KVM Reviews

I'm a technical solution manager and we are customers of KVM. 

The screen and keyboard sharing feature is valuable. 

Monitoring and resolution are features which could be improved and I've found that if the product has not been used for some time, it needs to be re-set. 

I've been using this solution for over three years.

When the product is used frequently, it's stable, but if we don't touch it for some time, it needs to get synchronized again with the VGA or the HDMI, and there can be problems with that. 

The initial setup is not complex, but sometimes there's a problem and we need to unplug the cable in order to connect to the system.

I rate this solution a seven out of 10. 

We are a consulting company and I work with a lot of solutions to compare them and find out which ones are good for my customers.

The primary use case for this solution is virtualization.

I use this solution in on-premises data centers.

Compared to other virtualization solutions KVM is much faster and better at managing resources. For example, we compared XEN, KVM, and Vmware for creating development infrastructure for our programmers, we ended up using KVM.

The GUI interface makes the management of KVM easier than ever before.

The performance of this solution is great.

This solution is lacking in features such as management and integration.

• This solution needs better integration with desktop virtualization.
• Better integration with storage solutions is needed.
• Business continuity features need to be added.
• The live migration needs to be improved.
• You cannot run this application in a data center using only the GUI, so you have to have some knowledge with Linux in order to best manage it.
• Better network management software is needed.
• Features like vSAN are not available on KVM.
• Integration with Kubernetes would be an improvement.

Generally, this solution should be made easier to use. Many customers don't have enough experience with Linux or a deep understanding of operating systems, and they just want to use the product. This together with a lack of features has led customers to choose VMware.

I have been working with this solution for more than ten years.

This solution is limited in terms of scalability. I think that it is suitable for a mid-range company, but for a larger company, it is not quick. It does not have features for companies that need expandable solutions.

This solution is not used directly by the end-users. If KVM is installed in their data center then they just use the virtual machine. Users don't care about infrastructure, they're just looking for stability and use the operating system for their service. It is the administrators who use this product. Typically, there are two or three administrators in each data center. In terms of end-users, I have seen more than one hundred concurrent users.

We do not have access to Red Hat support from our country.

For technical support we depend on the internet and the knowledge of our administrators.

I have used XenServer and VMware, and the performance of KVM is better than these.

When it comes to management, integration, business continuity, and live migration, KVM is lacking features and VMware is better in this area.

The initial setup of this solution is not hard, but when you want to use this product in your data center, you have to use the command-line interface to better manage it. You cannot run this application using the GUI alone, so if you don't have enough knowledge with Linux then you may have some trouble.

Most of our solutions are implemented in-house as well as this one.

This solution can be used for free but if you have an expert team on Linux OS, select this one. if you don't have them, forget about it.

I evaluate options such as XenServer, VMware, and KVM every six months in order to choose the best product for my customers.

I have been using this solution since before it was owned by Red Hat, when it was community-based. It is easier to manage than ever before because you used to have to use the command-line interface, instead of the GUI.

I do not recommend this product for those looking for a stable and scalable virtualization solution because they will ultimately have problems in their data center. Just two weeks ago, I helped a friend of mine to migrate from KVM to VMware.

I think that if Red Hat worked on some business continuity features and add them to KVM then it would receive a better grade and be a more competitive solution.

I would rate this solution a five out of ten.

It is useful for everything for which you would use VirtualBox. It is the kernel virtualization model in Linux. I am using the 5.10 kernel. It comes with the Linux operating system.

It is easy to use, stable, and flexible. It is a pretty mature product, and it is faster than VirtualBox.

Its resource usage can be improved. 

I have been using this solution for several years.

It is stable.

There is no support for it except in the community. If you want support, you have to pay a company that provides support for this platform.

There is no installation as such.

It is free for everyone.

I would recommend this solution to others. If they were using Linux, this is a requirement.

I would rate KVM an eight out of ten. If KVM uses less resources, it might improve my score.

We are an integrator and this is one of the solutions that we implement for our clients. I have more than twenty years of experience working with these kinds of technologies.

We are using this solution for virtualization on IBM servers.

KVM is a very good solution for the user ecosystem.

The KVM service is well managed with a central policy interface.

The initial setup of this solution is more difficult than some of the competing products and it could be improved.

I would like to be able to see virtual networking integrated with the virtual machine.

We have been using KVM for more than five or six years.

We have experienced some strange problems with instability using KVM. If you install a new driver, HBA, or a new PC network adapter, then you can have problems because of the process of certification for these devices. It happens because KVM is a solution that supports many different kinds of hardware, unlike VMware which is much more restrictive in terms of what it is compatible with. The problem with having such an open solution is that it can also be the cause of issues with stability.

The scalability of KVM is not as good as that of VMware. 

We have approximately twenty people who are using this solution.

We were using VMware prior to KVM. It is a very reliable and very strong solution, but it is also very expensive. We are switching to try and reducts cost both in terms of licensing and managing.

