No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Oracle VM VirtualBox vs RHEV comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Oracle VM VirtualBox
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
RHEV
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
12th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Server Virtualization Software category, the mindshare of Oracle VM VirtualBox is 7.8%, up from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of RHEV is 2.6%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Virtualization Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Oracle VM VirtualBox7.8%
RHEV2.6%
Other89.6%
Server Virtualization Software
 

Featured Reviews

Tanvir Siddique - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Officer at ADN Telecom
Easily accesses open solutions with seamless compatibility for testing and development
The most valuable feature is the seamlessness. When I install a Linux operating system, I can use Windows applications through Oracle VM VirtualBox seamlessly. There are many applications that work only on Windows. For desktop testing purposes, I used Oracle VM VirtualBox, and it works fine. The guest OS compatibility was tremendous because I used Oracle VM VirtualBox on Linux and ran Windows applications on top of that, working seamlessly.
Mike Neuliep - PeerSpot reviewer
Linux Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Has supported virtualization projects in side jobs but has required workarounds due to lack of maintenance
In my opinion, the best features of RHEV are that it is a real hypervisor and it is free, so it performs better than VMware. I have used the live migration feature in the past with RHEV. There is a free clone of it that is based on the open source. Live migration is a nifty feature if your app is not highly available and you need to do maintenance on a machine. You can migrate the VM off of it, do your maintenance, and move it back when you are done. RHEV has a high availability architecture with a built-in monitoring feature where you could see machines other than the one you are operating on. I tend to implement high availability not so much in RHEV, but by using standard application high availability strategies. Red Hat has another product specifically for high availability.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"We had other costumers that had used other solutions, such as VMware and Microsoft hypervisor, but I've pushed them all over to VirtualBox because of its flexibility and potential."
"This is a highly scalable solution for our infrastructure."
"The scalability of the solution is very good."
"The installation is easy."
"In my opinion, it's the best solution for a small office or one-person virtualization."
"In my opinion, this product is the best available option for testing virtual appliances and operating systems."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution were the support and performance of the product and the flexibility it gives you to work."
"The product is very easy to use."
"Technically, the main reason why I'm using Red Hat is because of its stability."
"Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization can help to optimize their space utilization and optimize their costs."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the support portal."
"We find the ease of use of this solution to be invaluable, as it is user-friendly and integrates well with other software."
"The biggest aspect for me is the disk usage, the virtual manager, and the deployment of machines."
"RHEV’s cost is much less compared to VMware."
"The solution is easy for us to deal with when comes to application migration and has good compatibility with multiple components."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
 

Cons

"It should have the functionality where if I move the mouse away from one screen, the context changes automatically."
"Managing virtual machine stacks on an individual and stacked basis needs work."
"The solution should have more enterprise features, like migration, high availability storage, disaster recovery, and the ability to deploy to enterprise-scale usage. They should not just offer desktop usage."
"The user interface needs to be improved."
"The solution needs to improve its flexibility. It's not as flexible as VMware."
"In Oracle VM a simple drag and drop of files and folders between the host machine and the virtual machine is not available."
"To make changes, you need to use the command lines. You need to use them to change the volume or extend or re-sync the volume."
"It would be good if we could use Hyper-V Windows subsystems with Linux and VirtualBox on the same instance. Currently, to be able to use VirtualBox, we have to restart the machine into an instance of Windows where Hyper-V is disabled, which is understandably very inconvenient."
"The documentation is not as good as it should be. There is a need for making it descriptive and in sequence."
"With RHEV, the cyberattacks should be fewer. I want RHEV to be better protected."
"The RHEV management plane could be improved, particularly the management interface."
"Red Hat by itself is not scalable. But you can have third party add-ons like Ceph to make it massively scalable."
"We would like the dashboard feature of this solution to be improved, as it is not very detailed at present."
"There is not any proper documentation on the site to reference."
"My teammates and I often complain that VMware is well-documented and has a large community since it is the de facto standard. I would love to see better documentation and ease of use."
"The initial setup is not simple or straightforward. It's very complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"No licensing is required as it is open-source."
"This is an open-source product and it can be used free of charge."
"The product is free to use."
"It is pretty good for the price, which is free."
"Pricing does not apply for us, we do not have to pay for the service."
"Available for free use"
"It is an open-source solution."
"The license I use is free."
"I believe we pay on a yearly basis."
"This product has a variety of licensing options available. However, the level of licensing, and therefore the cost of licensing, is dependent on the number of servers being utilized."
"Its price depends on the use cases."
"This is an open-source solution."
"The solution does not require licencing but a subscription is necessary, which is very affordable."
"RHEV offers pricing based on a per-physical-machine licensing model."
"We buy a license for commercial use, and we also use the free editions."
"We are using the free version of Red Hat."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Server Virtualization Software solutions are best for your needs.
921,338 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

VL
CIO at Robusta Technology & Training
Jan 13, 2015
vSphere vs. RHEV vs. Hyper-V vs. XenServer
We have used the following functions: 1. Hypervisor: to ensure that the virtual server provide web and email services to the company, thus providing a stable operation a with single sign-on integration of an AD server and vCenter. 2. Network and Storage: centralized data server…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

How does KVM compare to Oracle VM VirtualBox?
KVM is easy to use, stable and flexible. It is mature and very fast. It is an affordable open-source solution that is easy to set up and manage. It offers very good security. It has a virtual manag...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle VM VirtualBox?
Maintenance is not necessary because I did not use it for heavy loads.
What needs improvement with Oracle VM VirtualBox?
If there were more API access so that I could run it headlessly, similar to Proxmox where I can use API, it would be useful. Having some kind of API to maintain Oracle VM VirtualBox would be benefi...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for RHEV?
It's the open source. There's not much cost. It's very minimal comparably. Compared to what I am paying for VMware, it's negligible.
What needs improvement with RHEV?
RHEV is not improving because it has been discontinued. It has been discontinued for years. I would love to get back into RHEV, but the job market is difficult and no one is hiring. RHEV is designe...
What is your primary use case for RHEV?
I have done some consulting where I used RHEV, taking on side jobs to run virtual machines in the financial industry for a startup. The last time I used RHEV was in my home lab, but that has been d...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Airbus, Colorado State University, SCS Africa, Wolf Medical Systems.
Qualcomm and Bonham's Auction House.
Find out what your peers are saying about Oracle VM VirtualBox vs. RHEV and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,338 professionals have used our research since 2012.