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.
"KVM has a rich options set which can be directly used or via wrappers, such as libvirt."
"The most valuable feature is hypervisor. I can host at the same time different operating systems in Linux Windows."
"The most helpful aspect of KVM is the fact that the interface is so minimal. It includes just what you need to set up the VMs and manage them, and it's very simple to do so."
"What I like most about KVM is that it's very easy to use. Everything is built-in, even when writing command lines."
"Good screen and keyboard sharing feature."
"It is an easily scalable solution."
"I like that this is an open-source solution. It is very powerful, and it's easy."
"The initial setup was very easy."
"Stability and speed are the most valuable aspects."
"The solution is a great all-round product. The virtualization is especially good."
"This solution is very stable. Much more so than similar products."
"It is easy to deal with when comes to application migration and its compatibility with the multiple component applications."
"RHEV’s cost is much less compared to VMware."
"There aren't any bugs on the solution."
"The solution is overall very good with all the facilities. It is user friendly, easy to configure, has documentation, and support is available."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"The main drawback in the solution is probably disaster recovery."
"Support for VF is needed, where you can, for example, export from VMware to KVM."
"In KVM, snapshots and cloning are areas where there could be a little more sophistication, like VMware."
"Lacks high availability across clusters as well as support for Apache CloudStack."
"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."
"I would like to see more focus on microservices and integration with Kubernetes or OpenShift."
"Monitoring and resolution could be improved."
"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."
"Red Hat by itself is not scalable. But you can have third party add-ons like Ceph to make it massively scalable."
"A few features of the product do not work as well as those in VMware."
"This solution could be more secure."
"The solution should be made more user-friendly."
"I heard that there are big differences between Red Hat eight and seven, but it's still quite difficult for me to judge it. I found it a bit more difficult to manage than version seven, which was much easier. In term of features, though, it is still not yet clear which is better. I have no clear idea of which features need to be changed at the moment."
"In comparison to VMware, this solution isn't as stable. We're testing it right now, and we're not trusting the stability of the product."
"The solution could use network virtualization."
"It lags behind in that you need to go to something like Fedora to get all the extra bells and whistles."
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.