We performed a comparison between KVM, Oracle VM VirtualBox, and VMware Workstation based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Proxmox, VMware, Microsoft and others in Server Virtualization Software."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."
"The tool's most valuable feature is backup. The product makes it easy to manage virtual machines. Other tools require third-party applications like VMware and vSphere. However, KVM doesn't require these applications."
"This solution is open source and easy to configure."
"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."
"KVM has a rich options set which can be directly used or via wrappers, such as libvirt."
"The product is really good...One can get good performance because of kernel-based virtualization."
"What I like most about KVM is that it's very easy to use. Everything is built-in, even when writing command lines."
"One of the best features of KVM is its user-friendly interface."
"This product is extremely easy to install, use, has a great GUI and is incredibly stable."
"This is a highly scalable solution."
"Oracle VM Virtualbox is easy to use and does not require much training."
"The flexibility and the closed platform, so it allows you to run in multiple platforms, Windows, Linux, Macintosh."
"It is a stable product."
"The solution has high performance and is easy to use."
"It is easy to use and does not require complex knowledge."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"The tool’s GUI is very user-friendly."
"It will not harm any of the computer settings to run a specific program. For example, if a program needs a specific security policy, we don't have to use the shared configuration. We have an individual copy of Windows installed on the virtual machine, so anybody can access that. It helps us a lot."
"The most valuable features of the VMware Workstation solutions are the ESXi and vCenter."
"VMware Workstation allows you to run a virtual machine."
"The most valuable features of VMware Workstation are the DirectX support, you can run Microsoft Hyper-V in virtual environments which is good for me to test different installations. Additionally, you can set up different VLANs, and overall it is a complete solution."
"VMware Workstation has tons of third-party support, the largest partner ecosystem. VMware works with a ton of different vendors. They have plugins for almost everything. Other hypervisors lack the flexibility that VMware Workstation offers."
"The product works well."
"The product's initial setup phase was simple."
"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."
"Business continuity features need to be added."
"I have encountered difficulties in getting the tool's documentation."
"Technical support is not top-notch."
"I would like to see more focus on microservices and integration with Kubernetes or OpenShift."
"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."
"The main drawback in the solution is probably disaster recovery."
"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 installation is difficult and could be improved."
"Oracle needs to improve its hot virtual machine migration. It didn't work as intended. It should allow us to migrate between virtual machines, without stopping the database."
"The solution should work to simplify the system. However, it should be flexible enough to allow for special cases."
"Oracle’s support team should improve its response time."
"It has some issues when you have some weird device drivers. For instance, when you have a weird sound driver working on your machine, and the VirtualBox needs to output the sound of the virtual machine into the sound driver of the physical machine, the bare metal, it doesn't work too well. If you tweak lots of drivers and play around with the different kinds of drivers and machines, you will probably break something. I have not played with it too much and maybe it already supports it, but it would probably be good to have the ability to use a container from the virtual machine environment instead of spinning off a complete virtual machine. There are other tools for that. On Linux, you have a DXE, LXC framework, and you have Docker as well. Docker is good because it is multi-platform, and you can run Docker on pretty much anything, even different processors, but it would be good if we had a VirtualBox running on it while spinning off containers instead of full virtual machines. The other thing that will become important, and I'm pretty sure that they are thinking about it as well is that there's this new hardware platform that Apple is releasing, which is an ARM-based new chip. So, VirtualBox will probably have to work on ARM-based CPUs as well."
"The memory and hardware usage could be a little bit lighter. Right now, it's quite heavy on the usage. The CPU usage should be lower."
"Oracle VM VirtualBox doesn't work properly with an antivirus tool."
"I think that this solution should be more user-friendly."
"My experience with Workstation is limited, so I don't know all the functionalities of this tool. Maybe Workstation could add some more compatibility with other vendors."
"I need to buy a newer version of the tool to support Windows Server."
"The product is outdated."
"The support can be improved."
"They could bring in many different features from VMware vSphere to Workstation."
"It would be better if software updates occur automatically."
"VMware Workstation’s scalability could be improved."
"The solution freezes sometimes."
