We performed a comparison between Oracle VM VirtualBox 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: Oracle VM VirtualBox and Proxmox VE had a similar user rating regarding ease of deployment, pricing, service and support, and ROI. However, in terms of features, Oracle VM VirtualBox users felt the solution was unstable, whereas Proxmox VE users felt some bugs needed fixing.
"The pause feature is valuable. I can pause, which is something that not all hypervisors allow. The snapshot feature is also valuable."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"It is easy to use and does not require complex knowledge."
"The versatility, simplicity, and stability of the product are it's most valuable features."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that there is no cost because it is open source."
"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."
"I like that it is free and runs on Linux/Ubuntu - I wouldn't use any other solution. I am able to perform small developing tests."
"This solution creates a snapshot of virtual machines so you can create test environments."
"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 initial setup is straightforward."
"It is easier to balance loads across hypervisors if a given container or virtual machine uses more resources than its peers."
"We can access the product from iPhone 7. It is stable and easy."
"It fits in well with our organization. It works and does what it says it does."
"It's very user-friendly."
"The most valuable feature of Proxmox VE is its ease of use."
"I have a program on my old machine with 380 events, but I need to create new events. This is much easier to do with VFXTHs, and I have the skills to do it. I also have two VPNs running on the old machine, which I can use to get started."
"This solution needs improvement with the business continuity planning, disaster and recovery management and using centralized data storage."
"It could improve slightly with enhanced reporting capabilities that show the current status of the network."
"The communications setup lags. It does not connect properly so the batching and networking is a bit slow."
"When I select the Ubuntu operating system from within the virtual machine, it sometimes hangs."
"This should have better support for multiple network cards and some parts of the GUI should be improved."
"We're working with them to be able to allow the local USB ports to be ported over to the remote desktop, running VirtualBox."
"It's not as robust as server platforms, nor does it need to be."
"It should have the functionality where if I move the mouse away from one screen, the context changes automatically."
"Proxmox VE can improve by importing OVF or OVA files directly from OVA. I need to convert all the images to raw images before importing them to Proxmox VE. If there is a solution that I can import directly from VMDK, it would be better."
"This solution needs a more flexible and efficient backup solution in the dashboard."
"One issue with Proxmox is that some processes are not automatic. For some processes, you have to do it manually by command line."
"The initial setup has a pretty steep learning curve."
"Since I face issues importing Windows OVA inside Proxmox VE, a clickable button should be added to select the OVA format and import it inside Proxmox VE."
"The process for deployment is complicated."
"The virtualization can be better."
"The solution needs to move to the cloud. It would be nice if they made it more robust there."
Oracle VM VirtualBox is ranked 5th in Server Virtualization Software with 61 reviews while Proxmox VE is ranked 1st in Server Virtualization Software with 58 reviews. Oracle VM VirtualBox is rated 8.2, while Proxmox VE is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Oracle VM VirtualBox writes "The solution is versatile, simple to use, and stable". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Proxmox VE writes "Easy to use and supports multi-monitors on multiple VMs in KVM". Oracle VM VirtualBox is most compared with KVM, Hyper-V, Oracle VM, VMware Workstation and VMware vSphere, whereas Proxmox VE is most compared with VMware vSphere, KVM, Nutanix AHV Virtualization, Hyper-V and Citrix Hypervisor. See our Oracle VM VirtualBox vs. Proxmox VE report.
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Proxmox VE is a very fast and powerful solution. It offers feature-rich virtualization, has open-standards compliance, and also includes redundancy and failover capabilities. What I like about Proxmox VE is that it lets you rack and stack two or more nodes and enables you to be up and running with a one-node failure tolerance in very little time. Proxmox VE’s integration with ZFS is also fantastic. It allows you to create pools to store your VM images and data on very easily and their great web UI makes it easy to check drive health, ZFS scrub status, and other things. I think the best part of the web UI is that everything is configurable from the web user interface without having to use the command line. It also has graphs and additional visualizations so you can evaluate the performance of everything. Beyond that, even though you can use Proxmox VE on a single server, the solution makes it easy to set up a high availability cluster on multiple hosts if needed.
Regarding Oracle VM VirtualBox, I would say its most valuable features are its virtualization, its compatibility with older OSes, and its testing of environments without causing interruptions or any harm to production. Besides making it possible to run multiple VMs on a laptop or desktop, its ease of deployment makes the solution appealing. Not only is it easy to set up, but the software is free. Moreover, it has a nice interface. However, I think Oracle VM VirtualBox could use some improvements on its reporting as well as on its network settings for VMs, which can sometimes be hard for the average user to find and understand.
Conclusion: While Oracle is a safe and excellent option when it comes to virtualizing an operating system, I would suggest Proxmox VE because it is newer, has a lot of powerful features, and is a very reliable and stable solution.