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KVM vs Oracle VM VirtualBox vs VMware Workstation comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Mindshare comparison

Server Virtualization Software
Server Virtualization Software
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
 

Featured Reviews

Lan Tuong - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful to manage the virtual environments
The most valuable features of KVM for us are the console, which allows us to build or clone VMs quickly, and the ability to take snapshots and recreate new VMs rapidly. That's one of the things we love about KVM. The built-in management console, Auto KVM, is the most valuable tool for managing our virtual environments. We use it most to create and fire up new VMs or clone them for customers based on requests. The migration tools have worked quite well for us. We're moving from an Oracle Solaris platform for KVM logical domains, upgrading, and using KVM from Red Hat. It's slightly different but very similar to Oracle Unbreakable Linux, which is basically a clone of Red Hat. Oracle's console is easier to use than Red Hat's, though.
Tomasz Pietas - PeerSpot reviewer
Good functionality and free to use with a useful snapshot feature
The functionality and productivity are very good. I can test and roll back features in my work. It's a big platform. It's very useful. I like that it has a snapshot feature. The virtual network is great. There are a lot of features. It has everything I need. The product is free to use. It's easy to set up.
Phanindar Ada - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers ease of deployment and use along with a comfortable configuration process to be handled
The tool's performance is really good, so I can rate it a ten out of ten. The product did meet my expectations by allowing me to run multiple operating systems simultaneously. I recommend the product to those who plan to use it. The product is stable, very easy to deploy, easy to use, easy to configure, and easy to set up. I took care of the integration part of VMware Workstation with vSphere. I describe the product's documentation as a good area. My company gets complaints about technical notes from VMware. My company does face limitations with the product, and it is based on the licenses that we have purchased from VMware. I rate the overall product a ten out of ten.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The tool's most valuable feature is backup. The product makes it easy to manage virtual machines. Other tools require third-party applications like VMware and vSphere. However, KVM doesn't require these applications."
"If you are a Linux desktop user, KVM is the solution to go with if you have to start virtual machines with Linux or other operating systems with almost zero extra configuration needed."
"KVM has benefited our organization by enabling us to assess different virtualization solutions with reduced latency, which is crucial for guaranteeing the reliability and real-time performance of our communication systems."
"There is a strong emphasis on availability, and they have numerous API interfaces for distributed storage and the solution is quite known for its openness."
"Our production servers are running in Linux, and this solution supports that environment well."
"The GUI interface makes the management of KVM easier than ever before."
"The most valuable feature of KVM is its superior real-time performance, which results in lower latency compared to alternatives like VMware and Microsoft."
"It is an open ecosystem, and we see there is a benefit in open-source solutions."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that there is no cost because it is open source."
"This solution creates a snapshot of virtual machines so you can create test environments."
"The good thing is that it is multi-platform. Once you create a virtual machine in one particular environment, you can switch over to see if you can run it in other environments. For example, if you are on Windows and you create this virtual machine, you can actually go ahead and change the operating system. You can switch it over to Linux or Mac OS and see if you can run the VirtualBox on those particular machines. It even runs on some of the commercial operating systems that are not mainstream, such as Solaris and BSD. These kinds of operating systems are also supported by VirtualBox. The other thing that is good about VirtualBox is that it is open source. So, if you need to do any modifications for your own purposes, you can just download the source, modify it, and deploy it in your environment. It is pretty good and very versatile. You can create and manipulate virtual machines from the command line, which is also very important. It's something that some other products on the desktop side do not have. VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop don't have a good command-line interface to create and manipulate virtual machines, whereas VirtualBox has it out of the box, which is pretty good."
"Technical support is good."
"The solution is very convenient and easy to use."
"I like that it is free and runs on Linux/Ubuntu - I wouldn't use any other solution. I am able to perform small developing tests."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to copy bidirectionally between the desktop and the virtual machine."
"I think VirtualBox has good stability because I use it in an environment with several resolutions."
"It's stable."
"It will not harm any of the computer settings to run a specific program. For example, if a program needs a specific security policy, we don't have to use the shared configuration. We have an individual copy of Windows installed on the virtual machine, so anybody can access that. It helps us a lot."
"The product is stable, very easy to deploy, easy to use, easy to configure, and easy to set up."
"VMware Workstation allows multiple operating systems in the same physical machine."
"Technical support is very good."
"Because the setup is so easy, this is a solution that can be used at a moment's notice."
"The most valuable features of VMware Workstation are the DirectX support, you can run Microsoft Hyper-V in virtual environments which is good for me to test different installations. Additionally, you can set up different VLANs, and overall it is a complete solution."
"Having ten people working off a single piece of hardware reduces costs."
 

