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.
"I like that it's easy to manage. It's also more powerful when it comes to security than others. That point of view is the one consideration. The other consideration is that it's cost-effective."
"Good screen and keyboard sharing feature."
"Very cost-effective."
"The GUI interface makes the management of KVM easier than ever before."
"It is easy to use, stable, and flexible. It is a pretty mature product, and it is faster than VirtualBox."
"If you prefer command-line, there are all kinds of command-line options."
"I have found KVM to be scalable."
"KVM is stable."
"Proxmox is free, very stable, and doesn't require more resources for memory RAM. It's fine for a small data center."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of deployment."
"It is easy to deploy."
"That the product is free and still has all the features you expect is a huge benefit."
"The affordability of the solution is the product's most valuable aspect."
"The virtualization is good."
"It fits in well with our organization. It works and does what it says it does."
"Proxmox VE is simple to use and it is feature rich. The fact is that it performs,"
"There are some issues with the graphics and some software that is very complex."
"Lacks high availability across clusters as well as support for Apache CloudStack."
"Business continuity features need to be added."
"Monitoring and resolution could be improved."
"One thing that maybe could be improved is making it easier to scale. It needs to be more clear on how to scale the storage space for virtual machines."
"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."
"Its resource usage can be improved."
"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."
"A feature which should be added is the ability to encrypt the main installation."
"The only issue I have with Proxmox VE is updating it. You have to manually update it or you have to have a way to update it automatically."
"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."
"It's one of those things for me to move things on to the cloud. It's not so easy. I am always on the laptop and have to monitor that because if you want to make strides; you need to stay online."
"The initial setup has a pretty steep learning curve."
"There are some things that need to be done using the command-line interface, and these should be moved into the web-based interface."
"The availability of the solution could be a bit better."
"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."
KVM is ranked 4th in Server Virtualization Software with 9 reviews while Proxmox VE is ranked 2nd in Server Virtualization Software with 21 reviews. KVM is rated 7.4, while Proxmox VE is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of KVM writes "Stable, easy to set up, and very easy to use". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Proxmox VE writes "Rivaling the stiffest and competition in its category this solution suffers only from being young". KVM is most compared with Oracle VM VirtualBox, Hyper-V, VMware vSphere, Oracle VM and VMware Workstation, whereas Proxmox VE is most compared with Hyper-V, Oracle VM VirtualBox, VMware vSphere, 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.