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 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."
"Documentation and problem-solving troubleshooting are the most valuable features. Performance (when fine-tuned and with "special" HW) is awesome, equal to or more than other enterprise closed-source solutions."
"The initial setup was very easy."
"It is an open ecosystem, and we see there is a benefit in open-source solutions."
"I like that this is an open-source solution. It is very powerful, and it's easy."
"The KVM service is well managed with a central policy interface."
"The GUI interface makes the management of KVM easier than ever before."
"What I like most about KVM is that it's very easy to use. Everything is built-in, even when writing command lines."
"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."
"It's a scalable solution."
"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."
"The price is the solution's most valuable aspect. It's much cheaper than, for example, VMware."
"The most valuable feature of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization is its pricing."
"One of the most valuable features of this solution is the popularity of the OS."
"The solution is stable."
"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."
"I would like to see more focus on microservices and integration with Kubernetes or OpenShift."
"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."
"Technical support could be better. In the next release, I would like to see an improved user interface and dashboard. This type of improvement will make it easy or help our engineers understand the solution from a requirement point of view."
"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."
"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."
"It lags behind in that you need to go to something like Fedora to get all the extra bells and whistles."
"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."
"The biggest improvement would be more third-party direct support for things like backups and provisioning through third-party portals."
"Configuring the network interfaces is much better in Ubuntu and should be improved."
"The solution has a very small lifecycle."
"The solution should be made more user-friendly."
"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 solution could use network virtualization."
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.