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.
"I like that it's easy to manage. It's also more powerful when it comes to security than others. That point of view is the one consideration. The other consideration is that it's cost-effective."
"I find the density of the product most valuable. It is density that a technologist can just assign page merging. This is what makes KVM one of the important players of the virtualization market."
"The most valuable feature of KVM is its stability."
"The product is really good...One can get good performance because of kernel-based virtualization."
"The GUI interface makes the management of KVM easier than ever before."
"The key aspect is that the KVM directly interacts with the Kronos. There's no clear indication of indirect communication with Kronos. It is not linked to Kronos, and interaction is straightforward without any intermediaries."
"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."
"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."
"Technical support is good."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its stability."
"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 most valuable feature is the ability to copy bidirectionally between the desktop and the virtual machine."
"The installation is easy."
"It is a stable product."
"It's a pretty good product in terms of monitoring."
"The solution’s user interface could be improved and made more user-friendly."
"We are not getting good support from KVM, and it is not that user-friendly."
"KVM is very difficult to manage and run on daily operations."
"Monitoring and resolution could be improved."
"Its resource usage can be improved."
"I have encountered difficulties in getting the tool's documentation."
"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."
"Lacks high availability across clusters as well as support for Apache CloudStack."
"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."
"It could improve slightly with enhanced reporting capabilities that show the current status of the network."
"The product lacks scalability since it is for desktops and not for servers."
"When I select the Ubuntu operating system from within the virtual machine, it sometimes hangs."
"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"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."
"I think that this solution should be more user-friendly."
"The user interface needs to be improved."
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.