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Oracle VM VirtualBox vs VMware vSphere comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 6, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
4.0
Organizations using Oracle VM VirtualBox achieved quick ROI by reducing hardware costs and speeding up software deployment and testing.
Sentiment score
7.2
VMware vSphere delivers substantial savings, faster deployment, increased efficiency, and high ROI through reduced hardware and operational costs.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.7
Oracle VM VirtualBox users often prefer community resources over official support, though some praise Oracle's knowledgeable assistance.
Sentiment score
7.2
VMware vSphere's customer service is praised for expertise but criticized for delayed responses and inconsistent lower-tier support quality.
Priority one issues are usually addressed by engineers within one to two hours.
My team solves most tickets, needing support only about once or twice a year.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Oracle VM VirtualBox scalability receives mixed reviews, with some praising efficiency while others cite hardware constraints and resource management challenges.
Sentiment score
7.4
VMware vSphere excels in scalability, seamlessly integrating new resources for efficient, robust performance across diverse enterprise environments.
Scaling is easy, whether it is hyperconverged or a three-tier architecture.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.0
Oracle VM VirtualBox is generally stable, with Linux favored for reliability, and users rate it highly for functionality.
Sentiment score
8.0
VMware vSphere is praised for stability, with issues usually related to hardware and resolvable through patches and maintenance.
It is a very stable hypervisor solution.
 

Room For Improvement

Users find Oracle VM VirtualBox challenging due to outdated UI, networking issues, and required command-line configurations, seeking improvements.
VMware vSphere faces criticism for high costs, unresponsive GUI, limited features, poor support, and inadequate security and integration.
Another area is the stability during upgrades from older versions to newer versions, where we face issues.
The cost changed from perpetual to subscription, and there is a need for alternative solutions.
Sometimes, it is difficult to find documentation for specific tools and solutions.
 

Setup Cost

Oracle VM VirtualBox is favored for free access, appealing to smaller users, with variable costs for larger enterprises.
VMware vSphere offers stability and robust features but is costly, with complex licensing, especially challenging for smaller organizations.
Costs significantly increased from perpetual to subscription, with prices rising by two to three times over three to five years.
 

Valuable Features

Oracle VM VirtualBox provides cost-free, multi-platform virtualization, offering ease of use, high performance, and versatile open-source features.
VMware vSphere enhances virtualization with seamless VM movement, high availability, resource optimization, scalability, and efficient centralized management, reducing costs.
The vMotion feature is beneficial for online migration of virtual machines from one host to another without downtime.
VMware vCenter is extremely useful as we can manage between 100 and 1,000 hosts using just one management tool.
The high availability feature is significant.
 

Categories and Ranking

Oracle VM VirtualBox
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware vSphere
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
452
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Server Virtualization Software category, the mindshare of Oracle VM VirtualBox is 7.5%, down from 11.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware vSphere is 18.1%, down from 19.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Virtualization Software
 

Featured Reviews

Kopano  Ramaphoi - PeerSpot reviewer
A flexible and easy-to-deploy product that provides a great user experience
The product should improve its scalability. It should be more flexible to be used with desktops with different capacities. We do not have much storage on our desktops, and we must allocate a certain amount of memory to install the product. When we install a virtual machine, we have a limit that we cannot exceed 80% of RAM.
Neeraj Mehra - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamlines virtualization and has features like high availability and vMotion
The primary use case is for virtualization, including the implementation of vSphere, vCloud Foundation, vCloud Director, and cloud automation with vSphere My customers, particularly SMBs, mainly utilize High Availability (HA), DRS, and vMotion features. The vMotion feature is beneficial for…
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Server Virtualization Software solutions are best for your needs.
832,138 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user234735 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 10, 2015
Hyper-V 2012 R2 vs. VMware vSphere 5.5
I was won with Hyper-V 2012R2 recently and the table below based on customer RFP (edited). This articles all about technical, there is not related with TCO/ROI, licensing cost, “political”, etc. Another to noted is the Windows Server 2012 licenses is based on 2 socket CPU, meanwhile…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Educational Organization
30%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 easy to set up and manage. It offers very good security. It has a virtual manag...
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 affect the terms of licenses and additional costs. The price is okay. I rate the p...
What is IOMMU?
DEEPEN DHULLA did explain well IOMMU. IOMMU has to be activated at the bios level. It exists on Intel and AMD platforms. It is used a lot inside virtualization platforms like VMware VSphere. It pr...
Why KVM??? Help please!
We use VMware and KVM. We find that KVM is a lot simpler to use and it provides the virtualization we need for Linux and Windows. For us, VMware does not offer any advantage. Moreover, KVM is free.
What is the biggest difference between Nutanix Acropolis and VMware vSphere?
We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface that allows you to talk directly to your VM from the present software. We fou...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Airbus, Colorado State University, SCS Africa, Wolf Medical Systems.
Abu Dhabi Ports Company, ACS, AIA New Zealand, Consona, Corporate Express, CS Energy, and Digiweb.
Find out what your peers are saying about Oracle VM VirtualBox vs. VMware vSphere and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
832,138 professionals have used our research since 2012.