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.
"It offers a high-availability environment."
"Scaling the solution is easy. You just have to add more hardware."
"KVM has a rich options set which can be directly used or via wrappers, such as libvirt."
"Our production servers are running in Linux, and this solution supports that environment well."
"I think nine out of the ten supercomputers in the world use Linux KVM, so I think that attests to the fact that it is a scalable product."
"The GUI interface makes the management of KVM easier than ever before."
"A very reliable solution which can be used for x86 architecture virtualization with reasonable overhead."
"The product is really good...One can get good performance because of kernel-based virtualization."
"It is easy to deal with when comes to application migration and its compatibility with the multiple component applications."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"It's a scalable solution."
"The most valuable features of RHEV are all the tools, such as virtualization, management of cloud platforms, and integration of container environments. The solution has good compatibility between virtualization, content management, and cloud management. Having the full set of these tools is the advantage of it."
"The solution is stable."
"The solution has a good licensing module."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The most valuable feature of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization is its pricing."
"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."
"One problem I have is that it's not very scalable when it comes to resizing the VM disk dimensions. For example, if you have initially set a virtual drive to 10 GB and you want to upgrade it to 15 GB, it's not that easy."
"KVM is very difficult to manage and run on daily operations."
"The grid interface of KVM needs improvement. It could be more beautiful, especially when compared to VMware."
"In KVM, snapshots and cloning are areas where there could be a little more sophistication, like VMware."
"Monitoring and resolution could be improved."
"The product must provide better performance monitoring features."
"Some things are pretty basic, and they could be more robust with more detail."
"This solution could be more secure."
"The support is tricky in a few places. We're facing some challenges within Malaysia where we don't really have the system integrators available who can provide extended support. When we need personnel on-site, we can't get them."
"The documentation is not as good as it should be."
"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 availability of technical expertise with the solution may be limited in some areas."
"While everything needs improvement in some way, I have no specifics."
"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."
"A few features of the product do not work as well as those in VMware."
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.