We performed a comparison between KVM and Proxmox VE based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, KVM and Proxmox VE had a similar user rating regarding ease of deployment, pricing, and service and support. When it came to features, reviewers felt KVM was complex and not scalable, while users of Proxmox VE were unhappy that certain processes weren’t automatic, and moving things to the cloud was difficult.
"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."
"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."
"Our production servers are running in Linux, and this solution supports that environment well."
"It offers a high-availability environment."
"One of the best features of KVM is its user-friendly interface."
"A very reliable solution which can be used for x86 architecture virtualization with reasonable overhead."
"I appreciate the network passcode feature in KVM, as it provides a convenient way to manage DNS and cloud hosting."
"The most valuable feature of KVM is its stability."
"The most valuable feature of Proxmox VE is the speed. Additionally, I can modify the solution if needed because it is open-source and the integration of any kind of API and monitoring is hassle-free."
"I like that it's secure, and I find its Software RAID very useful. It's way better than the Hardware RAID I was used to. I'm really impressed by their Software RAID feature."
"We had issues with this solution when it comes to resources. We have officially created four to five PMs and it just continues to make more resources even though they are delivered in the main post mode."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is performance."
"The solution is easy to install. It can run on a lot of different types of hardware. Creating virtual machines with it is really easy."
"Proxmox VE is very lightweight, and it doesn't take a lot of memory on the device."
"You can easily migrate VMs between hosts."
"Its compatibility is most valuable."
"The KVM tech support is really bad. They are not very responsive."
"The networking with wireless devices needs improvement."
"Lacks high availability across clusters as well as support for Apache CloudStack."
"Business continuity features need to be added."
"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."
"We would like to have a software lifecycle solution included in this solution. We can handle the software needed for KVM, but also the software that we provide. A lifecycle component would be very beneficial."
"Technical support is not top-notch."
"In KVM, snapshots and cloning are areas where there could be a little more sophistication, like VMware."
"The virtualization can be better."
"Proxmox needs to improve the integration of its network, machines, and virtual machines."
"Proxmox VE needs improvement in cloud computing."
"Proxmox VE needs to make a deal with Veeam. I was also unable to make version upgrades. I have also encountered backup problems."
"The only disadvantage of Proxmox VE is that it is a young solution so it does have some bugs."
"We had some challenges with management including volume and storage management. Setting it up properly and making it work, specifically shared storage between the virtual machines, is difficult."
"The only issue I have with Proxmox VE is updating it. You have to manually update it or you have to have a way to update it automatically."
"I would like to see more monitoring in the next release of this solution."
KVM is ranked 4th in Server Virtualization Software with 39 reviews while Proxmox VE is ranked 1st in Server Virtualization Software with 58 reviews. KVM is rated 8.0, while Proxmox VE is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of KVM writes "Delivers good performance because of kernel-based virtualization". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Proxmox VE writes "Easy to use and supports multi-monitors on multiple VMs in KVM". KVM is most compared with Oracle VM VirtualBox, Hyper-V, VMware vSphere, VMware Workstation and Oracle VM, whereas Proxmox VE is most compared with VMware vSphere, Oracle VM VirtualBox, Nutanix AHV Virtualization, Hyper-V and Citrix Hypervisor. See our KVM vs. Proxmox VE report.
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I use Proxmox VE and have been very happy with it. In my opinion, it is a complete and stable solution with excellent tools for managing servers. It has a lot of different features, and I also love the user interface. Setup is easy, it is very stable, scales well, and is a great fit that is suitable for my organization. Besides those advantages, another huge plus for me is that it doesn’t require any additional resources for memory RAM and it has independent nodes. I also chose Proxmox VE because it allows me to run services without needing dedicated hardware. With all that in mind, there are still some downsides to the product. Because it is still a very young solution, it sometimes has bugs. In addition, some processes need to be completed manually by command line because not all processes are automatic. And in the future, I hope they will add application storage.
KVM is easy to set up, deploy, and use. I think its ability to scale could be improved, though. If your organization relies on command lines a lot, KVM has several different command line options to choose from. From the information I have gathered from other users, KVM seems to have good customer service and technical support. In addition, the GUI interface is solid. In general, KVM seems like it performs well but it lacks good management features and needs to offer more integration options. However, in comparison to other solutions,KVM has a reputation for being faster. And while it provides a good screen sharing feature, the resolution isn’t great. Even though KVM is cost-effective, I think it lacks high availability across clusters.
Conclusion: Ultimately I chose Proxmox VE because it was a better option for my particular needs.
In a marketing services-related company security is paramount.
Therefore, you probably will rely on services, especially during maintenance of your network and need support for that.
When it comes to security and support KVM would be the better option. With in-house engineers, both Proxmox VE and KVM could be chosen. But qualified engineers are hard to come by nowadays, depending on where you live.
As a side note, I maintain mainly Xenserver, VMware and KVM. When it comes to performance per watt Xenserver would be the king, especially on larger setups.
Since your setup is of medium size and if you decided not to go for the aforementioned setups, KVM would be the lesser of the worse.
Your question depends a lot on the hardware/cloud system you have in mind. More details would make my recommendations more precise.
Kind regards,
KVM is a kernel base hypervisor while Proxmox VE is open-source. Technically, Proxmox VE fulfills the smallest business users than KVM.
And if we go for the quality and support KVM is better.
But Proxmox VE has also more features according to business growth.