RHEV vs VMware vSphere comparison

Red Hat and Broadcom are both solutions in the Server Virtualization Software category. Red Hat is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.0, while Broadcom is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.2. Red Hat holds a 2.4% mindshare in SVS, compared to Broadcom’s 19.0% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of Red Hat users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

RHEV

Read 37 RHEV reviews

4,061 Views
4,020 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

VMware vSphere

Read 461 VMware vSphere reviews

31,237 Views
28,113 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

RHEV

VMware vSphere

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

RHEV and VMware vSphere are competing virtualization products in the enterprise market. VMware vSphere seems to have the upper hand with its extensive feature suite, higher deployment sophistication, superior customer service, and long-term ROI potential despite its higher cost.

Features: RHEV provides efficient resource management, seamless application migration, and open-source integration, which are beneficial for enterprises needing specific customization. VMware vSphere offers advanced automation tools, enhanced security features, and high availability, which makes it ideal for businesses seeking a comprehensive virtual environment.

Room for Improvement: RHEV can enhance its automation capabilities, expand third-party support, and improve its user interface for better manageability. VMware vSphere could lower costs, simplify its complex licensing model, and improve performance documentation to assist user understanding.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: RHEV's straightforward deployment process appeals to organizations prioritizing simplicity, while its customer service meets expectations. VMware vSphere, on the other hand, offers a detailed and sophisticated deployment model, supported by a range of extensive customer service options, suited for complex environments requiring detailed assistance.

Pricing and ROI: RHEV is budget-friendly with a faster ROI for cost-conscious companies. VMware vSphere, with higher upfront costs, provides superior features justifying its pricing, and offers greater long-term ROI potential for enterprises prioritizing performance, hence, appealing to those willing to invest in top-tier virtualization solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed RHEV vs. VMware vSphere Report (Updated: August 2026).

Buyer's Guide

RHEV vs. VMware vSphere

August 2026

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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

RHEV

Ranking in Server Virtualization Software

13th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMware vSphere

Ranking in Server Virtualization Software

1st

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

461

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Server Virtualization Software category, the mindshare of RHEV is 2.4%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware vSphere is 19.0%, up from 16.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Server Virtualization Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
VMware vSphere	19.0%
RHEV	2.4%
Other	78.6%

Server Virtualization Software

Featured Reviews

Mike Neuliep

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.

Read full review

RajeshK10

Information Technology Architect at Central Bank of India

Reliable virtualization has supported smooth DR drills and efficient resource allocation

VMware vSphere has proven to be robust in nature, and the new features are quite acceptable. The new features in NSX network switching make it more useful in the reliability management of data centers. vMotion has helped my organization's business continuity strategies during our planned DR drill activity. The migration of VMs from DC to DR is quite smooth with respect to the network link. I assess the impact of VMware vSphere's High Availability feature on my infrastructure resilience as effective during DR drill activities and firmware upgrades, which we perform every six months. During those times, we rely on maintenance mode of several servers, and HA works properly. I have nothing to complain about. We have utilized VMware vSphere's Distributed Resource Scheduler effectively. Even though we have over-provisioned the vCPUs, it efficiently manages the CPU cores and memory of the servers intelligently, so I am not experiencing any bottleneck in resource utilization. Distributed Resource Scheduler has affected my resource allocation performance positively, providing a 20 percent advantage over my old hardware.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"This solution is very stable. Much more so than similar products."

"The solution has a good licensing module."

"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."

"Customers are moving to open source and Red Hat is the leader in this particular space, and I think customers feel more confident running Red Hat Virtualization than VMware."

"The platform is scalable, allowing for the installation of multiple nodes."

"There aren't any bugs on the solution."

More RHEV pros

"We did a side-by-side comparison of Hyper-V and VMware and VMware was substantially better for performance and usability."

"The more visible example is the performance seen by the user in my DaaS product."

"The product offers good stability."

"Cross vendor integration is in my opinion one of the best features."

"The most valuable feature of VMware vSphere is the ability to work in a big system infrastructure."

"The most valuable features for us are HA, DRS, and SDRS."

"We deploy this solution for our clients, from small to large enterprise."

"VMWare (and any virtualization platform) completely changes the way an organization functions."

More VMware vSphere pros

Cons

"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."

"I have found that the stability is related to the upgrade cycle. I find the cycle a little bit annoying; if the system is constantly upgrading then it is very painful in terms of the operation."

"We have found the technical support for this solution to be very slow in responding to our requests for assistance."

