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.
"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."
"The KVM service is well managed with a central policy interface."
"It is an open ecosystem, and we see there is a benefit in open-source solutions."
"If you prefer command-line, there are all kinds of command-line options."
"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."
"One of the best features of KVM is its user-friendly interface."
"It offers a high-availability environment."
"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 very stable."
"The solution is overall very good with all the facilities. It is user friendly, easy to configure, has documentation, and support is available."
"Technically, the main reason why I'm using Red Hat is because of its stability."
"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."
"The solution is a great all-round product. The virtualization is especially good."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the support portal."
"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 thing that maybe could be improved is making it easier to scale. It needs to be more clear on how to scale the storage space for virtual machines."
"Monitoring and resolution could be improved."
"The initial setup of this solution is more difficult than some of the competing products and it could be improved."
"The virtual manager and the graphical QEMU for KVM need some improvement."
"The stability of this solution is less than other products in the same category."
"In KVM, snapshots and cloning are areas where there could be a little more sophistication, like VMware."
"The solution should be more user friendly. We are struggling with the command lines."
"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."
"With RHEV, the cyberattacks should be fewer. I want RHEV to be better protected."
"Red Hat by itself is not scalable. But you can have third party add-ons like Ceph to make it massively scalable."
"The Administration of the Oracle database and the SAP ERP needs improvement."
"The availability of technical expertise with the solution may be limited in some areas."
"The documentation is not as good as it should be."
"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 solution has a very small lifecycle."
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.