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 8.2, while Broadcom is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.3. Red Hat holds a 2.4% mindshare in SVS, compared to Broadcom’s 19.2% 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

3,888 Views
3,849 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

VMware vSphere

Read 459 VMware vSphere reviews

27,141 Views
24,155 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

RHEV

VMware vSphere

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

RHEV and VMware vSphere both compete in the virtualization platform sector. VMware vSphere holds the upper hand due to its superior features, advanced management tools, and strong support network.

Features: RHEV benefits from its open-source nature, integration with Red Hat solutions, and powerful features like KVM virtualization technology and memory page sharing. VMware vSphere is known for its advanced management capabilities, such as VMotion for real-time movement of virtual machines, and high availability features. It provides comprehensive backup and recovery options, making it appealing for enterprise environments.

Room for Improvement: RHEV could enhance its user interface and integration with third-party applications, broaden its support network, and improve performance metrics in high-demand scenarios. VMware vSphere might benefit from more cost-effective pricing models, clearer licensing terms, and streamlined integration processes with non-VMware applications.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: RHEV features straightforward deployment and seamless integration within Red Hat ecosystems but relies on community-driven support. VMware vSphere, with its extensive documentation and robust support network, is noted for its ease of deployment in large and complex environments.

Pricing and ROI: RHEV offers a cost-effective option appealing to budget-conscious businesses, promising sustainable ROI, especially when integrated with Red Hat solutions. VMware vSphere’s higher initial investment is compensated by its extensive capabilities and tools, offering substantial long-term ROI, suitable for those prioritizing comprehensive solutions over cost.

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

Buyer's Guide

RHEV vs. VMware vSphere

April 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

7.0

Number of Reviews

459

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Server Virtualization Software category, the mindshare of RHEV is 2.4%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware vSphere is 19.2%, up from 16.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Server Virtualization Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
VMware vSphere	19.2%
RHEV	2.4%
Other	78.4%

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.

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IbrahimAysu

IT Director at Def Industry

Has improved infrastructure monitoring and resource management but requires better support and cost efficiency

The high availability feature's resilience is not bad, but it could be better. For example, whenever you lose any hardware, you will have interruptions on the services, and it reboots again on the other hardware host which is available at the crash time. That's good, but we would prefer to have zero downtime instead of the rebooting on the other server. We would prefer to have a zero downtime always-on configuration. VMware vSphere has a built-in feature called Fault Tolerance, but it's very limited for very limited VMs or very limited core count or CPU count, so it's not so useful for all the environment because of the limitations. The Fault Tolerance (FT) feature is very limited to very little core counts or very little VM counts, so you can't run the Fault Tolerance for all the servers or all the VMs, and that's very bad. If VMware vSphere could have any kind of built-in patch management environment with a repository, offline repository option, with test, non-production, and production environment separated, this would be perfect. Management of patch management with operating systems and including third-party applications which are running on the servers would enhance the VMware vSphere environment. VMware vSphere is very expensive. The worst aspect of VMware vSphere is the price. I can't tell you the exact cost at this time because the other team members in my teams are working on it, but I remember that the prices are very high. VMware vSphere is easy to scale, but it could be better, similar to a Kubernetes environment. It should have an automatic scale-out feature when the load gets high; if it gets some scale out automatically, it would be better than this, similar to Kubernetes or OpenShift.

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

"It is a very good solution, it works very well, we haven't had any issues with any technical aspects and it works well."

"It's a very good platform to build your virtual machines on and highly integrated with Red Hat itself and its satellites."

"What they provide is way beyond the essential requirements of customers."

"One of the most valuable features of this solution is the popularity of the OS."

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

"The biggest aspect for me is the disk usage, the virtual manager, and the deployment of machines."

"Technically, the main reason why I'm using Red Hat is because of its stability."

"The support for this solution is very good."

More RHEV pros

"The solution is stable."

"It gives us the ability to be running over 250+ VMs on five physical hosts and in various flavours of guest OSs."

"On the on-premises version, however, it's a very good solution; it has a nice interface and nice everything and is a very stable product."

"The performance of VMware vSphere is good."

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

"With this solution, we can provide more resources, cheaper, quickly, and still keep the integrity and quality of our services."

"From the interface, you see how much CPU utilization and RAM utilization that each one of those hosts is giving you. You can tell ahead of time when you need to start expanding the environment. And with VMotion, you expand the environment and then let DRS have at it and walk away."

"Technical support was helpful and knowledgeable."

More VMware vSphere pros

Cons

"We'd like it if it would be possible on Red Hat Virtualization to possibly connect two or three VMs to the same disk."

"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 solution could use network virtualization."

"Customers are not aware of this solution, they can improve by providing more awareness and solution availability."

"There are two things that I would like to see improvement in when it comes to Red Hat. First is the pricing and second is the support."

"RHEV can improve by keeping pace with new features and new enhancements. They should not be halted or delayed innovation because over the past quarter the enhancements have not been as fast as they have been previously."

"While everything needs improvement in some way, I have no specifics."

"They don't know how to sell their great products and don’t really seem to be interested in taking care of their partners who trust and really know their products."

More RHEV cons

"When it comes to cross-regional (e.g., someone in the US managing the China vSphere implementations), it can be a somewhat slow. I would recommend increasing the speed. While there has already been improvement there, I would like to see more."

"Here in Egypt, we would like everything free. So if you give us the license for free, we would be thrilled."

"I would like having something that works on a smaller screen, so we can get to it on our iPads and have it more touch-centric versus having to sit at a laptop."

"That was a bit tough."

"There should be a bit more flexibility in terms of the hardware we can use with the product."

"Reporting on vCenter needs to be improved."

"It would be great if the free version included a management tool that was a scaled-down vCenter Manager."

"The solution's technical team is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."

More VMware vSphere cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price depends on the use cases."

"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."

"We buy a license for commercial use, and we also use the free editions."

"This is an open-source solution."

"I would say the price is acceptable."

"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."

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

More RHEV pricing and cost advice

"I don't like the price because it's too expensive."

"This is not the cheapest solution, but when you consider the stability of VMware vSphere, it is a great solution."

"I think the licensing cost depends on the number of users."

"A customer can buy a license and support on a yearly basis."

"The licensing fees are on a yearly basis."

"vSphere is expensive."

"The pricing is competitive."

"The price could improve for the enterprise versions."

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

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

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	259

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

Proxmox VE vs RHEV

Compared 19% of the time

Hyper-V vs RHEV

Compared 18% of the time

Oracle VM vs RHEV

Compared 11% of the time

KVM vs RHEV

Compared 8% of the time

Nutanix AHV Virtualization vs RHEV

Compared 6% of the time

More RHEV Competitors

Hyper-V vs VMware vSphere

Compared 55% of the time

Oracle VM vs VMware vSphere

Compared 10% of the time

Proxmox VE vs VMware vSphere

Compared 6% of the time

KVM vs VMware vSphere

Compared 4% of the time

Oracle VM VirtualBox vs VMware vSphere

Compared 2% of the time

More VMware vSphere Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

RHEV

April 2026

Download RHEV product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware vSphere

April 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

April 2026

Free Report: RHEV vs. VMware vSphere

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