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Oracle VM VirtualBox vs RHEV comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 6, 2024

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
12th
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
13th
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 May 2026, in the Server Virtualization Software category, the mindshare of Oracle VM VirtualBox is 6.0%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of RHEV is 2.4%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Virtualization Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Oracle VM VirtualBox6.0%
RHEV2.4%
Other91.6%
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

"For my users, it is very stable; we do home automation on it, and it works really well."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"OracleVM is an excellent alternative to Virtual PC and other client-side virtualization tools."
"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."
"Overall, the solution works very well and we have been happy with it."
"This solution can be used on many different platforms including Windows and Linux."
"The configuration and installation is pretty straightforward."
"The flexibility and the closed platform, so it allows you to run in multiple platforms, Windows, Linux, Macintosh."
"The solution is stable, there are no bugs or glitches, it doesn't crash or freeze, and it's reliable with good performance."
"Whenever there's an issue or problem, I contact customer support and they take it seriously."
"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."
"The initial setup is fairly straightforward and well-documented. The process is very similar to its competitors. The success of your setup depends on how well you plan."
"I advise keeping an open mind. It's an excellent solution."
"The biggest aspect for me is the disk usage, the virtual manager, and the deployment of machines."
"One of the most valuable features of this solution is the popularity of the OS."
"It is very stable."
 

Cons

"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."
"I think part of the reason is, is a lot of people do not trust Virtual Box because they think it's buggy."
"The solution needs to improve the methods used for starting and stopping the machine."
"An example of an area of improvement that I can see from my use of it would be the VirtualBox network setting."
"The solution has to do a better job of promoting the product and its licensing capabilities."
"This solution needs improvement with the business continuity planning, disaster and recovery management and using centralized data storage."
"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."
"It's not as robust as server platforms, nor does it need to be."
"While everything needs improvement in some way, I have no specifics."
"The availability of technical expertise with the solution may be limited in some areas."
"The Administration of the Oracle database and the SAP ERP needs improvement."
"The support is tricky in a few places. We're facing some challenges within Malaysia where we don't really have the system integrators available who can provide extended support. When we need personnel on-site, we can't get them."
"The initial setup is not simple or straightforward. It's very complex."
"It would be better to have more patches, especially kernel-level updates, live and online so that we can keep the business up and running during this period."
"The solution could use network virtualization."
"A few features of the product do not work as well as those in VMware."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an open-source solution."
"The tool is not as expensive as other products."
"Everything is free within limitations. Once you go over a certain level of usage you have to license the product."
"Available for free use"
"Price wise, Oracle VM VirtualBox is a six on a scale from one to ten."
"Pricing does not apply for us, we do not have to pay for the service."
"This is an open-source product and it can be used free of charge."
"The license I use is free."
"It's a budget product as far as I'm concerned. It's way cheaper than any of its competitors. The only thing cheaper than Red Hat is that the people who take the Red Hat code clone it and then self-support it."
"Its price depends on the use cases."
"I believe we pay on a yearly basis."
"I would say the price is acceptable."
"Price-wise, RHEV is okay, in my opinion."
"We have to pay extra for vulnerability and fault tolerance."
"The price of RHEV is high. It is an open-source solution, the price should be less. The price should not be on par with a solution, such as VMware. It's not more or equal to VMware, it's less, but the difference should be more substantial."
"The solution does not require licencing but a subscription is necessary, which is very affordable."
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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
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

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: April 2026.
896,034 professionals have used our research since 2012.