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.
"What I like most about KVM is that it's very easy to use. Everything is built-in, even when writing command lines."
"This solution is open source and easy to configure."
"I have found KVM to be scalable."
"If you are a Linux desktop user, KVM is the solution to go with if you have to start virtual machines with Linux or other operating systems with almost zero extra configuration needed."
"If you prefer command-line, there are all kinds of command-line options."
"The initial setup was very easy."
"The most valuable feature is hypervisor. I can host at the same time different operating systems in Linux Windows."
"The GUI interface makes the management of KVM easier than ever before."
"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 flexibility and the closed platform, so it allows you to run in multiple platforms, Windows, Linux, Macintosh."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to copy bidirectionally between the desktop and the virtual machine."
"It is a stable product."
"It's a pretty good product in terms of monitoring."
"This product is very user-friendly and easy to use."
"The networking with wireless devices needs improvement."
"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."
"Monitoring and resolution could be improved."
"The speed is around thirty percent slower than another competitor. This would be something to work on."
"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."
"Business continuity features need to be added."
"Technical support is not top-notch."
"The solution lacks some open source remote administration tools. The reload of individual virtual machine definitions through the vboxweb service (via its API) without restarting it and the access to shared storage (to use teleport functions) need to be improved."
"Basically, the GUI and command-line interface need improvement."
"The communications setup lags. It does not connect properly so the batching and networking is a bit slow."
"The user interface needs to be improved."
"Oracle VM VirtualBox is not flexible, It's not like VMware."
"This solution needs improvement with the business continuity planning, disaster and recovery management and using centralized data storage."
"The technical support needs to improve."
"Oracle VMs don't have a solid web interface of their own. This is an area where Oracle is lagging behind. Now, we use headless servers, install Oracle VMs, and manage them remotely. We could use phpVirtual Box, but it is a third-party solution. A lot of people contribute to it, and it's not authenticated by Oracle. As a result, I don't find it to be a good option. Therefore, I would like to see Oracle offer an extension pack or a licensed version that fixes this problem."
KVM is ranked 4th in Server Virtualization Software with 15 reviews while Oracle VM VirtualBox is ranked 5th in Server Virtualization Software with 10 reviews. KVM is rated 8.0, while Oracle VM VirtualBox is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of KVM writes "Reduces OpEx and is easy to maintain, along with low memory usage and a minimal interface". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Oracle VM VirtualBox writes "Simple to use, easy to configure, and reliable". 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.