We performed a comparison between KVM and Proxmox VE based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, KVM and Proxmox VE had a similar user rating regarding ease of deployment, pricing, and service and support. When it came to features, reviewers felt KVM was complex and not scalable, while users of Proxmox VE were unhappy that certain processes weren’t automatic, and moving things to the cloud was difficult.
"I have found KVM to be scalable."
"The initial setup was simple."
"I find the density of the product most valuable. It is density that a technologist can just assign page merging. This is what makes KVM one of the important players of the virtualization market."
"The performance is great."
"Good screen and keyboard sharing feature."
"One of the best features of KVM is its user-friendly interface."
"The KVM service is well managed with a central policy interface."
"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."
"We can access the product from iPhone 7. It is stable and easy."
"The solution's compatibility is very good with multiple operating systems. The moving systems are very good and migration is excellent. These are the most valuable features for us."
"The whole solution is good. It has good tools that help me in managing the servers. It is also stable."
"Proxmox is free, very stable, and doesn't require more resources for memory RAM. It's fine for a small data center."
"The ability to back up a host and keep it running is valuable."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is that its storage container, LVM, and everything else work out of the box."
"We now have the ability to quickly build and deploy VM desktops for application testing with the snapshot ability to rollback, as required."
"Less infrastructure required; simple to use."
"I would like to see more focus on microservices and integration with Kubernetes or OpenShift."
"The solution should be more user friendly. We are struggling with the command lines."
"The only negative aspect of needing hardware support is a fully functional KVM can be dropped. It would be nice if the support for other platforms, like ARM or Risk, were as good as the x86 one. However, with the democratization of Chromebooks based on these chips and mobile devices, it will not take long for that to happen."
"Support for VF is needed, where you can, for example, export from VMware to KVM."
"The initial setup of this solution is more difficult than some of the competing products and it could be improved."
"The product must provide better performance monitoring features."
"The virtual manager and the graphical QEMU for KVM need some improvement."
"I have previously used VMware and KVM is easier to use. However, they both have their strengths depending on their use cases. They are mostly equal. One of VMware's advantages is it has better support."
"It would be nice to have total CPU and RAM allocations show for all VMs/CTs to avoid overloading an individual hypervisor."
"The solution needs to improve its stability."
"The availability of the solution could be a bit better."
"If this solution could import directly from OVS format then it would make migration much easier."
"The virtualizer in Proxmox VE could improve."
"A feature which should be added is the ability to encrypt the main installation."
"I would like to see more monitoring in the next release of this solution."
"The only issue I have with Proxmox VE is updating it. You have to manually update it or you have to have a way to update it automatically."
KVM is ranked 4th in Server Virtualization Software with 39 reviews while Proxmox VE is ranked 1st in Server Virtualization Software with 58 reviews. KVM is rated 8.0, while Proxmox VE is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of KVM writes "Delivers good performance because of kernel-based virtualization". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Proxmox VE writes "Easy to use and supports multi-monitors on multiple VMs in KVM". KVM is most compared with Oracle VM VirtualBox, Hyper-V, VMware vSphere, VMware Workstation and Oracle VM, whereas Proxmox VE is most compared with VMware vSphere, Oracle VM VirtualBox, Nutanix AHV Virtualization, Hyper-V and Citrix Hypervisor. See our KVM vs. Proxmox VE report.
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I use Proxmox VE and have been very happy with it. In my opinion, it is a complete and stable solution with excellent tools for managing servers. It has a lot of different features, and I also love the user interface. Setup is easy, it is very stable, scales well, and is a great fit that is suitable for my organization. Besides those advantages, another huge plus for me is that it doesn’t require any additional resources for memory RAM and it has independent nodes. I also chose Proxmox VE because it allows me to run services without needing dedicated hardware. With all that in mind, there are still some downsides to the product. Because it is still a very young solution, it sometimes has bugs. In addition, some processes need to be completed manually by command line because not all processes are automatic. And in the future, I hope they will add application storage.
KVM is easy to set up, deploy, and use. I think its ability to scale could be improved, though. If your organization relies on command lines a lot, KVM has several different command line options to choose from. From the information I have gathered from other users, KVM seems to have good customer service and technical support. In addition, the GUI interface is solid. In general, KVM seems like it performs well but it lacks good management features and needs to offer more integration options. However, in comparison to other solutions,KVM has a reputation for being faster. And while it provides a good screen sharing feature, the resolution isn’t great. Even though KVM is cost-effective, I think it lacks high availability across clusters.
Conclusion: Ultimately I chose Proxmox VE because it was a better option for my particular needs.
In a marketing services-related company security is paramount.
Therefore, you probably will rely on services, especially during maintenance of your network and need support for that.
When it comes to security and support KVM would be the better option. With in-house engineers, both Proxmox VE and KVM could be chosen. But qualified engineers are hard to come by nowadays, depending on where you live.
As a side note, I maintain mainly Xenserver, VMware and KVM. When it comes to performance per watt Xenserver would be the king, especially on larger setups.
Since your setup is of medium size and if you decided not to go for the aforementioned setups, KVM would be the lesser of the worse.
Your question depends a lot on the hardware/cloud system you have in mind. More details would make my recommendations more precise.
Kind regards,
KVM is a kernel base hypervisor while Proxmox VE is open-source. Technically, Proxmox VE fulfills the smallest business users than KVM.
And if we go for the quality and support KVM is better.
But Proxmox VE has also more features according to business growth.