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Oracle VM vs VMware ESXi 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.4
Oracle VM's perceived ROI varied; users praised its cost-effectiveness and flexibility, though some found it costly.
Sentiment score
4.7
VMware ESXi boosts efficiency and eases management, but rising costs lead to interest in more cost-effective alternatives.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.1
Oracle VM support is generally high-quality with knowledgeable staff, though initial challenges and escalation are sometimes necessary.
Sentiment score
6.9
VMware ESXi support is generally praised for expertise, despite mixed response times and quality post-Broadcom transition.
The response time and quality of support could be improved.
I rate the technical support from VMware as nine or ten out of ten.
In the last three or four years, we did not require any support from VMware engineers, indicating its high reliability.
Customer service and support are good; they are reachable, and at times remote support suffices.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Oracle VM is praised for effective scalability despite minor hardware constraints and licensing model limitations.
Sentiment score
7.8
VMware ESXi is praised for its vertical scalability and management efficiency, despite challenges in horizontal scalability and licensing.
The solution is scalable, allowing us to scale up or down regardless of infrastructure size.
vCenter Server can manage up to 1,000 ESXi servers within a single UI interface, allowing extensive deployment and management capabilities.
My customers are highly satisfied with its scalability.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Oracle VM's stability improved significantly with version 3.4, becoming reliable with minimal bugs, especially on certified hardware.
Sentiment score
8.3
VMware ESXi is highly stable and dependable, often rated 8-10, with minimal issues and effective recent updates.
Not every upgrade goes smoothly, and after an upgrade, it sometimes stops working.
ESXi is stable, and our business operations depend on it year after year.
Stability rates a perfect 10.
 

Room For Improvement

Oracle VM struggles with UI instability, limited integration, and performance, needing enhancements in security and multi-platform compatibility.
Users are concerned about VMware ESXi's pricing, support, and complexities post-Broadcom, desiring simpler licensing and improvements.
If I have limited systems and there is maintenance on the hardware, the Oracle systems are impacted.
Not every upgrade goes smoothly, and after an upgrade, it sometimes stops working.
Oracle VM provides automation capabilities in the new version.
Providing a mobile application for remote access to ESXi servers would be beneficial.
It's not cost-effective for small users and creates a gap for alternatives, while favoring larger clients.
The cost of VMware ESXi is very high, especially after the acquisition by Broadcom, which led to price increases.
 

Setup Cost

Oracle VM is cost-effective with free core offering, flexible licensing, and bundled support, benefiting large-scale enterprises.
Enterprise evaluators find VMware ESXi pricing high, with complex licensing and costs exceeding competitors, challenging smaller users' budgets.
Oracle VM is not a very expensive solution.
The product is very cost-effective, though not fixed, as pricing tends to fluctuate over time.
The solution is moderately priced, not exactly cheap yet not overly expensive either.
The pricing is expensive, with the cost for customers ranging from $10,000 to $20,000 yearly.
 

Valuable Features

Oracle VM offers cost-effective virtualization with flexibility, supporting multiple OS, live migration, scalability, and Oracle licensing compliance.
VMware ESXi provides cost-effective server consolidation, seamless migrations, high availability, resource optimization, and centralized management with strong compatibility.
If there is an issue with the operating system running on top of it, there's no primary and secondary domain, rather segregated I/Os, disks, memory, everything assigned to a logical domain.
It is easy to copy or clone one Oracle workstation to another.
Oracle VM's features perform better on Windows compared to iOS.
Its capability to move virtual machines to physical machines is very efficient for our live environment.
As a level one or bare metal hypervisor, its unmatched scalability depends on underlying hardware, capable of managing large numbers of physical servers with one management platform.
vMotion is a daily used technology that allows us to have machines distributed across different sites while maintaining redundancy between the sites.
 

Categories and Ranking

Oracle VM
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
85
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware ESXi
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Server Virtualization Software category, the mindshare of Oracle VM is 6.9%, up from 6.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware ESXi is 1.7%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Virtualization Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Oracle VM6.9%
VMware ESXi1.7%
Other91.4%
Server Virtualization Software
 

Featured Reviews

Chimdi Profitearne - PeerSpot reviewer
Has supported ethical training effectively but configuration needs to be more user-friendly
When evaluating Oracle VM, I have concerns about the configuration being too complex and not user-friendly. It doesn't perform optimally on iOS, which is an Apple laptop, but works very well on Windows. To improve Oracle VM, the configuration needs to be more user-friendly and less rigid. Additionally, compatibility with Apple laptops needs improvement as it currently doesn't work well on that platform.
Ion Boni - PeerSpot reviewer
Has improved daily operations and provides solid performance but recent licensing changes have created challenges
Licensing has become a major issue. The new subscription-based licensing model is problematic. They have dropped all the support services for small partners and cut all small partners. The last two years have been challenging - after building stability, we received an email announcing they dropped the current model. It used to be cost-efficient. Now, when compared with Red Hat OpenStack, it is more expensive, but our knowledge and client awareness is with VMware ESXi. At this moment, we still prefer VMware ESXi.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business35
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise37
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Oracle VM or KVM?
I would prefer if KVM was easier to scale and not so limited. Overall the product has been helpful. It is easy to use, and was quite straight-forward to set up. Since I have been using KVM, I have ...
Which is better - Oracle VM or VMware VSphere?
Oracle VM seems to me to be kind of outdated. Nevertheless, it is fairly straightforward to use and maintain. The solution can just be set and you can forget about it, and the scalability is consid...
What do you like most about Oracle VM?
If you want to access the VM from anywhere over the Internet, you put it in a public subnet. So, VMs are linked to that. The subnets are linked to it. So, it's perfectly secured if it's a private n...
What do you like most about VMware ESXi?
My customers are satisfied with the solution’s performance.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware ESXi?
VMware ESXi is extremely expensive now compared to a few years ago. It's a core-based license now. We have bought VCF for about more than 2,000 cores. It's not a user-based license, and when you co...
What needs improvement with VMware ESXi?
Licensing has become a major issue. The new subscription-based licensing model is problematic. They have dropped all the support services for small partners and cut all small partners. The last two...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ambulance Victoria, Australian Finance Group (AFG), Avnet Technology Solutions, CERN, cloudKleyer, Danish Tax Authority (SKAT), Data Intensity, Dubai World, Engineers Australia, Enkitec, Groupe FLO, Guerra S.A. Implemento, s Rodovišrios, Interactive One, IT Convergence, Jesta Digital, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, KT, Kyoto Prefecture, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory / National Ignition Facility, Multinet Pakistan, National Australia Bank (NAB), Navis LLC, Overhead Door, Overstock.com, Paragon Data, Parks Victoria, Pella, Sunway Shared Services, St. Louis Metro, Terminales Ro de la Plata S.A., University of Massachusetts, Versace,
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Find out what your peers are saying about Oracle VM vs. VMware ESXi and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.