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.
"This solution is open source and easy to configure."
"If you prefer command-line, there are all kinds of command-line options."
"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 performance is great."
"It is easy to use, stable, and flexible. It is a pretty mature product, and it is faster than VirtualBox."
"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."
"One of the best features of KVM is its user-friendly interface."
"What I like most about KVM is that it's very easy to use. Everything is built-in, even when writing command lines."
"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."
"It's a pretty good product in terms of monitoring."
"The solution is very stable."
"This is a good and easy solution for running virtual environments."
"I like that it has a snapshot feature."
"This product is very user-friendly and easy to use."
"The configuration and installation is pretty straightforward."
"The grid interface of KVM needs improvement. It could be more beautiful, especially when compared to VMware."
"Some things are pretty basic, and they could be more robust with more detail."
"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."
"The networking with wireless devices needs improvement."
"I would like to see more focus on microservices and integration with Kubernetes or OpenShift."
"The main drawback in the solution is probably disaster recovery."
"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."
"The AI and the UI could be improved. The user interface is a little outdated and the AI is not very attractive."
"The solution is a bit less stable than I would like."
"The installation is difficult and could be improved."
"Oracle needs to improve its hot virtual machine migration. It didn't work as intended. It should allow us to migrate between virtual machines, without stopping the database."
"The product lacks scalability since it is for desktops and not for servers."
"The solution has to do a better job of promoting the product and its licensing capabilities."
"This should have better support for multiple network cards and some parts of the GUI should be improved."
"Oracle VM VirtualBox doesn't work properly with an antivirus tool."
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.