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 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."
"It is an open ecosystem, and we see there is a benefit in open-source solutions."
"Very cost-effective."
"Our production servers are running in Linux, and this solution supports that environment well."
"The initial setup was very easy."
"It offers a high-availability environment."
"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."
"KVM has a rich options set which can be directly used or via wrappers, such as libvirt."
"The snapshot feature is very powerful; it protects us from disaster."
"The installation is easy."
"This solution creates a snapshot of virtual machines so you can create test environments."
"I like that it has a snapshot feature."
"I think VirtualBox has good stability because I use it in an environment with several resolutions."
"The solution is very stable."
"The flexibility as well as performance wise and as well as data volume, we have huge volume stored."
"Oracle VM VirtualBox is easy to use."
"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 grid interface of KVM needs improvement. It could be more beautiful, especially when compared to VMware."
"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."
"I have encountered difficulties in getting the tool's documentation."
"KVM is very difficult to manage and run on daily operations."
"Lacks high availability across clusters as well as support for Apache CloudStack."
"Some things are pretty basic, and they could be more robust with more detail."
"We still occasionally build Interlaced Wireless Protection within our environment. The ecosystem entails areas, where we support agents, and release backup and security solutions. Collaboration with independent software vendors (ITOLs or ITOLED) is necessary to offer these solutions to customers. However, the scope of the ecosystem in KVM is not as extensive as that of VMware's. In contrast, VMware boasts a robust partner network, allowing for comprehensive customer solutions. On the other hand, KVM’s ecosystem is comparatively limited in comparison. I would like to see FT features in KVM."
"I find the solution to be incredibly unstable, constantly falling over and not working properly."
"It's not as robust as server platforms, nor does it need to be."
"The communications setup lags. It does not connect properly so the batching and networking is a bit slow."
"Oracle VM VirtualBox is not flexible, It's not like VMware."
"The solution is a bit less stable than I would like."
"The solution has to do a better job of promoting the product and its licensing capabilities."
"The memory and hardware usage could be a little bit lighter. Right now, it's quite heavy on the usage. The CPU usage should be lower."
"The solution needs to improve its flexibility. It's not as flexible as VMware."
KVM is ranked 4th in Server Virtualization Software with 38 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.