We performed a comparison between KVM, Oracle VM VirtualBox, and VMware vSphere based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Proxmox, VMware, Microsoft and others in Server Virtualization Software."The most valuable feature of KVM is its stability."
"KVM is stable."
"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 key aspect is that the KVM directly interacts with the Kronos. There's no clear indication of indirect communication with Kronos. It is not linked to Kronos, and interaction is straightforward without any intermediaries."
"I like that this is an open-source solution. It is very powerful, and it's easy."
"The product's scalability is good...It's a very stable product."
"The GUI interface makes the management of KVM easier than ever before."
"The most valuable feature is hypervisor. I can host at the same time different operating systems in Linux Windows."
"It's very simple to use."
"This solution creates a snapshot of virtual machines so you can create test environments."
"The snapshot feature is very powerful; it protects us from disaster."
"The good thing is that it is multi-platform. Once you create a virtual machine in one particular environment, you can switch over to see if you can run it in other environments. For example, if you are on Windows and you create this virtual machine, you can actually go ahead and change the operating system. You can switch it over to Linux or Mac OS and see if you can run the VirtualBox on those particular machines. It even runs on some of the commercial operating systems that are not mainstream, such as Solaris and BSD. These kinds of operating systems are also supported by VirtualBox. The other thing that is good about VirtualBox is that it is open source. So, if you need to do any modifications for your own purposes, you can just download the source, modify it, and deploy it in your environment. It is pretty good and very versatile. You can create and manipulate virtual machines from the command line, which is also very important. It's something that some other products on the desktop side do not have. VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop don't have a good command-line interface to create and manipulate virtual machines, whereas VirtualBox has it out of the box, which is pretty good."
"It is a stable product."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to copy bidirectionally between the desktop and the virtual machine."
"This is a highly scalable solution."
"The flexibility and the closed platform, so it allows you to run in multiple platforms, Windows, Linux, Macintosh."
"vSphere brings the features required for an enterprise class system with a lot of supporting components: An intuitive user experience that simplifies and helps operational management."
"This solution is very stable. It's scalable and simple to set up."
"There are no issues with the level of scalability you can achieve."
"The feature that I find very valuable is the ability to move images of virtual machines from different workspaces to other workspaces between different installations."
"It is easy to maintain our data machines and take snapshots with the solution."
"VMware vSphere is easy to scale. We haven't had any problems scaling what we're scaling now."
"What I like about it is being able to see my entire organization, especially with some of the newer enhanced links. All of my data centers show up in one view and I can see every server that's running. I also get performance statistics so if there are issues, major problems going on, I can see them."
"We have removed the need for backups and going to the office at three in the morning to change a server. I do everything during my business hours. It gave me my life back."
"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."
"We still occasionally build Interlaced Wireless Protection within our environment. The ecosystem entails areas, where we support agents, and release backup and security solutions. Collaboration with independent software vendors (ITOLs or ITOLED) is necessary to offer these solutions to customers. However, the scope of the ecosystem in KVM is not as extensive as that of VMware's. In contrast, VMware boasts a robust partner network, allowing for comprehensive customer solutions. On the other hand, KVM’s ecosystem is comparatively limited in comparison. I would like to see FT features in KVM."
"The main drawback in the solution is probably disaster recovery."
"In our setup, we do not have any dashboards or orchestration, and it is hard to manage. We have 25 gig network cards, but the software driver we have only supported 10 gigs."
"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 solution’s user interface could be improved and made more user-friendly."
"The product must provide better performance monitoring features."
"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."
"There are a few bugs that need to be updated."
"The solution needs to improve the methods used for starting and stopping the machine."
"The user interface needs to be improved."
"The product lacks scalability since it is for desktops and not for servers."
"This solution needs improvement with the business continuity planning, disaster and recovery management and using centralized data storage."
"The solution lacks some open source remote administration tools. The reload of individual virtual machine definitions through the vboxweb service (via its API) without restarting it and the access to shared storage (to use teleport functions) need to be improved."
"Having live migrations to move a running server to other hardware would be great."
"The solution is a bit less stable than I would like."
"Integration with different platforms could be improved."
"From my point of view, my advice is to design the solution properly the first time."
"We are provided with a mini dashboard that has been improved in the latest version but it still could be better. The monitoring is now available on the vCenter dashboard and the vROps has been added to the basic version that had to be purchased separately before. A complete dashboard has always been provided with some competitors, such as Nutanix."
"We've been using vSphere on Windows 7, and it had less fluff associated with ThinApp. Currently, with Windows 10 version that we have, it adds a lot of bulk to ThinApp. We have offices spanning across Canada from the east coast to the west coast. A ThinApp that is roughly around 400 MB in size would take minutes to open up. With Windows 7, the same ThinApp used to be close to 75 to 80 MB in size. So, I'm really not happy with the extra fluff that is bundled in Windows 10. It really messes things up for us at times."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"The technical support is good. However, it could be more seamless when it comes to chat support and lower response times."
"In addition, I think they should come up with a backup feature which is more product enrichment-based. It should be a full-fledged backup solution. It just is not there right now."
"They can maybe review its price. They can also consider offering a free public version for development for a certain number of users."
