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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."
"Scaling the solution is easy. You just have to add more hardware."
"KVM has a rich options set which can be directly used or via wrappers, such as libvirt."
"The product is really good...One can get good performance because of kernel-based virtualization."
"This solution is open source and easy to configure."
"The scalability part should be better."
"The key aspect is that the KVM directly interacts with the Kronos. There's no clear indication of indirect communication with Kronos. It is not linked to Kronos, and interaction is straightforward without any intermediaries."
"I think nine out of the ten supercomputers in the world use Linux KVM, so I think that attests to the fact that it is a scalable product."
"VirtualBox provides an isolated, consistent environment"
"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."
"The flexibility and the closed platform, so it allows you to run in multiple platforms, Windows, Linux, Macintosh."
"The cloning is a very useful tool."
"This is a good and easy solution for running virtual environments."
"This is a highly scalable solution."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its stability."
"The solution is very stable."
"Instead of relying on dual-boot operating systems, I can utilize open-source tools within my infrastructure. This approach allows me to create an in-house cloud platform suitable for testing. VMware Workstation enables me to perform tasks across various operating systems using a single device. It has helped me save time."
"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten."
"The tool’s GUI is very user-friendly."
"I have found this product excellent for test/dev environments. This is 90% of what I use this product for."
"It is much more mature compared to Nutanix or SimpliVity when it's cross-platform based."
"VMware Workstation allows multiple operating systems in the same physical machine."
"It's stable."
"VMware Workstation’s most valuable features are backup and data transfer from one server to another."
 

Cons

"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."
"We are not getting good support from KVM, and it is not that user-friendly."
"The stability of this solution is less than other products in the same category."
"I would like to see more focus on microservices and integration with Kubernetes or OpenShift."
"Technical support could be better. In the next release, I would like to see an improved user interface and dashboard. This type of improvement will make it easy or help our engineers understand the solution from a requirement point of view."
"I believe KVM offers a unified answer, while ProxMark addresses orchestration. KVM lacks orchestration. If the aim is to centrally oversee multiple KVMs – let's say to freeze them – a centralized management solution is absent."
"The solution’s user interface could be improved and made more user-friendly."
"The virtual manager and the graphical QEMU for KVM need some improvement."
"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."
"Oracle VMs don't have a solid web interface of their own. This is an area where Oracle is lagging behind. Now, we use headless servers, install Oracle VMs, and manage them remotely. We could use phpVirtual Box, but it is a third-party solution. A lot of people contribute to it, and it's not authenticated by Oracle. As a result, I don't find it to be a good option. Therefore, I would like to see Oracle offer an extension pack or a licensed version that fixes this problem."
"There are a few bugs that need to be updated."
"Having live migrations to move a running server to other hardware would be great."
"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."
"The installation is difficult and could be improved."
"The memory and hardware usage could be a little bit lighter. Right now, it's quite heavy on the usage. The CPU usage should be lower."
"I find the solution to be incredibly unstable, constantly falling over and not working properly."
"It takes too much time to load all the plug-ins and software."
"I have had issues with the virtual network adapters in the past that has taken some time to troubleshoot."
"They could bring in many different features from VMware vSphere to Workstation."
"For some virtual machine configurations, you have to go to the text editor and make the configuration changes, which could be improved."
"The solution freezes sometimes."
"Performance could be improved, it's somewhat clunky."
"The product is outdated."
"When you go to work on a server, it opens up the whole window, and that causes an error inside VMware Player."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is extremely cheap in China."
"There is no cost involved in the use of KVM, as it is open source."
"We had some problems with the licensing."
"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."
"It is cheaper than other competitors like VMware or Hyper-V."
"KVM is an open-source product that works well for us."
"It is free for everyone."
"I use the free version of KVM, and I'm not sure if there is a paid version."
"Pricing does not apply for us, we do not have to pay for the service."
"The license I use is free."
"The solution is free."
"This is an open-source product and it can be used free of charge."
"Everything is free within limitations. Once you go over a certain level of usage you have to license the product."
"No licensing is required as it is open-source."
"It is an open-source solution."
"It is pretty good for the price, which is free."
"The cost differs depending on the customer's requirement."
"It has the best licensing modules."
"The solution's pricing is almost the same as what Google Cloud, AWS, or Microsoft would charge you."
"The pricing is a bit steep in my opinion for testing and there are other options."
"VMware Workstation is an expensive solution in Asian countries."
"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 pricing is reasonable."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being expensive."
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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
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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