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.
"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 feature is hypervisor. I can host at the same time different operating systems in Linux Windows."
"The KVM service is well managed with a central policy interface."
"It is an open ecosystem, and we see there is a benefit in open-source solutions."
"It is an easily scalable solution."
"Good screen and keyboard sharing feature."
"The performance is great."
"One of the best features of KVM is its user-friendly interface."
"Oracle VM Virtualbox is easy to use and does not require much training."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to copy bidirectionally between the desktop and the virtual machine."
"Oracle VM VirtualBox has a platform where the support team responds to frequently asked questions by its users. Every time I have had issues with Oracle VM VirtualBox, I always get a solution from Oracle's online platform or GitHub."
"The scalability of the solution is very good."
"This product is extremely easy to install, use, has a great GUI and is incredibly stable."
"The pause feature is valuable. I can pause, which is something that not all hypervisors allow. The snapshot feature is also valuable."
"The product’s most valuable feature is the ability to manage multiple operating systems through one application."
"One thing that maybe could be improved is making it easier to scale. It needs to be more clear on how to scale the storage space for virtual machines."
"KVM is very difficult to manage and run on daily operations."
"We would like to have a software lifecycle solution included in this solution. We can handle the software needed for KVM, but also the software that we provide. A lifecycle component would be very beneficial."
"Support for VF is needed, where you can, for example, export from VMware to KVM."
"The main drawback in the solution is probably disaster recovery."
"The networking with wireless devices needs improvement."
"The solution’s user interface could be improved and made more user-friendly."
"The virtual manager and the graphical QEMU for KVM need some improvement."
"There are a few bugs that need to be updated."
"One valuable feature would be for it to work right the first time but it doesn't necessarily do that."
"Oracle VM VirtualBox doesn't work properly with an antivirus tool."
"We're working with them to be able to allow the local USB ports to be ported over to the remote desktop, running VirtualBox."
"The communications setup lags. It does not connect properly so the batching and networking is a bit slow."
"Having live migrations to move a running server to other hardware would be great."
"The product lacks scalability since it is for desktops and not for servers."
"The technical support needs to improve."
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.