"With RHEV, the cyberattacks should be fewer. I want RHEV to be better protected."

"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 Administration of the Oracle database and the SAP ERP needs improvement."

"A few features of the product do not work as well as those in VMware."

"Red Hat by itself is not scalable. But you can have third party add-ons like Ceph to make it massively scalable."

More RHEV cons

"One of the areas creating a crash is when you are cloning."

"Customers face challenges due to increased costs after VMware's acquisition by Broadcom. The cost changed from perpetual to subscription, and there is a need for alternative solutions."

"VMware vSphere could improve on the automation features and the ease of use of the solution in many areas, such as the interface. However, VMware is doing lots of great things."

"I would like to see VMware vSphere provide a centralized patch service on the VMware level, regardless of your operating systems."

"Maybe the only thing to improve is the compatibility with non-standard devices. In particular we have issues with SAS Tape drives"

"One area for improvement is the documentation, especially after VMware was transferred to Broadcom. Sometimes, it is difficult to find documentation for specific tools and solutions."

"There are certain tools the can't run in parallel and occasionally, in those instances, we have trouble migrating customers from one source to our data center."

"It needs to be easier to integrate with open cloud."

More VMware vSphere cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"RHEV offers pricing based on a per-physical-machine licensing model."

"I would say the price is acceptable."

"This is an open-source solution."

"Price-wise, RHEV is okay, in my opinion."

"We have to pay extra for vulnerability and fault tolerance."

More RHEV pricing and cost advice

"The licensing price is fair compared to other similar solutions."

"vSphere is expensive."

"VMware licensing and pricing are a bit more expensive compared to others, like Hyper-V. However, you get what you pay for."

"The price could improve for the enterprise versions."

"The licensing cost is strictly based on the number of CPUs that your hosts have."

"Its price could be lower. There is the cost of one license, and then there is the subscription cost for support."

"It keeps together a lot of different environments, making it easier and faster to work. It definitely has a good turn around."

"Its price is quite high. VMware licensing is quite costly. You have to pay for the CPU and Threads, but if you want good service, you have to pay the price. Its cost is not more than 1 million for us."

More VMware vSphere pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

Thang Le Toan (Victory Lee)

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…

Read full review

Answers from the Community

Sridhar Battarusetty

VP-Global Supply Chain Management at mobileum

Feb 7, 2024

What are the differences between RHEV and VMware vSphere?

See 2 answers

Anne Cubarrubia

Editor at PeerSpot

Aug 21, 2023

Here is a comparison of the two hypervisors, RHEV (Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization) and VMware vSphere: RHEV Pros: Open source Highly scalable Cost-effective Cons: Not as mature as VMware vSphere Not as widely supported as VMware vSphere VMware vSphere Pros: Mature and widely supported Wide range of features Easy to use and manage Cons: Not open source Can be expensive Some prefer RHEV because it is open-source and cost-effective. However, VMware vSphere may be the better option if you need a hypervisor with a wide range of features and support. As to which solution consumes fewer resources, RHEV is a lighter-weight hypervisor than VMware vSphere, so it consumes fewer resources. However, you must remember that each hypervisor's resource consumption depends on the configuration and workload.

Read full answer

Rajkumar Gera

Vice President, IT Infrastructure ( DC Operations ) at Vodafone Idea Ltd.

Feb 7, 2024

Hi Sridhar, This is Rajkumar Gera, VP IT in one of the Telecom. Below are some of the points, may help you: FEATURE RED HAT ENTERPRISE VIRTUALIZATION VMWARE VSPHERE Key differentiators Open source solution Proprietary solution Purchased via one subscription Multiple levels of functionality sold in editions with different price points Bare-metal performance for virtualized applications Application high availability (Enterprise Plus version only) Prioritized high availability so critical workloads are restarted first Desktop and server virtualization One infrastructure for managing desktops and servers Add-on products for desktop virtualization: VMware Player, VMware Horizon View, VMware Horizon DaaS, and VMware Horizon Mirage Remote access to virtual desktops through SPICE Full support for multimedia applications Management server Included in the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization subscription Requires purchase and license of VMware vCenter and database support Virtual machine density 40 cores: 4,682@288 40 cores: 3,824@234 160 cores: 14,061@864 160 cores: result not available Self-service portal Allows users to provision and manage VMs and templates with a browser Requires the purchase of VMware vCloud Automation Center Integration with OpenStack technology Supports the open Neutron pluggable networking API Supports VMware’s NSX networking plug-in Supports the OpenStack image service for a unified image repository between virtual and cloud platforms Does not support the OpenStack image service

Read full answer

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Construction Company

Financial Services Firm

Construction Company

Manufacturing Company

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	21
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	177
Midsize Enterprise	138
Large Enterprise	261

Questions from the Community

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

Proxmox vs ESXi/vSphere: What is your experience?

