Compare Citrix Hypervisor vs. KVM
Citrix Hypervisor is ranked 7th in Server Virtualization Software with 15 reviews while KVM is ranked 2nd in Server Virtualization Software with 9 reviews. Citrix Hypervisor is rated 8.4, while KVM is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Citrix Hypervisor writes "The ability to move a VM while it is still running and continue doing maintenance work is a big advantage". On the other hand, the top reviewer of KVM writes "Good performance, but better management features and integration are needed". Citrix Hypervisor is most compared with Proxmox VE, KVM and Hyper-V, whereas KVM is most compared with Oracle VM VirtualBox, Hyper-V and VMware vSphere. See our Citrix Hypervisor vs. KVM report.
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 Find out what your peers are saying about Citrix Hypervisor vs. KVM and other solutions. Updated: May 2020. 418,350 professionals have used our research since 2012. | |||||
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros | |
What I like the most is the support of the GPU Graphics and the VM Live migration. The support for this solution is phenomenal. This is a good product for virtualization and it is easy to use. The solution integrates well with other solutions, which makes it really strong as a primary solution to deploy. The solution is easy to deploy. It's very easy to understand problems and read logs. The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is very fast. It also works very well for physically small servers. The ability to move a virtual machine while it is running is a big advantage. The feature I find most valuable, is its performance | The KVM service is well managed with a central policy interface. The GUI interface makes the management of KVM easier than ever before. I like that this is an open-source solution. It is very powerful, and it's easy. Scaling the solution is easy. You just have to add more hardware. Our production servers are running in Linux, and this solution supports that environment well. 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. The initial setup was simple. It is an open ecosystem, and we see there is a benefit in open-source solutions. |
Cons | |
Network management needs improvement because it is not very stable. The built-in networking features are a little limited. The product could be faster and licensing options could be improved. The solution is too expensive and people are kind of moving away from Citrix. It's starting to become a problem. It is a primary reason that while we are rebuilding we're going to seek out open-source solutions. The solution would benefit from faster technical support. The USB support for the virtual server needs improvement. It needs to have a more robust backup solution. I think the technical support could be better. | The initial setup of this solution is more difficult than some of the competing products and it could be improved. Business continuity features need to be added. The virtual manager and the graphical QEMU for KVM need some improvement. The solution should be more user friendly. We are struggling with the command lines. Support for VF is needed, where you can, for example, export from VMware to KVM. The stability of this solution is less than other products in the same category. The KVM tech support is really bad. They are not very responsive. 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. |
Pricing and Cost Advice | |
This solution is open source, it's free. We migrated from VMware to XenCenter to cut costs. While it is free for small networks, the pricing is high if your network grows past a certain size. The licensing is straight forward based on usage and features. There are free and paid versions. The free version is limited in features but not by time limit. The paid version has more features. The most valuable feature is the cost; it is a free product. To subscribe to the paid version with support, it is approximately $6,000 per year. The pricing and licensing is so important. Customers do consider the price seriously. | This solution is an open-source, free platform with paid support. This solution came with the Linux license. It is cheaper than other solutions out there on the market. It is cheaper than other competitors like VMware or Hyper-V. |
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Ranking  | |
Views 29,481 Comparisons 26,645 Reviews 14 Average Words per Review 367 Avg. Rating 8.4 | Views 80,761 Comparisons 73,680 Reviews 9 Average Words per Review 371 Avg. Rating 7.9 |
Top Comparisons | |
 Compared 59% of the time.  Compared 15% of the time.  Compared 9% of the time. |  Compared 40% of the time. Compared 22% of the time.  Compared 12% of the time. |
Also Known As | |
| XenServer | |
Learn | |
| Citrix | KVM Video Not Available |
Overview | |
Citrix Hypervisor is a leading virtualization management platform optimized for application, desktop and server virtualization infrastructures. Consolidation and containment of workloads on Citrix Hypervisor enables organizations of any vertical or size to transform their business IT compute infrastructures. | KVM (for Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware containing virtualization extensions (Intel VT or AMD-V). It consists of a loadable kernel module, kvm.ko, that provides the core virtualization infrastructure and a processor specific module, kvm-intel.ko or kvm-amd.ko. |
Offer | |
Learn more about Citrix Hypervisor | Learn more about KVM |
Sample Customers | |
| U.S. Army Shared Services Center, SoftLayer, Educational Services of America, Independent Bank, and SK Telecom. | MediaWiki, Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, Wikidata, Wikiversity, Commons |
Top Industries | |
Healthcare Company10% Energy/Utilities Company10% University10% Comms Service Provider10% Software R&D Company22% Comms Service Provider18% Media Company10% Government10% | Software R&D Company42% Comms Service Provider18% Media Company8% Government5% |
Find out what your peers are saying about Citrix Hypervisor vs. KVM and other solutions. Updated: May 2020.
418,350 professionals have used our research since 2012.
See also Citrix Hypervisor Reviews, KVM Reviews, and our list of Best Server Virtualization Software Companies.
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