The initial setup is more difficult than some other products, such as Nutanix. However, it is easier and more compact than the VMware setup.

We implement KVM for our clients and we have a technical support team of about fifteen people.

The most important thing for people to do when they are researching this kind of solution is to try and understand the main reason and concerns behind virtualization. They should learn the strong points and weakness of this technology, and try to have a base knowledge to understand the concept and how it can be used and managed on a daily basis.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

I am using this solution in my home lab because I don't know this solution well enough to put it into production. I have many clients, and by putting KVM into production it would require several changes, which would require more experience.

In the meantime, I will continue to use VMware and ESXi.

I use both on-premises and cloud-based deployment models. I typically use this solution on the cloud because I have many dedicated servers. However, I also use it on low-powered hardware machines, like old laptops, to create a firewall, access the router, or use as an access point.

I like that this is an open-source solution. It is very powerful, and it's easy.

When you install Hypervisor with KVM, you can transform it into a server with the graphical QEME in minutes, then look at what you have and remove all graphical things and then you can restore what you had originally.

The virtual manager and the graphical QEMU for KVM need some improvement.

In the next release, I would like to see some changes made to the dashboard as it would be nice to see some icons and some graphics when you are showing this solution to clients.

MOP made some changes to the dashboard, but it made it more difficult and it's a bit complicated. Maybe this was done intentionally because this is an open-source solution with technical support as an additional fee.

This solution is very stable.

It's straightforward and recoverable, it's easy to do anything.

This solution is scalable. Ubuntu is the best version to scale because with the MAS you can set load balancing, and they offer a free account to manage the load balancing for up to ten servers.

Currently, I am the only user.

I haven't contacted technical support.

I have been using VMware, ESXi, and Linux and will continue to use them while I get more experience with KVM.

The initial setup is straightforward.

There is a lot of information available online. You can do it all by yourself, you just need the time and the will to do it.

This solution is an open-source, free platform with paid support.

You can virtualize anything now, but in my experience, they are good for Linux and Unix systems. I have also used Windows.

Even if you are using another platform hypervisor, as I do with VMware, you may get yourself in a situation where you want to install the KVM or at least the key tools. You can access RAM drives, or broken virtual hard drives, or migrate them to another type of hard drive.

KVM is very complete, it is very powerful, but people are used to graphical QEMU and that is an issue.

The solution performs well and has many tools. It offers everything that all other paid versions have. Everything is in your hands, all you need is the internet to access all of the information on KVM.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We primarily use it to write the payroll solution fort Windows Server 2012 and 2018.

The solution is very light when you are putting your Operating System on it. You forget that there's a virtual layer on your solution. You are using it as if it was a whole computer. It's like having an entire computer that you've launched and have running with the Operating System that you need to work with.

The solution should be more user friendly despite that some interesting graphical solutions are available to manage the VMs. it would be usefull that the solution integrate the VM snapshot features and make it graphical, so we have a VM infrastructure more complete and easy the backup/restore in case of issue.

The solution is very stable. It's been stable since I started using it in 2014.

Scaling the solution is easy. You just have to add more hardware.

I've never needed to contact technical support. To me, that's a sign of a good solution.

The initial setup is easy. There is a lot of documentation online, so if there is a problem the online information will help you. 

Deployment only took one hour.

I handled the implementation myself.

We're using the on-premises deployment model. We're using the community version of the solution.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We are no longer using this solution. We evaluated it, but I have not used it in a production environment.

This solution is used for virtualization.

We have an on-premises deployment.

same features that vmware have concerning disaster recovery, high availibility and live motion of vm

simplicity of installation

full interoprability with vm format (ova, ovf, ..) for been aable to move forward or backward to another virtualization solution

We did not test scalability during our evaluation.

We are currently using VMware in our production environment.

The initial setup of this solution is quite simple.

My primary use case for KVM is running multiple VMs and containers on the one node.

I find the density of the product most valuable. It is because of kernel same page merging technology (KSM) that is integrated into Linux kernel. That high density makes KVM one of the important players of the virtualization market.

In the future release of KVM, I would like to have improved support for Windows guests.

The stability of this solution is less than other products in the same category. But, it is OK. 

The scalability of the product is really high because of architecture. Since KVM is part of a Linux kernel, it gets a lot of the benefits of its location. It has a nice strategy of memory virtualization, which is also part of the kernel. Kernel location makes possible schemes of a vhost that boosts device performance.

We currently have 300 users of KVM, with about two people as support staff. We do plan to increase usage in the future. So, we will be scaling up in the future.

The KVM technical support is really bad. It has a number of empty channels for support. We have tried emails, as well. But, if you are not part of the community, they will not answer your request. 

We previously used VMware. 

The initial setup was simple because KVM is used in Linux, so to get it out of the box is a simple task. But, the deployment is not an easy task. It takes a lot of installation suites. You could use a lot of additional products or improvements, like Red Hat virtualization that makes deployment of virtual machines simple. But, out of the box deployment is not that good.

This solution came with the Linux license.