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Oracle VM vs VMware vSphere comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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
7.7
The ROI varies, with high initial costs; however, cost-effectiveness and ease of use are appreciated despite differing opinions.
Sentiment score
7.1
VMware vSphere increases ROI by reducing server needs, costs, and deployment time, improving efficiency and hardware utilization.
We can say 10% is the approximate amount of savings because most of the things are automated and streamlined, so the manual work is eliminated in most cases.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.0
Oracle VM support improved over time, with mixed reviews on speed and expertise, but helpful resources for self-resolution.
Sentiment score
6.8
VMware vSphere support is efficient and knowledgeable, though delays occur for low-priority issues; community forums provide additional help.
The response time and quality of support could be improved.
If we have issues, the support tends to be unreliable
Priority one issues are usually addressed by engineers within one to two hours.
Recently, support has been less friendly and slower, especially after the company was acquired by Broadcom.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Oracle VM efficiently scales resources across environments, providing flexibility and seamless integration, despite minor configuration challenges.
Sentiment score
7.4
VMware vSphere is praised for its scalable architecture, allowing efficient expansion with minimal downtime, despite potential hardware and licensing issues.
VMware vSphere is highly scalable in terms of the number of users and the number of servers it can handle.
It is a highly scalable solution.
Scaling is easy, whether it is hyperconverged or a three-tier architecture.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Oracle VM is praised for stability and performance, despite initial bugs, with improvements in latest versions on certified hardware.
Sentiment score
7.9
VMware vSphere is highly stable and reliable, with minimal downtime and strong performance, widely regarded as a robust platform.
Not every upgrade goes smoothly, and after an upgrade, it sometimes stops working.
It is a very stable hypervisor solution.
While they are generally stable, if outages occur, they tend to be due to brands like HP or Dell, not VMware vSphere itself.
I would rate the stability of VMware vSphere as eight out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

Oracle VM users seek improvements in UI, integration, documentation, and features like drag-and-drop, backup, and monitoring tools.
VMware vSphere's cost, stability, integration, and usability issues lead organizations to consider alternatives and seek improved solutions.
Oracle VM provides automation capabilities in the new version.
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.
Although the product is very strong and includes all necessary features, the high pricing drives many customers to avoid using it.
Another area is the stability during upgrades from older versions to newer versions, where we face issues.
Sometimes, it is difficult to find documentation for specific tools and solutions.
 

Setup Cost

Oracle VM is cost-effective with included support and licensing, benefiting enterprise users, especially with Oracle hardware.
VMware vSphere is reliable, but its high pricing and complex licensing can challenge budget-conscious enterprises compared to competitors.
Oracle VM is not a very expensive solution.
Many customers are trying to avoid it due to its high cost.
Costs significantly increased from perpetual to subscription, with prices rising by two to three times over three to five years.
About three or four years ago, I would have recommended VMware vSphere more strongly, but currently, the price and licensing issues are deterrents.
 

Valuable Features

Oracle VM offers scalable, secure, open-source virtualization with extensive automation, cost savings, and enhanced compatibility with Oracle databases.
VMware vSphere provides efficient virtualization with high availability, scalability, and robust performance, enhancing agility and minimizing downtime.
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.
The vMotion feature is beneficial for online migration of virtual machines from one host to another without downtime.
The tool is highly available, which is crucial for implementing critical applications requiring 24/7 availability.
We utilize features such as the motion and Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) for automatically managing resources.
 

Categories and Ranking

Oracle VM
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware vSphere
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
456
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Server Virtualization Software category, the mindshare of Oracle VM is 7.3%, up from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware vSphere is 16.1%, down from 20.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Virtualization Software
 

Featured Reviews

Nitin Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Experience enhanced performance and support with reliable server consolidation
We are working with Oracle VM and Oracle OLVM We have used both Oracle VM and Oracle OLVM. It has been four or five years since we started using these solutions. Both products are from Oracle. Oracle VM provides automation capabilities in the new version. We have been using this solution for…
Neeraj Mehra - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamlines virtualization and has features like high availability and vMotion
The primary use case is for virtualization, including the implementation of vSphere, vCloud Foundation, vCloud Director, and cloud automation with vSphere My customers, particularly SMBs, mainly utilize High Availability (HA), DRS, and vMotion features. The vMotion feature is beneficial for…
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Comparison Review

it_user234735 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 10, 2015
Hyper-V 2012 R2 vs. VMware vSphere 5.5
I was won with Hyper-V 2012R2 recently and the table below based on customer RFP (edited). This articles all about technical, there is not related with TCO/ROI, licensing cost, “political”, etc. Another to noted is the Windows Server 2012 licenses is based on 2 socket CPU, meanwhile…
 

Answers from the Community

NC
Nov 22, 2021
Nov 22, 2021
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 considered to be quite good. Oracle VM’s customer service and technical support are really outstanding. With this solution, you have the ability to patch with no downtime. Oracle has been around for a long ...
2 out of 3 answers
FM
Nov 17, 2021
VMware VSphere is better than Oracle VM because on Oracle Virtual machine migration is not an easy task as in VSphere due to complications existing in Oracle VM.  Also, Oracle VM is limited in features compared to VMware. Oracle VM is limited also in communicating with other virtualization platforms like VMware.
Janet Staver - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 18, 2021
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 considered to be quite good. Oracle VM’s customer service and technical support are really outstanding. With this solution, you have the ability to patch with no downtime. Oracle has been around for a long time. It is complete in terms of its features, functionalities, and sophistication. It may provide good documentation and be easy to set up, but it has a terrible licensing structure. Oracle VM may help a company manage its costs, but that can come at another expense for a company - you have to work with an antiquated system. VMware VSphere is fairly priced. Like Oracle VM, it provides near-zero downtime services. I think the way information is monitored needs to be improved. I feel like they need to have a better solution for hybrid clouds and migration to the cloud. It would also be nice to have additional integration options with different solutions at the application level (for example, Kubernetes). One of the biggest issues I have with it, is the firmware management of the underlying hardware. For firmware upgrades, for example, you have to take down your entire system. Even though it makes it easy to create virtual machines, it could be more user-friendly. In addition, the customer service and technical support seem to be average, but nothing spectacular. Overall, I would say that VMware VSphere is pretty stable and implementation is fairly easy. Conclusion:I’m not overly thrilled about either solution, but having had experience with both, I think VMware VSphere is better because it is easy to scale, pretty easy to use, easy to maintain and is mostly stable. And also, while Oracle VM may be more well known, I am not willing to work with an outdated product, especially since there are multiple other modern solutions available.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 is IOMMU?
DEEPEN DHULLA did explain well IOMMU. IOMMU has to be activated at the bios level. It exists on Intel and AMD platforms. It is used a lot inside virtualization platforms like VMware VSphere. It pr...
Why KVM??? Help please!
We use VMware and KVM. We find that KVM is a lot simpler to use and it provides the virtualization we need for Linux and Windows. For us, VMware does not offer any advantage. Moreover, KVM is free.
What is the biggest difference between Nutanix Acropolis and VMware vSphere?
We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface that allows you to talk directly to your VM from the present software. We fou...
 

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,
Abu Dhabi Ports Company, ACS, AIA New Zealand, Consona, Corporate Express, CS Energy, and Digiweb.
Find out what your peers are saying about Oracle VM vs. VMware vSphere and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
861,390 professionals have used our research since 2012.