For me the biggest impact is the cost of licensing in the case of VMware despite its overall intuitiveness and ease of handling and management. However, KVM-based Open Source solutions are becoming...

See all answers

Comparisons

Hyper-V vs RHEV

Compared 20% of the time

Proxmox VE vs RHEV

Compared 14% of the time

Oracle VM vs RHEV

Compared 11% of the time

KVM vs RHEV

Compared 8% of the time

DxEnterprise vs RHEV

Compared 7% of the time

More RHEV Competitors

Hyper-V vs VMware vSphere

Compared 47% of the time

Oracle VM vs VMware vSphere

Compared 15% of the time

Proxmox VE vs VMware vSphere

Compared 6% of the time

KVM vs VMware vSphere

Compared 4% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs VMware vSphere

Compared 2% of the time

More VMware vSphere Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

RHEV

July 2026

Download RHEV product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware vSphere

July 2026

Download VMware vSphere product report

Also Known As

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization

No data available

Overview

RHEV offers a cost-effective virtualization platform with support for up to 160 cores and 2 TB of RAM per host, emphasizing open-source accessibility and integration with applications like OpenStack.

RHEV stands out with features such as high performance, stability, ease of migration, and robust security. Its integration capabilities with diverse applications and the self-service Power user portal enhance its appeal for IT environments. While the platform's affordability compared to VMware is noted, areas for improvement include the GUI, user-friendliness, network virtualization, and the need for enhanced pricing and support in regions lacking system integrators. RHEV's ability to facilitate seamless migration from legacy systems to virtual environments is widely adopted in sectors such as government, banking, and IT services.

What are the key features of RHEV?

Open-Source Accessibility: Offers flexibility and customization options.
High Performance: Supports up to 160 cores and 2 TB of RAM per host.
Seamless Integration: Integrates well with applications like OpenStack.
Live VM Migration: Enables continuous operations without downtime.
Power User Portal: Provides self-service capabilities for users.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Cost Optimization: Provides a cost-effective alternative to VMware.
Scalable Computing: Allows flexible resource allocation and scaling.
Migration Efficiency: Facilitates moving from legacy systems smoothly.
Robust Security: Enhances data protection and privacy management.

RHEV is widely used in high-computing tasks like AI and big data analytics within data centers, supporting cloud solutions, AI, and ERP systems. It's implemented in privacy clouds for industries such as government, banking, and IT services to migrate workloads from physical to virtual environments and optimize operational costs.

Red Hat

VMware vSphere offers robust virtualization capabilities with features that enhance data center performance and optimize workloads. Centralized management and ease of deployment make it a cost-effective choice for many industries.

VMware vSphere is recognized for its high availability, vMotion, and Distributed Resource Scheduler, essential for efficient server infrastructure management. Users value its virtual machine management, seamless live migration, and strong resource allocation across data centers. Though the web client can be slow, and individual management of multiple ESXi hosts is challenging without central management, vSphere remains popular due to its flexibility and integration capabilities. While fault tolerance and free version features have their limitations, the product supports private clouds and hybrid cloud deployments effectively.

What are the key features of VMware vSphere?

High Availability: Ensures uptime through automatic failover and load balancing.
vMotion: Facilitates live migration without downtime.
Distributed Resource Scheduler: Optimizes workload distribution across servers.
Centralized Management: Simplifies administration tasks through single-pane control.
Resource Allocation: Allocates computing power and memory efficiently.

What benefits and ROI does VMware vSphere offer?

Cost Efficiency: Reduces hardware requirements and energy usage.
Scalability: Easily scales to meet growing business requirements.
Improved Performance: Enhances application performance and reliability.
Flexibility: Supports integration with other technologies for operational agility.
Ease of Management: Simplifies monitoring and administrative efforts.

VMware vSphere is widely used in industries to manage server infrastructure effectively, hosting mission-critical applications like ERP and SQL servers. It supports development, testing, and backup environments, contributing to data center consolidation and cost reduction while enabling private and hybrid cloud setups.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Qualcomm and Bonham's Auction House.

Abu Dhabi Ports Company, ACS, AIA New Zealand, Consona, Corporate Express, CS Energy, and Digiweb.

Buyer's Guide

RHEV vs. VMware vSphere

August 2026

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