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 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."
"I appreciate the network passcode feature in KVM, as it provides a convenient way to manage DNS and cloud hosting."
"KVM is stable."
"The GUI interface makes the management of KVM easier than ever before."
"Very cost-effective."
"I like that this is an open-source solution. It is very powerful, and it's easy."
"KVM has a rich options set which can be directly used or via wrappers, such as libvirt."
"There is a strong emphasis on availability, and they have numerous API interfaces for distributed storage and the solution is quite known for its openness."
"The most valuable features of Proxmox VE are the ease of containerization. Overall the solution is generic, feature-rich, and has compatibility."
"It fits in well with our organization. It works and does what it says it does."
"We had issues with this solution when it comes to resources. We have officially created four to five PMs and it just continues to make more resources even though they are delivered in the main post mode."
"The ability to back up a host and keep it running is valuable."
"Proxmox VE has many containers. You need to download the image and do basic configuration, after which it is operational within a few minutes. The solution provides many containers that are light in use and don't use a lot of memory. You don't have to spend a lot of resources."
"It's very user-friendly."
"The solution is easy to install. It can run on a lot of different types of hardware. Creating virtual machines with it is really easy."
"The whole solution is good. It has good tools that help me in managing the servers. It is also stable."
"Business continuity features need to be added."
"The solution should be more user friendly. We are struggling with the command lines."
"KVM is very difficult to manage and run on daily operations."
"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."
"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 virtual manager and the graphical QEMU for KVM need some improvement."
"There are some issues with the graphics and some software that is very complex."
"If this solution could import directly from OVS format then it would make migration much easier."
"Its performance and support can be improved. Currently, there is a cost for support."
"I can't speak to any improvements. It is not lacking features."
"The solution is not good at upgrading and this is why I using version 6.2 and not version 7. There is no easy way to implement the upgrade. I don't have enough experience to do it safely."
"The process for deployment is complicated."
"The scalability could be better."
"Proxmox VE can improve the management of virtual discs. For example, if my virtual disc is 200 GB and I want to decrease it is not easy. I have to do a lot of things to decrease the size of existing virtual machines. If the Proxmox VE team can make it easy for customers to instantly increase or decrease the virtual machine hard disc, it will be very helpful for me. However, the containers I can do it easily."
"We are facing issues with disk utilization and disk performance."
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.