Cons

"Technical support is not top-notch."
"We would like to have a software lifecycle solution included in this solution. We can handle the software needed for KVM, but also the software that we provide. A lifecycle component would be very beneficial."
"Lacks high availability across clusters as well as support for Apache CloudStack."
"The product must provide better performance monitoring features."
"The grid interface of KVM needs improvement. It could be more beautiful, especially when compared to VMware."
"The initial setup of this solution is more difficult than some of the competing products and it could be improved."
"The solution overall is just okay."
"In our setup, we do not have any dashboards or orchestration, and it is hard to manage. We have 25 gig network cards, but the software driver we have only supported 10 gigs."
"It has some issues when you have some weird device drivers. For instance, when you have a weird sound driver working on your machine, and the VirtualBox needs to output the sound of the virtual machine into the sound driver of the physical machine, the bare metal, it doesn't work too well. If you tweak lots of drivers and play around with the different kinds of drivers and machines, you will probably break something. I have not played with it too much and maybe it already supports it, but it would probably be good to have the ability to use a container from the virtual machine environment instead of spinning off a complete virtual machine. There are other tools for that. On Linux, you have a DXE, LXC framework, and you have Docker as well. Docker is good because it is multi-platform, and you can run Docker on pretty much anything, even different processors, but it would be good if we had a VirtualBox running on it while spinning off containers instead of full virtual machines. The other thing that will become important, and I'm pretty sure that they are thinking about it as well is that there's this new hardware platform that Apple is releasing, which is an ARM-based new chip. So, VirtualBox will probably have to work on ARM-based CPUs as well."
"The solution needs to improve the methods used for starting and stopping the machine."
"One valuable feature would be for it to work right the first time but it doesn't necessarily do that."
"The AI and the UI could be improved. The user interface is a little outdated and the AI is not very attractive."
"It's not as robust as server platforms, nor does it need to be."
"Oracle VM VirtualBox is not flexible, It's not like VMware."
"Having live migrations to move a running server to other hardware would be great."
"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"It would be better if software updates occur automatically."
"It takes too much time to load all the plug-ins and software."
"It could have more platforms and CPUs."
"The product is outdated."
"There could be more integration with different tools."
"It would be helpful if VMware Workstation included an in-built monitoring tool for monitoring things."
"The GUI interface could be improved."
"The tool has limited scalability."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"One only needs a subscription to Oracle Linux. So, it's cheaper with Oracle Linux's subscription. It is not very expensive. In short, the solution is open source, and you need only a subscription."
"KVM is priced reasonably."
"This solution came with the Linux license."
"There is no cost involved in the use of KVM, as it is open source."
"It is free for everyone."
"The tool is free."
"KVM is an open-source product that works well for us."
"The solution is extremely cheap in China."
"It is an open-source solution."
"Price wise, Oracle VM VirtualBox is a six on a scale from one to ten."
"The product is free to use."
"There are no licensing fees."
"The tool is not as expensive as other products."
"No licensing is required as it is open-source."
"This is an open-source product and it can be used free of charge."
"Available for free use"
"The price of the solution per workstation is approximately 200 Francs annually. We pay a total of 800 francs. Everything is included in the price such as the support."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The pricing is a bit steep in my opinion for testing and there are other options."
"The licensing costs are cheap. I pay approximately $100 per year."
"VMware Workstation has a high price than competitors in the market."
"VMware Workstation is an expensive tool. I rate the product's price a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low or good price."
"The solution is moderately priced. I rate the pricing a six out of ten."
"The solution’s pricing is moderate."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Educational Organization
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Why KVM??? Help please!
KVM scales better, orchestration better, performs better and supports a wider range of hardware and, also, you can im...
Why KVM??? Help please!
Small support team, small cluster, low core count, use VMware products Large support team, large clusters with many c...
Why KVM??? Help please!
Far from being an expert, my opinion is that the positive sides of KVM are: Lower costs and open-source which gives ...
How does KVM compare to Oracle VM VirtualBox?
KVM is easy to use, stable and flexible. It is mature and very fast. It is an affordable open-source solution that is...
What do you like most about Oracle VM VirtualBox?
The product’s most valuable feature is the ability to manage multiple operating systems through one application.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle VM VirtualBox?
The pricing is flexible. When Oracle bought VirtualBox, they introduced some licensing issues. However, it did not af...
Which VMware solution would you go with - Workstation or vSphere?
VM Workstation’s setup is so easy, you can use it almost instantly, it works well with Windows and Linux. We like VM ...
What do you like most about VMware Workstation?
The product is stable, very easy to deploy, easy to use, easy to configure, and easy to set up.
What needs improvement with VMware Workstation?
The product's integration capabilities are an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required.
 

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Sample Customers

MediaWiki, Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, Wikidata, Wikiversity, Commons
Airbus, Colorado State University, SCS Africa, Wolf Medical Systems.
Akademiska Hus
Find out what your peers are saying about Proxmox, VMware, Microsoft and others in Server Virtualization Software. Updated: November 2024.
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