PeerSpot takes a user-centered approach to creating product comparisons that help IT decision-makers arrive at informed decisions. Instead of relying on the word of the companies that create the technological solutions, they go to the users themselves. Real users offer true feedback without any of the partiality that the solutions’ vendors may have.
PeerSpot’s users of Server Virtualization Software Solutions have ranked the products according to how potentially valuable they may be to other users. What follows are the top eight ranked products in the category:
1. VMware vSphere
PeerSpot users ranked VMware vSphere as the number one virtualization software solution of 2021. Here is what is being said about it:
A technical architect at a computer software company writes, “VMware vSphere is replete with about a gazillion different features. In the context of vCenter, everything has been amalgamated into a single appliance. It's much more simplified at deployment. Because of that, immediately I would say the most useful feature is the Lifecycle Manager, VLCM, that is now available. So, what used to be the VMware of Data Manager has now changed to the Lifecycle Manager. Those changes are really, really useful.”
However, a Systems Engineer/Systems Administrator at a government agency feels, “The web user interface can be a bit clunky from time to time, so there may be some room for improvement in that regard. I was a fan of the C# client for as long as I could use it. The move from flash to HTML5 for the web interface is an improvement but still not a good as C# was.”
2. Proxmox VE
Proxmox VE was named the number two virtualization software solution of 2021.
Kevin H., a Technical Operations Manager at Ocient, Inc.writes, “The feature I like best about this product is the fact that they have independent nodes. Proxmox is based on KVM and essentially you could lose a node. All the hosts that are running are evacuated elsewhere in the cluster and away you go. I have reduced infrastructure and I'm familiar with it because at the heart of the hypervisor is Debian Linux and I'm a Linux administrator. It didn't require learning a whole new platform and it's so easy to use. Proxmox will be in my toolbox forever, I love it.”
However, he also writes, “The product should have more enterprise features, perhaps DRS. I don't think Proxmox has the ability to sense that a host is running hot and needs to be evacuated. So DRS, dynamic resource scheduling, is a feature that constantly monitors the host and if it sees a particular host taking up a lot of resources, it will take that host off and throw it on a different host in the cluster that's not running as hot and doesn't have as much utilization. It protects the overall cluster.”
3. KVM
Users named KVM the number three virtualization software solution of 2021.
Muhammad H., CEO at BRIGHT-i SYSTEMS LIMITED, writes, “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.”
He also thinks, “Technical support could be better. In the next release, I would like to see an improved user interface and dashboard. This type of improvement will make it easy or help our engineers understand the solution from a requirement point of view.”
4. Hyper-V
PeerSpot users ranked Hyper-V the number four virtualization software solution of 2021.
Aws A., an IT manager at a tech vendor writes, “It has very good fail-over features. You can have servers running in a fail-over cluster and whenever one server fails, you can migrate the workloads to the second one. This is also a very important feature to avoid service downtime or to minimize it at the very least.”
He also states, “The solution needs to improve integration with hyper-converged infrastructure solutions, or SGI solutions. We were going with SGI for our next virtualization solution. I read reviews about the Hyper-V causing issues with SGI. When we decided to go with SGI, I decided against going with Hyper-V due to the integration issues that it had.”
5. Oracle VM
Oracle VM is ranked as the number five solution of 2021 by PeerSpot users.
Awais K., a Senior System Support Engineer at Techaccess Pakistan, writes “The previous version was full of bugs, but they seem to have resolved all the issues on it so it's a good solution. Oracle VM is a good visualization hypervisor, like VMware and Hyper-V. We can create clusters and primary file takeaways.”
Rozaino S. a senior manager at NCS Group thinks “Oracle VM should be more feature-rich.”
6. Citrix Hypervisor
Citrix Hypervisor was ranked as the number six solution of 2021 by PeerSpot users.
Michael E., an Enterprise Server and Storage Administrator at a financial services firm, believes, “It is quite flexible and rugged. It is also easy to understand and user-friendly. It is not as complicated as some of the other solutions. It has its technicalities, but it is easy to understand. You can easily pick up in a short period of time and understand how to manage the infrastructure.”
Bunmi S., the CTO at Syscodes Communications Ltd, writes, ”I'd like to see improvement in integration with other vendors and other applications, like Microsoft, for example. Operability with different kinds of hardware and infrastructure could be included, so that you don't have to approach the vendor. I should be able to operate with a diverse infrastructure or RPA.”
7. Nutanix AHV
Users of PeerSpot ranked Nutanix AHV as the number seven solution of the year 2021.
A Senior IT Consultant writes, “The features that I've found most valuable are that it is customized like Linux KVM and it is open-source for people who know Linux. It's easier for them to use AHV than MWeb. Plus, AHV is free. For Linux people it's easy and also it's free.”
Steffen H., an administrator at Neuberger Gebäudeautomation GmbH, writes ”Since it is tightly integrated, you want to have it as a single installable thing. But that is against its nature. The tight integration with AOS makes it what it is. AHV is mostly on par with ESXi. Since it comes together with AOS you must compare it to ESXI with VSAN to get the complete picture. It can do vGPU just like ESXi, can move VMs just like ESXi, and snapshots won't make it "stun" the VM as it does on ESXi.”
8. Oracle VM VirtualBox
Users of Peerspot ranked Oracle VM VirtualBox as the number eight solution of 2021.
A Director of Engineering at a manufacturing company writes, “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.”
An IT manager at a government agency writes, “The product needs to make dramatic changes to the guest machines. For example, they need to improve changing the disks, and the resources used and to make the back and forth transfer to other platforms like Nutanix, VMware, or Microsoft.”