We performed a comparison between KVM and RHEV based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: KVM wins out in this comparison. Users find it very fast and super easy to use and manage. It provides excellent security and scales easily. Many users feel RHEV is lacking in some documentation capabilities and security features and that it can be challenging to scale up when needed.
"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."
"The initial setup was very easy."
"This solution is open source and easy to configure."
"I have found KVM to be scalable."
"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."
"KVM has a rich options set which can be directly used or via wrappers, such as libvirt."
"The performance is great."
"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 a good licensing module."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"Customers are moving to open source and Red Hat is the leader in this particular space. I think customers feel more confident running Red Hat Virtualization than VMware."
"What they provide is way beyond the essential requirements of customers."
"This solution is very stable. Much more so than similar products."
"The initial setup is fairly straightforward and well-documented. The process is very similar to its competitors. The success of your setup depends on how well you plan."
"We find the ease of use of this solution to be invaluable. It is user-friendly and integrates well with other software."
"It is very stable."
"I have previously used VMware and KVM is easier to use. However, they both have their strengths depending on their use cases. They are mostly equal. One of VMware's advantages is it has better support."
"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."
"In KVM, snapshots and cloning are areas where there could be a little more sophistication, like VMware."
"The initial setup of this solution is more difficult than some of the competing products and it could be improved."
"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."
"Some things are pretty basic, and they could be more robust with more detail."
"I have encountered difficulties in getting the tool's documentation."
"Business continuity features need to be added."
"When we do a direct comparison, then obviously VMware does better in terms of having Fault Tolerance and doing active disaster recovery and these kind of things. This is something that can be improved within Red Hat."
"We'd like it if it would be possible on Red Hat Virtualization to possibly connect two or three VMs to the same disk."
"The biggest improvement would be more third-party direct support for things like backups and provisioning through third-party portals."
"The availability of technical expertise with the solution may be limited in some areas."
"Customers are not aware of this solution, they can improve by providing more awareness and solution availability."
"The UI should be more interactive with additional features."
"It would be better to have more patches, especially kernel-level updates, live and online so that we can keep the business up and running during this period."
"The Administration of the Oracle database and the SAP ERP needs improvement."
KVM is ranked 4th in Server Virtualization Software with 39 reviews while RHEV is ranked 10th in Server Virtualization Software with 32 reviews. KVM is rated 8.0, while RHEV is rated 7.6. The top reviewer of KVM writes "Delivers good performance because of kernel-based virtualization". On the other hand, the top reviewer of RHEV writes "Offers frameworks with well-documented API and easy to use". KVM is most compared with Proxmox VE, Oracle VM VirtualBox, Hyper-V, VMware vSphere and Citrix Hypervisor, whereas RHEV is most compared with VMware vSphere, Proxmox VE, Hyper-V, Oracle VM and Nutanix AHV Virtualization. See our KVM vs. RHEV 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.