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.
"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."
"What I like most about KVM is that it's very easy to use. Everything is built-in, even when writing command lines."
"It offers a high-availability environment."
"The GUI interface makes the management of KVM easier than ever before."
"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."
"It is an easily scalable solution."
"The product's scalability is good...It's a very stable product."
"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."
"We can access the product from iPhone 7. It is stable and easy."
"Proxmox allows us to achieve affordable performance while keeping high levels of data protection and flexibility."
"The affordability of the solution is the product's most valuable aspect."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is migration."
"It fits in well with our organization. It works and does what it says it does."
"The solution's maintenance part was very easy."
"One of the standout features of Proxmox VE is its meticulously crafted web user interface, which is not only highly efficient but also exceptionally clear and user-friendly."
"The solution is extremely scalable."
"Lacks high availability across clusters as well as support for Apache CloudStack."
"The stability of this solution is less than other products in the same category."
"The speed is around thirty percent slower than another competitor. This would be something to work on."
"The virtual manager and the graphical QEMU for KVM need some improvement."
"KVM is very difficult to manage and run on daily operations."
"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."
"The only negative aspect of needing hardware support is a fully functional KVM can be dropped. It would be nice if the support for other platforms, like ARM or Risk, were as good as the x86 one. However, with the democratization of Chromebooks based on these chips and mobile devices, it will not take long for that to happen."
"The solution’s user interface could be improved and made more user-friendly."
"The virtualization can be better."
"Its user interface can be improved. In the version that I am using, not all functions can be performed by using the UI. There can be some improvement on that. I'm assuming that it has already been improved in the latest version."
"The Windows drivers could be easier (unlike manually installing Ballon, QEMU and optionally SPICE, VIRTio, etc.)"
"I can't speak to any improvements. It is not lacking features."
"The facility of deployment is an area that needs to improve."
"Proxmox VE needs improvement in cloud computing."
"Backup and recovery could be better. It's a bit problematic. If you're not well-versed with Linux, it tends to be a bit of a challenge when setting up and recovering. It's not really GUI-based, and if you're not a good Linux user, it becomes a bit difficult. In the next release, I would like to have something like Hyper-V's Data Protection Manager, where you could do an offsite backup and keep a copy. I haven't seen that incorporated yet, but I'm sure they will do that."
"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."
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, Hyper-V, Nutanix AHV Virtualization 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.