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 GUI interface makes the management of KVM easier than ever before."
"The initial setup was very easy."
"There is a strong emphasis on availability, and they have numerous API interfaces for distributed storage and the solution is quite known for its openness."
"The product is really good...One can get good performance because of kernel-based virtualization."
"If you are a Linux desktop user, KVM is the solution to go with if you have to start virtual machines with Linux or other operating systems with almost zero extra configuration needed."
"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."
"This solution is open source and easy to configure."
"There aren't any bugs on the solution."
"Technically, the main reason why I'm using Red Hat is because of its stability."
"What they provide is way beyond the essential requirements of customers."
"The solution is overall very good with all the facilities. It is user friendly, easy to configure, has documentation, and support is available."
"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 most valuable feature of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization is its pricing."
"Stability and speed are the most valuable aspects."
"This solution is very stable. Much more so than similar products."
"I would like to see more focus on microservices and integration with Kubernetes or OpenShift."
"Lacks high availability across clusters as well as support for Apache CloudStack."
"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."
"In KVM, snapshots and cloning are areas where there could be a little more sophistication, like VMware."
"The main drawback in the solution is probably disaster recovery."
"The grid interface of KVM needs improvement. It could be more beautiful, especially when compared to VMware."
"Monitoring and resolution could be improved."
"I have encountered difficulties in getting the tool's documentation."
"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."
"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."
"The solution should be made more user-friendly."
"Configuring the network interfaces is much better in Ubuntu and should be improved."
"The availability of technical expertise with the solution may be limited in some areas."
"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."
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.
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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.