Hyper-V vs VMWare for virtualization software?

[AS162]

Hello LTT forums

 

I am trying to decide which virtualization software is better, Hyper-V or VMWare?

 

I want to use the VMs as sandbox computers to mess around with and for isolated software development.

[This_guy1998]

34 minutes ago, AS162 said:

Hello LTT forums

 

I am trying to decide which virtualization software is better, Hyper-V or VMWare?

 

I want to use the VMs as sandbox computers to mess around with and for isolated software development.

I've used both (and Virtual Box) and I prefer VMWare. WMWare Player is free and offers a basic software experience or if you want to pay $30 you can buy VMWare Workstation 12? (it's not the newest one, but has more features than Player) on Amazon like I did because my college decided since I am not taking any classes at the moment that require VMWare (I'm an IT major and last Fall was the last time I needed it for a class) that my VMWare License (it's a yearly Evaluation one) wasn't renewed (which I understand because it does cost them money, another thing happening at my college right now there is a debate about buying a popular software suite (not Office) for all the students (due to some other University requirement) at my college that needs it and my major technically falls under it, but it's pricey and they don't want to have to buy more licenses for this suite, so I see why my VMWare software wasn't renewed).

 

 

[EPENEX]

I use Virtualbox most of the time because it's easy and works- I'm not a big fan of Oracle though. I haven't taken the time to try others except for Qemu which I'm not a fan of.

[alex75871]

Are you wanting to run a dedicated VM server or run locally?

[keskparane]

Hyper-V kept NIC management is a mare IMO. It would randomly create new virtual NICs leaving the old ones unused on my system. I went for VMPlayer

[Mikensan]

Agreed, vswitches and nic management is more headache than it is worth in hyperv. If you want to trunk a nic you will have to drop into powershell. I find myself more in powershell than the GUI.

 

 

[NelizMastr]

Hyper-V is a type 1 hypervisor, so I'm not sure why everyone here is comparing type 2 solutions like workstation/virtualbox rather than ESXi, Xen and Proxmox/KVM, but anyway.

 

Having run both Hyper-V and ESXi extensively, I've found ESXi to have overall better network performance. Networking in general is much less of a headache, so if that's a priority for you, then ESXi could be a good solution. The main pros for Hyper-V are the usually familiar Windows system and the fact that virtual disks are in VHD format, which can be accessed by any modern Windows release to extract data from. No such luck with VMDKs.

[leadeater]

14 hours ago, NelizMastr said:

Hyper-V is a type 1 hypervisor, so I'm not sure why everyone here is comparing type 2 solutions like workstation/virtualbox rather than ESXi, Xen and Proxmox/KVM, but anyway.

Yea people seem to get all super precious about Hyper-V, mostly because "omg it has a GUI". Server core is an option if you really don't want a GUI because "overhead".

[NelizMastr]

3 hours ago, leadeater said:

Yea people seem to get all super precious about Hyper-V, mostly because "omg it has a GUI". Server core is an option if you really don't want a GUI because "overhead".

It's not recommended to run a Hyper-V Server (the free core based one) if you don't have an AD domain, though. It's a pain in the ass on a workgroup. Reason enough to not bother and just go with VMware or Proxmox, lmao.

[Xplo1t]

Probably will get crusified for saying this, but after running ESXi for a number of years at home, I went Windows 10 and Hyper-v.  I found that I could use the machine to run VM's or leverage the main OS directly for other functions through a monitor.  Since it's a sandbox, I didn't have to strictly treat it like a production VM server.  It also comes in handy as I can spin up a VM and use it on my laptop or other PC's without the struggles of trying to convert for something like VMWare Workstation.  If this was production, of course I would be looking at it differently, but for sandbox I like the flexibility.