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.
"KVM has a rich options set which can be directly used or via wrappers, such as libvirt."
"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 GUI interface makes the management of KVM easier than ever before."
"It is easy to use, stable, and flexible. It is a pretty mature product, and it is faster than VirtualBox."
"One of the best features of KVM is its user-friendly interface."
"I appreciate the network passcode feature in KVM, as it provides a convenient way to manage DNS and cloud hosting."
"What I like most about KVM is that it's very easy to use. Everything is built-in, even when writing command lines."
"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."
"The cloning is a very useful tool."
"This solution creates a snapshot of virtual machines so you can create test environments."
"The product gives us the flexibility to try different machines."
"It's very simple to use."
"The solution is very convenient and easy to use."
"The snapshot feature is very powerful; it protects us from disaster."
"This product is very user-friendly and easy to use."
"The flexibility and the closed platform, so it allows you to run in multiple platforms, Windows, Linux, Macintosh."
"The solution should be more user friendly. We are struggling with the command lines."
"The virtual manager and the graphical QEMU for KVM need some improvement."
"Some things are pretty basic, and they could be more robust with more detail."
"In KVM, snapshots and cloning are areas where there could be a little more sophistication, like VMware."
"The main drawback in the solution is probably disaster recovery."
"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."
"One problem I have is that it's not very scalable when it comes to resizing the VM disk dimensions. For example, if you have initially set a virtual drive to 10 GB and you want to upgrade it to 15 GB, it's not that easy."
"Business continuity features need to be added."
"It should have the functionality where if I move the mouse away from one screen, the context changes automatically."
"The solution is a bit less stable than I would like."
"The communications setup lags. It does not connect properly so the batching and networking is a bit slow."
"We're working with them to be able to allow the local USB ports to be ported over to the remote desktop, running VirtualBox."
"Oracle VM VirtualBox is not flexible, It's not like VMware."
"When I select the Ubuntu operating system from within the virtual machine, it sometimes hangs."
"The product lacks scalability since it is for desktops and not for servers."
"This solution needs improvement with the business continuity planning, disaster and recovery management and using centralized data storage."
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.