We performed a comparison between KVM and Oracle VM VirtualBox based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Both KVM and Oracle VM VirtualBox have their strengths and weaknesses. Oracle VM VirtualBox seems to be the more favorable choice of the two, since it offers good scalability whereas scalability seems to be an ongoing issue for KVM users.
"Documentation and problem-solving troubleshooting are the most valuable features. Performance (when fine-tuned and with "special" HW) is awesome, equal to or more than other enterprise closed-source solutions."
"The initial setup was very easy."
"I appreciate the network passcode feature in KVM, as it provides a convenient way to manage DNS and cloud hosting."
"If you prefer command-line, there are all kinds of command-line options."
"It is easy to use, stable, and flexible. It is a pretty mature product, and it is faster than VirtualBox."
"The performance is great."
"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 initial setup was simple."
"I like that it is free and runs on Linux/Ubuntu - I wouldn't use any other solution. I am able to perform small developing tests."
"Oracle VM Virtualbox is easy to use and does not require much training."
"I like that Oracle VM is safe and stable. It is also very easy to administer. For example, opening a VM or adding a host adapter is extremely easy."
"This product is extremely easy to install, use, has a great GUI and is incredibly stable."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"It's very simple to use."
"The solution has high performance and is easy to use."
"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. The other thing that is good about VirtualBox is that it is open source. So, if you need to do any modifications for your own purposes, you can just download the source, modify it, and deploy it in your environment. It is pretty good and very versatile. You can create and manipulate virtual machines from the command line, which is also very important. It's something that some other products on the desktop side do not have. VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop don't have a good command-line interface to create and manipulate virtual machines, whereas VirtualBox has it out of the box, which is pretty good."
"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 stability of this solution is less than other products in the same category."
"There are some issues with the graphics and some software that is very complex."
"I have encountered difficulties in getting the tool's documentation."
"Business continuity features need to be added."
"Monitoring and resolution could be improved."
"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."
"The virtual manager and the graphical QEMU for KVM need some improvement."
"This solution needs improvement with the business continuity planning, disaster and recovery management and using centralized data storage."
"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"When I select the Ubuntu operating system from within the virtual machine, it sometimes hangs."
"The solution is not flexible."
"Having live migrations to move a running server to other hardware would be great."
"The user interface needs to be improved."
"The solution is a bit less stable than I would like."
"It would be good if we could use Hyper-V Windows subsystems with Linux and VirtualBox on the same instance. Currently, to be able to use VirtualBox, we have to restart the machine into an instance of Windows where Hyper-V is disabled, which is understandably very inconvenient."
KVM is ranked 4th in Server Virtualization Software with 39 reviews while Oracle VM VirtualBox is ranked 5th in Server Virtualization Software with 61 reviews. KVM is rated 8.0, while Oracle VM VirtualBox is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of KVM writes "Delivers good performance because of kernel-based virtualization". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Oracle VM VirtualBox writes "The solution is versatile, simple to use, and stable". KVM is most compared with Proxmox VE, Hyper-V, VMware vSphere, VMware Workstation and Oracle VM, whereas Oracle VM VirtualBox is most compared with Proxmox VE, Hyper-V, Oracle VM, VMware Workstation and VMware vSphere. See our KVM vs. Oracle VM VirtualBox report.
See our list of best Server Virtualization Software vendors.
We monitor all Server Virtualization Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.