cloud computing. It has created a software called the VMware Virtual Platform, which enables users to run multiple, independent virtual machines on a single physical computer. These virtual machines can operate different operating systems and applications without requiring actual hardware systems. This approach enhances resource utilization, reduces costs, and streamlines the management of IT environments. VMware's portfolio includes solutions for desktop virtualization, data center and cloud infrastructure, software-defined storage, networking, and security.

VMware introduced the concept of virtualization in the 1990s. The approach was based on the ESX/ESXi bare-metal hypervisor for the x86 architecture. A hypervisor can run multiple VMs, sharing resources such as CPUs, RAM, and network interfaces from a single physical server.

VMware's offerings support virtualization, software-defined data centers, and cloud infrastructure management. At the heart of its portfolio is VMware vSphere, a key server virtualization platform that enables large-scale deployment and management of virtual machines. In fact, vSphere comprises a suite of virtualization products, such as the ESXi hypervisor, vSphere Client, VMware Workstation, vCenter, and more. These products, when combined, form the VMware infrastructure, enabling centralized management of virtual environments.

With VMware, you have to live with its strengths and weaknesses:

VMware's Edge

- Mature and widely proven technologies. - Leader in virtualization for the enterprise data center. - Continual innovation.

Disadvantages of VMware

- Vendor lock-in. - Public clouds are changing the enterprise. - Public clouds could replace VMware tools. - VMware is betting on VMware Cloud on AWS.

If you want to learn more about VMware license keys, you can read the following article:

How to Find VMware License Key: Reliable Ways to Locate VMware Workstation Key

You may need to find VMware license key when reinstalling or installing the software on a new computer.

What's the Difference Between Hyper-V and VMware?

Hyper-V and VMware have many features that are unique to each platform. Additionally, there are pros and cons to consider with each virtualization platform when deciding which one to use.

In our comparison, we look at the following areas: supported operating systems, security, scalability, networking, and cost.

• Supported Operating Systems
• Security
• Scalability
• Networking
• Price

Supported operating systems

With virtualization, the focus of what the hypervisor provides is on running guest operating systems. Let's look at how Hyper-V and VMware compare in terms of supported operating systems.

Hyper-V

In addition to Windows operating systems, Hyper-V supports:

• CentOS
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• Debian
• Oracle Linux
• SUSE
• Ubuntu
• FreeBSD

VMware is a company that provides software and services for virtualization and cloud computing. Its technology enables users to create and run multiple virtual machines on a single physical server, enhancing resource utilization and simplifying IT management. VMware offers solutions such as vSphere, vCenter, Workstation, Fusion, which are widely used in data center, desktop virtualization, cloud infrastructure, and service provider environments.

The following guest operating systems are new or updated in this release of VMware Fusion:

- Asianux 4 SP4 - Solaris 11.2 - Ubuntu 12.04.5 - Ubuntu 14.04.1 - Oracle Linux 7 - FreeBSD 9.3 - Mac OS X 10.10

Security

While Hyper-V also offers robust security features, as an enterprise-class virtualization solution, VMware's security capabilities are even more extensive.

Hyper-V is a virtualization technology from Microsoft.

< li > Encrypted network. This is a new feature in Windows Server 2019 that encrypts all traffic for an entire subnet. You don't have to configure or change anything on your VMs or networking devices.
• Shielded fabric. This is a security model that helps protect the host and its VMs from malware. It also enables you to run three types of VMs: unshielded (unprotected), shielded with encryption, and shielded with protections that can't be disabled.
• Host Guardian Service (HGS). This is a component of the shielded fabric framework that ensures that Hyper-V hosts are known, healthy, and running trusted software for your organization.
• Shielded VMs. These are second-generation VMs with a virtual Trusted Platform Module (vTPM) that uses BitLocker encryption and can run only on hosts that are HGS-attested and approved.

VMware is a company that provides cloud computing and virtualization technology. The name remains the same since "VMware" is a proper noun and usually doesn't need translation. In Chinese, it's commonly referred to as "威睿" or simply kept in its original form, "VMware."

• Host-level security features — ESXi supports CPU isolation, memory isolation, device isolation, lockdown mode, certificate replacement, and smart card authentication.
• Host firewall — ESXi hosts are protected by a firewall that blocks access to services and ports by default, except for a few critical ports.
• Host certificates — The VMware certificate infrastructure provides each ESXi host with a certificate issued by the VMware Certificate Authority (VMCA).
• Secure default settings — VMware controls several configuration parameters that could lead to intrusion or misuse. Users can override these settings to ensure secure operation.

Scalability

Scalability is an important consideration for any organization choosing a hypervisor to run its production workloads. The following table outlines the differences in scalability between Hyper-V and VMware:

Network

Microsoft Hyper-V provides networking features through Windows Server. The virtualization networking capabilities of Windows Server include:

• Virtualized Layer 2 networking.
• Routing of traffic between virtual networks and between physical and virtual networks through gateways.
• Virtual extensible local area networks (VXLANs) and network virtualization using generic routing encapsulation (NVGRE).
• Software-defined networking (SDN).

VMware offers a virtual networking solution, NSX-T, that supports the following:

- Layer 2, Layer 3, and isolated virtual networks. - L2VPNs allow you to extend your on-premises subnets to the virtualized environment without changing IP addresses. - Route-based IPsec VPNs (using BGP) or policy-based IPsec VPNs can be used to connect your on-premises networks to a VPC. - Support for AWS Direct Connect (DX) for high-speed connectivity between your data center and AWS.

Price

Comparing Hyper-V to VMware pricing is more complicated, because VMware ESXi licenses by socket (physical CPU), while Hyper-V has licensed by core since 2016. The table below outlines some of the differences in pricing:

Final Award

A reliable and efficient virtualization platform is crucial for building and managing virtual environments, such as VMware and Hyper-V. When choosing a platform for business operations, it's essential to consider the differences between VMware and Hyper-V in terms of supported operating systems, security, scalability, networking, and their respective pros and cons.