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.
"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."
"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 tool's most valuable feature is backup. The product makes it easy to manage virtual machines. Other tools require third-party applications like VMware and vSphere. However, KVM doesn't require these applications."
"The product is really good...One can get good performance because of kernel-based virtualization."
"The performance is great."
"The initial setup was very easy."
"I like that this is an open-source solution. It is very powerful, and it's easy."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its stability."
"This is a good and easy solution for running virtual environments."
"The versatility, simplicity, and stability of the product are it's most valuable features."
"The solution has high performance and is easy to use."
"The flexibility as well as performance wise and as well as data volume, we have huge volume stored."
"It's a pretty good product in terms of monitoring."
"This is a highly scalable solution."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"I believe KVM offers a unified answer, while ProxMark addresses orchestration. KVM lacks orchestration. If the aim is to centrally oversee multiple KVMs – let's say to freeze them – a centralized management solution is absent."
"The KVM tech support is really bad. They are not very responsive."
"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."
"The only negative aspect of needing hardware support is a fully functional KVM can be dropped. It would be nice if the support for other platforms, like ARM or Risk, were as good as the x86 one. However, with the democratization of Chromebooks based on these chips and mobile devices, it will not take long for that to happen."
"In KVM, snapshots and cloning are areas where there could be a little more sophistication, like VMware."
"Monitoring and resolution could be improved."
"The stability of this solution is less than other products in the same category."
"The product must provide better performance monitoring features."
"Having live migrations to move a running server to other hardware would be great."
"The user interface needs to be improved."
"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."
"It could improve slightly with enhanced reporting capabilities that show the current status of the network."
"The solution has to do a better job of promoting the product and its licensing capabilities."
"We're working with them to be able to allow the local USB ports to be ported over to the remote desktop, running VirtualBox."
"They could improve the graphics functionality of the product."
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.