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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

"It is an easily scalable solution."
"Very cost-effective."
"The product is scalable."
"The initial setup was simple."
"This solution is open source and easy to configure."
"It offers a high-availability environment."
"I like that it's easy to manage. It's also more powerful when it comes to security than others. That point of view is the one consideration. The other consideration is that it's cost-effective."
"It is an open ecosystem, and we see there is a benefit in open-source solutions."
"This product is extremely easy to install, use, has a great GUI and is incredibly stable."
"The product’s most valuable feature is the ability to manage multiple operating systems through one application."
"The cloning is a very useful tool."
"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."
"Oracle VM VirtualBox is easy to use."
"The solution has high performance and is easy to use."
"Oracle VM Virtualbox is easy to use and does not require much training."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its stability."
"VMware Workstation’s most valuable features are backup and data transfer from one server to another."
"The product is stable, very easy to deploy, easy to use, easy to configure, and easy to set up."
"The product's initial setup phase was simple."
"VMware Workstation allows you to run a virtual machine."
"VMware Workstation is easy to manage and understand."
"Great at solving connection problems."
"The most valuable feature of the VMware Workstation is the ease to create a development environment. When you have different ongoing developments, you often need to create a lot of different development environments. With this workstation solution, you can have a development environment for all the things you develop."
"VMware Workstation allows multiple operating systems in the same physical machine."
 

Cons

"I would like to see more focus on microservices and integration with Kubernetes or OpenShift."
"The grid interface of KVM needs improvement. It could be more beautiful, especially when compared to VMware."
"The virtual manager and the graphical QEMU for KVM need some improvement."
"KVM is very difficult to manage and run on daily operations."
"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."
"The stability of this solution is less than other products in the same category."
"The product must provide better performance monitoring features."
"Its resource usage can be improved."
"This solution needs improvement with the business continuity planning, disaster and recovery management and using centralized data storage."
"It could improve slightly with enhanced reporting capabilities that show the current status of the network."
"The solution should work to simplify the system. However, it should be flexible enough to allow for special cases."
"The solution is a bit less stable than I would like."
"The solution lacks some open source remote administration tools. The reload of individual virtual machine definitions through the vboxweb service (via its API) without restarting it and the access to shared storage (to use teleport functions) need to be improved."
"The tool has some stability issues."
"When I select the Ubuntu operating system from within the virtual machine, it sometimes hangs."
"One valuable feature would be for it to work right the first time but it doesn't necessarily do that."
"The tool has limited scalability."
"It would be better if software updates occur automatically."
"Lacks the ability to clone onto another system rather than starting from scratch."
"They could bring in many different features from VMware vSphere to Workstation."
"There could be more integration with different tools."
"The price of VMware Workstation could improve."
"For some virtual machine configurations, you have to go to the text editor and make the configuration changes, which could be improved."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution came with the Linux license."
"KVM is free."
"I have no information on the cost of KVM because I downloaded it for the lab and not for production. It's free, but I don't know if that's the case for people using it in a production environment."
"It is cheaper than other competitors like VMware or Hyper-V."
"The solution is extremely cheap in China."
"I use the free version of KVM, and I'm not sure if there is a paid version."
"There is no cost involved in the use of KVM, as it is open source."
"​It is free and can be run from your laptop, if needed, unlike VMware.​"
"It is pretty good for the price, which is free."
"Oracle should consider reducing the cost of the product."
"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 solution is free."
"The tool is not as expensive as other products."
"Everything is free within limitations. Once you go over a certain level of usage you have to license the product."
"The pricing is a bit steep in my opinion for testing and there are other options."
"The product has a moderate price."
"With all its support and ease of use, VMware Player's pricing is fair."
"It is an expensive solution."
"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."
"VMware is expensive. Licensing can be tricky. For example, I recently had a client running VMware vSphere Essentials and wanted to migrate to a more scalable solution. However, they had no choice but to purchase a completely new license and deploy a completely new instance of VMware."
"The solution’s pricing is moderate."
"You need to pay for a license, but I don't think it costs that much. I think it's a one-time payment."
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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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