Five advantages of Hyper-V over other virtualization platforms

When it comes to virtualization platforms Hyper-V is still a young pup compared to competitors like VMware but it is quickly gaining ground. Since its release in 2008 Hyper-V has shown that it can stand up against the bigger players and is now showing its worth in everything from small business to major enterprise virtualization.

Security

As a microkernelized hypervisor, Hyper-V uses the individual virtual machines and their associated disk partitions to store device drivers. As a result, drivers can run independently for each virtual machine. The compartmentalized nature of Hyper-V gives it a layer of security that monolithic hypervisors like VMware’s vSphere lack. By dividing its virtual machines across drive partitions, hackers need to crack open each virtual machine in Hyper-V rather than simply latching onto a single hypervisor via its API.

More stable

Increased stability is another benefit of the compartmentalization that comes with Hyper-V. With each virtual machines’ device drivers running at the virtual level rather than the hypervisor level, if a virtual machine becomes unstable, it’s only going to take down only the effected machine rather than the whole virtual platform.

Replica

Hyper-V Replica is a much lauded new feature built into Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012. It means you can easily clone servers across a WAN or secure VPN and have them spare in case of a VM outage. This is a feature that was once only available to large and well-resourced companies to small and medium businesses.

Hyper-V is Windows based

As a virtual platform built in Windows, its familiar interface, functions and layout mean it is much easier to use if you are used to the working in Windows environment. This is a great benefit if you are the informal admin for your office or if you just prefer working with Windows.

Hyper-V is included in Server 2012

It comes as a freebie in Windows Server 2012 and who doesn’t like a freebie, especially as many IT departments are under pressure to cut down their costs. On top of this the included features in Hyper-V are comparable to what you find in the more expensive versions of other hypervisor platforms.

If you’re a Hyper-V user or you’re thinking about implementing it soon and are looking at backup solutions, check out BackupAssist’s Hyper-V backup and granular restore solution or if you want to know more about the technical details of Hyper-V backups and restores, have a look at our Hyper-V Whitepaper.