Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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

"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."
"This solution is open source and easy to configure."
"The most valuable feature of KVM is its stability."
"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."
"One of the best features of KVM is its user-friendly interface."
"It is easy to use, stable, and flexible. It is a pretty mature product, and it is faster than VirtualBox."
"I appreciate the network passcode feature in KVM, as it provides a convenient way to manage DNS and cloud hosting."
"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."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its stability."
"The solution is very stable."
"The product’s most valuable feature is the ability to manage multiple operating systems through one application."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"The flexibility and the closed platform, so it allows you to run in multiple platforms, Windows, Linux, Macintosh."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution were the support and performance of the product and the flexibility it gives you to work."
"The solution has high performance and is easy to use."
"It is a stable product."
"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten."
"The product's initial setup phase was simple."
"The most valuable features of the VMware Workstation solutions are the ESXi and vCenter."
"The most valuable features of VMware Workstation are the speed of access and quality of upgrade. Those are the more important and pertinent aspects as far as we were concerned. Functionality and features were relevant for the customers. What a customer chose, we had to make sure that it operated."
"We can undo some changes using the snapshot feature."
"The solution's customer service is good."
"I have found this product excellent for test/dev environments. This is 90% of what I use this product for."
"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."
 

Cons

"Monitoring and resolution could be improved."
"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."
"Support for VF is needed, where you can, for example, export from VMware to KVM."
"The grid interface of KVM needs improvement. It could be more beautiful, especially when compared to VMware."
"I have encountered difficulties in getting the tool's documentation."
"The solution should be more user friendly. We are struggling with the command lines."
"Technical support is not top-notch."
"The main drawback in the solution is probably disaster recovery."
"It should have the functionality where if I move the mouse away from one screen, the context changes automatically."
"The technical support needs to improve."
"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."
"This solution needs improvement with the business continuity planning, disaster and recovery management and using centralized data storage."
"The communications setup lags. It does not connect properly so the batching and networking is a bit slow."
"The solution needs to improve the methods used for starting and stopping the machine."
"They could improve the graphics functionality of the product."
"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."
"One improvement is mouse emulation. Some people in the office want to use a five—or seven-button mouse like they're used to at home, but they can't with the workstation setup."
"My experience with Workstation is limited, so I don't know all the functionalities of this tool. Maybe Workstation could add some more compatibility with other vendors."
"I would want to see features included that make deployment easier."
"I have had issues with the virtual network adapters in the past that has taken some time to troubleshoot."
"There could be more integration with different tools."
"The product’s virtual machine data backup feature needs upgrading."
"It would be helpful if VMware Workstation included an in-built monitoring tool for monitoring things."
"VMware Workstation could improve the export and import of virtual machines."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"KVM is an open-source solution."
"There is no cost involved in the use of KVM, as it is open source."
"The product's pricing is above average but cheaper than that of VMware. I can't provide specific licensing costs, but we have a contract with Red Hat for client support that covers everything. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"It is cheaper than other solutions out there on the market."
"KVM is free."
"It is free for everyone."
"It is cheaper than other competitors like VMware or Hyper-V."
"This solution came with the Linux license."
"It is pretty good for the price, which is free."
"Everything is free within limitations. Once you go over a certain level of usage you have to license the product."
"It is a very cost-effective solution."
"The license I use is free."
"The product is free to use."
"No licensing is required as it is open-source."
"Available for free use"
"There are no licensing fees."
"The licensing costs are cheap. I pay approximately $100 per year."
"The pricing is a bit steep in my opinion for testing and there are other options."
"The solution's pricing is almost the same as what Google Cloud, AWS, or Microsoft would charge you."
"The solution is moderately priced. I rate the pricing a six out of ten."
"The tool is not the cheapest."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"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."
"With all its support and ease of use, VMware Player's pricing is fair."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Server Virtualization Software solutions are best for your needs.
817,653 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
15%
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Learn More

Video not available
 

Overview

 

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.
817,653 professionals have used our research since 2012.