Hyper-V vs VMWare Workstation pains

Hi folks

@spkay31

and others who are considering this same question.

these things aren't always easy to decide-- but the issue really is what do you want your VM to do.

First HYPER-V drawbacks :
1) you have to have W10 pro or above - it won't run on W10 Home.
2) To access the VM's there's no real Native mode console -- connection is via RDP or similar.
3) Installing "native" drivers on a VM is possibly impossible -- certainly not "plug and play"
4) attaching / removing USB devices dynamically -- I don't think that works yet
5) Using LINUX VM's on HYPER-V means you probably won't be able to get sound working.

However for a basic file server and just running Windows guests with basically just Ms office and that sort of stuff it's reasonably efficient. I believe also it's possible to pass thru the graphics hardware and some other cards so the Guest uses the actual hardware and the real OS drivers.

HYPER-V is of course free software as well. Included in Windows 10 Pro etc - you just have to enable it on your Windows Host via programs and features.

VMWare is a "paravirtualized" system which comes in 2 flavours -- workstation edition which is paid software or VMware player which is free for home (non commercial) users. The paravirtualisation aspect means that the hardware is essentially "emulated" which is why the guest machines can be moved at will without change between different hosts - so if you have a W10 Guest you can run it with vmware on a Linux or a Windows Host.

The Vmware product has a really easy GUI so acessing and managing VM's is really easy and there are wizards to easily create VM's. Things like sound and dynamically attaching / removing USB devices are simple and attaching say raw Linux formatted drives to Linux VM's on vmware is not a problem at all.

For beginners with Virtual Machines I'd start with VMWare - if you don't like it then try HYPER-V of course --bear in mind though that you can't run VMWare (or VBOX from Oracle --also free for non commercial use -- another Virtualisation program -- I personally hate it though --YMMV of course) together with HYPER-V so you will need to switch off the HYPER-V functionality before running Vmware.

Vmware also will run on W10 Home -- note though the later editions do not run on 32 bit windows systems though of course 32 Bit guest OS's are supported.

Some of the advanced features of the commercial product can temporarily be enabled in the free VMWare player product -- such as boot to firmware - but you need to manually edit the .vmx configuration file -- not a big problem.

Personally I would suggest if just starting on VM's you can't lose with vmware player -- HYPER-V will probably put you off using VM's for life because you've got two very complex processes to learn at the same time neither of which are in any way intuitive so the initial experience will probably want to make you chuck your whole computer into the bin. !!

You can get the full VMWARE workstation product as a free 30 day trial -- that is probably the easiest way to start learning -- and then simply switch to the free VMWare player application. Currently you can just download from VMWare's UK site -- no registration etc required.

Download VMware Workstation Pro | UK


For those who want to try out an alternative HYPERVISOR environment (akin to HYPER-V) then if you use a Linux Host KVM (include with most Linux distros) works brilliantly and is much easier to operate than HYPER-V -- you'll need to be able to use Linux on the HOST but running Windows Guests is a doddle. Things like sound etc -- no problem !!!

Here's a link to someone using UBUNTU with the KVM hypervisor to passthru the graphics GPU to a W10 Guest.

Why not try it when feeling bored !!!. This works for gaming / multi-media etc etc and the Windows guest is running at almost native speed --as a user you wouldn't know the difference without exhaustive bench marking

Ubuntu 18.04 - KVM/QEMU Windows 10 GPU Passthrough


Cheers
jimbo

Personally, I only use vms for Windows OSs and Hyper-V is definitely superior if guest OS supports RDP as a server. Ubuntu runs well in Hyper-V as it uses enhanced mode.

Major downside is that you cannot get sound for Linux (or 10 Home as it does not support RDP as a server).

Hyper-V is faster in my experience as it is a type 1 hypervisor whereas VMware is type 2.

In the end, both VM apps have pluses and minuses and depends what you are doing.

Slightly off topic, nothing to offer to OP, but I thought to mention that I just made a new tutorial about how to run VMware Workstation, VirtualBox and Hyper-V virtual machines on the same computer: Run Hyper-V, VirtualBox and VMware on same Computer

Kari

Thanks, Jimbo, for the nice words. And, thanks to OP @spkay31 for the rep!

Kari