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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.
Shambhu Narayan  Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
An easy-to-manage solution that has really good customer support compared to other market players
VMware Workstation makes it easy to manage all the resources that we are handling. VMware Workstation has reduced our infrastructure cost. If someone wants machines, I can create them easily using the solution. VMware Workstation is easier to manage than other workstations like Oracle Workstation. VMware Workstation is an easy-to-manage solution, and its support is really good compared to other market players. Overall, I rate VMware Workstation an eight 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 most helpful aspect of KVM is the fact that the interface is so minimal. It includes just what you need to set up the VMs and manage them, and it's very simple to do so."
"Good screen and keyboard sharing feature."
"The most valuable feature of KVM is its stability."
"The initial setup was simple."
"It is easy to use, stable, and flexible. It is a pretty mature product, and it is faster than VirtualBox."
"The KVM service is well managed with a central policy interface."
"Our production servers are running in Linux, and this solution supports that environment well."
"The product's scalability is good...It's a very stable product."
"The product’s most valuable feature is the ability to manage multiple operating systems through one application."
"It's very simple to use."
"VirtualBox provides an isolated, consistent environment"
"Oracle VM VirtualBox is easy to use."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to copy bidirectionally between the desktop and the virtual machine."
"This product is very user-friendly and easy to use."
"The solution has high performance and is easy to use."
"Oracle VM VirtualBox has a platform where the support team responds to frequently asked questions by its users. Every time I have had issues with Oracle VM VirtualBox, I always get a solution from Oracle's online platform or GitHub."
"We are able to simultaneously run multiple operating systems in a single machine and have virtually no performance hit."
"VMware is incredible and is designed for simple use. They help with efficiency."
"VMware Player helps you to virtualize and install Ubuntu or any other operating system, even on a Windows laptop."
"VMware Workstation is easy to manage and understand."
"I like that it's easy to use. It's easy to deploy virtual machines. You have to insert your ISO and the image of your OS and configure it. They provide a step-by-step guide, and you have to follow it. In the end, you have to start the machine, and that's all you have to do. I liked that they synchronized the mouse, keyboard, and everything. When you finish the installation, it directly links to your laptop. This makes copying and pasting things from my laptop inside the virtual machine easy."
"VMware Workstation’s most valuable features are backup and data transfer from one server to another."
"Technical support is very good."
"I have found this product excellent for test/dev environments. This is 90% of what I use this product for."
 

Cons

"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."
"We are not getting good support from KVM, and it is not that user-friendly."
"Support for VF is needed, where you can, for example, export from VMware to KVM."
"Although KVM meets our expectations, it can be somewhat fragmented with numerous management tools available, making it difficult to determine which tool to use."
"The solution’s user interface could be improved and made more user-friendly."
"One thing that maybe could be improved is making it easier to scale. It needs to be more clear on how to scale the storage space for virtual machines."
"The product must provide better performance monitoring features."
"One problem I have is that it's not very scalable when it comes to resizing the VM disk dimensions. For example, if you have initially set a virtual drive to 10 GB and you want to upgrade it to 15 GB, it's not that easy."
"One valuable feature would be for it to work right the first time but it doesn't necessarily do that."
"There are a few bugs that need to be updated."
"Oracle VM VirtualBox is not flexible, It's not like VMware."
"It should have the functionality where if I move the mouse away from one screen, the context changes automatically."
"I find the solution to be incredibly unstable, constantly falling over and not working properly."
"The solution should have more enterprise features, like migration, high availability storage, disaster recovery, and the ability to deploy to enterprise-scale usage. They should not just offer desktop usage."
"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."
"I think that this solution should be more user-friendly."
"VMware Player isn't downgradable, so if you have a later set of VMs, you need to upgrade it or figure out a workaround."
"The tool can improve network storage technology."
"The price of VMware Workstation is an area of concern where improvements are needed."
"They could include official support for macOS virtualization within VMware Workstation."
"The big issue that we've always had with VMware, was the disparity between what was presented for a Windows-based client and a Linux-based client. The Windows client was always two or three releases ahead of the Linux client. We always wanted VMware to change and improve the feature sets between the client connector on Linux and on Windows."
"VMware Workstation could improve the export and import of virtual machines."
"The solution freezes sometimes."
"The solution should provide a guide on its installation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is free for everyone."
"We had some problems with the licensing."
"This solution is an open-source, free platform with paid support."
"The solution is extremely cheap in China."
"There is no cost involved in the use of KVM, as it is open source."
"The tool is free."
"It is cheaper than other solutions out there on the market."
"This solution came with the Linux license."
"The solution is free."
"It is an open-source solution."
"No licensing is required as it is open-source."
"The tool is not as expensive as other products."
"Price wise, Oracle VM VirtualBox is a six on a scale from one to ten."
"Everything is free within limitations. Once you go over a certain level of usage you have to license the product."
"The license I use is free."
"Available for free use"
"The pricing is a bit steep in my opinion for testing and there are other options."
"With all its support and ease of use, VMware Player's pricing is fair."
"The licensing costs are cheap. I pay approximately $100 per year."
"With a VDI solution, there is always extra cost running a VDI solution but it's not for cost purposes anymore. In the beginning, it was to save money on hardware but at the moment it's other aspects that are more important why you should use a VDI solution."
"The cost differs depending on the customer's requirement."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"You need to pay for a license, but I don't think it costs that much. I think it's a one-time payment."
"VMware Workstation's costs are lifetime."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
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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