Azure Virtual Machines vs. Oracle VirtualBox vs. Red Hat Virtualization (discontinued)

If you want to host a dedicated Windows server on the cloud, and especially if you want to integrate it with your on premises Active Directory, Azure Virtual Machines should be your first choice. Obviously running Linux on Azure works very well too, but given Azure's pricing is not the cheapest, there are other providers out there that have a better cost-benefit ratio for Linux. That said, hosting Windows on Azure can be affordable (especially when compared to other providers) if you plan your licensing, topology, and application architecture correctly.

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It is best suited when you want to have different operating systems on your laptop or desktop. You can easily switch between operating systems without the need to uninstall one. In another scenario, if you expect some application to damage your device, it would be best to run the application on the VM such that the damage can only be done to the virtual machine. It is less appropriate when time synchronization is very important. At times the VMs run their own times differently from the host time and this may cause some losses if what you doing is critical. Another important thing to take note of is the licensing of the application you want to run your VM. Some licenses do not allow the applications to be run on virtual servers so it is not appropriate to use the VM at this time.

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RHEV is well suited for organizations that need a cost-effective and flexible solution for their environment. As its vendor-independent software, easily install on any type of hardware. RHEV provides a GUI interface to manage the software, which makes the management of the software easier for the end-user. RHEV is best for non-production or less critical applications. RHEV can be easily integrated with other REDHAT software.

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• When demand is high, we scale the service out, eg During a Football Match.
• When a football match is over and the throughput of data from OPTA drops we save by the service scaling back in.
• Our App Service Plans along with the Clean C# code are lightening fast giving a good customer experience.
• When producing the TV Guide information and a program overruns its scheduled time, a client can instantly be updated to the new programming schedule as our change is instant and its in the right place for all the clients to download and adjust their television guides appropriately to send out to the public giving a 24x7 uptime service that is precise and accurate and resilient to outages due to failover zones around the world.

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• It is simple to install - there is no advanced knowledge required to begin building virtual computers
• It is easy to use - adding new virtual machines is simple with wizard-based deployment
• It enables easy portability - moving virtual machines from one host to another is straight-forward and simple
• It is free

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• RHV issues/bugs can be reported via Bugzilla to RH support. The service is great and typically responds soon.
• Red Hat distribution integration is seamless as it is integrated into the kernel.
• OpenStack support enables more customized VM templates and network configuration control.

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• Pricing can be a concern if you are truly agnostic to which cloud you are building your particular solution in.
• The UI, as is the case with any cloud provider, is crowded.
• As with any cloud provider, it can be difficult to tune in exactly the right amount of servers for your needs...you might find yourself under/overprovisioning.

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• I have had issues in the past when it has come to resizing VM disk storage. The issue is entirely detailed here: https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/9103 -- the problem was caused because of having existing snapshots (which error message output was not detailing). I haven't had to deal with the issue due to my dynamic disk sizes not being small from the start anymore (this is mostly an issue for my Windows VMs where the base disk may need significant size for the OS). It looks like, for a resize, that a merge of all snapshots has to occur first -- one user on that list details a workaround to maintain snapshots by cloning the VM. (Note: 5.2 was just released a few weeks ago, and looks like it should prevent the problem happening in the future by properly informing users that it isn't possible with snapshots).
• Certain scenarios, like resizing disks, required dropping into a terminal as there were no options to previously do so via the GUI. According to some recent posts, I've seen that v5.2 has added disk management stuff like that to the GUI (or will be adding it). I'm comfortable with dropping into the terminal, but in a teaching scenario or when evaluating the learnability of the tools, it complicates things.

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• 1- RHVM API is pretty slow, especially after creating a VM it is not possible to retrieve the VM details (i.e VM's MAC Address) fast enough, where we need to place a pause in our Ansible Playbook, make the automation process slow.
• 2- RHV is still using collected to monitor the hypervisors which is deviating from Red Hat policy for other RHEL based applications to use PCP to monitor, which is richer in features.
• 3- It will be great if it is possible to patch the hypervisors using other tools such as satellite and not only via RHVM.
• 4- In the past Red Hat used to present patches in the z release (i.e. 4.3.z), and features in the y release (i.e 4. y), but starting from 4.4 that is mixed together wherein the Z release you get both patches and features, that is not good because that requires a lot of time to test when we patch as it includes features as well.
• 5- Engineering team has to be more reactive when new feature is requested.

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I give this rating because virtual box is inexpensive but there is another product such as vm ware that can also be used

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No VM console, weak management interface, changing CPU/memory is not straightforward. On the positive side, basic RDP functionality is good to have. As long as things are working, the ability to host Windows VMs is appreciated.

I love using the Graphical User Interface. The VirtualBox Manager is very easy to understand and use. You can quickly create, configure and manage all your virtual machines in one window. It makes operating virtual machines easy and simple. When using VBoxManage it gives the user comprehensive control over VirtualBox so that you can use automation and scripting at the command-line interface

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Dependency on the Host OS means it is as reliable as it is possible to be. Application errors are beyond the purview of the application.

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No issues, especially with the extensions addons.

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I give the overall support for Azure Virtual Machines a 7 because I think while the overall support do a great job there are still areas that it could improve on such as efficiency and speed. So while I only give it a 7 and it has some issues it is still better than the overall support at Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling.

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Oracle have a very fast response rate and a strong user community. One can geet help from many sources if they choose to research for themselves.

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We really enjoy using virtual box. We do not require to buy expensive hardware but instead we can minimize costs and maximize profits.

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Azure Virtual Machines offer unparalleled flexibility in provisioning, managing and upgrading the VM instances, both manually and programmatically. AVM offer very granular billing options and enables high costs optimisations (while still being costly). The other competitors I mentioned are very good at offering dead-cheap VMs. But if you need anything beyond that, especially for big computing, you need Azure Virtual Machines.

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VirutalBox is very similar to using Vmware with the slight difference in appearance and what might be considered a less polished look. However, what it lacks in polish and looks it makes up for in functionality, easy of use and the wide range of operating systems and features it supports without the need of buying the full professional edition

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RHEV is an excellent product, includes more features, is less expensive, and has rock solid reliability and is backed with the best Red Hat Support in the industry. RHEV uses KVM under the hood which is used by all the big players in the industry (AWS, Rackspace, etc) to lower their overall costs and improve efficiency and profits and that's why RHEV is an excellent solution!

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The only problem I have found is that the deployment is dependent and intrinsically linked to the Host OS. This is different from bare metal solutions which remove that dependency on a Host OS. The latter is more reliable and removes a layer of potential failure.

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• It's so easy to spin up new instances, that it becomes also to easy to have to many of them to manage. Many teams end up with a couple of hundreds of VMs after a short while, making the whole thing very hard to maneuver
• Azure VMs are the next step for us to rely on Onprem servers, and leaving the management of the infrastructure to the professionals
• The ease of use, is also important when our main focus is to deliver new applications and integrations fast, and not having to worry about infrastructure. We sell bottles, not CPUs

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• Minimal-to-no support needed from the DevOps team.
• Provides a direct and an easy way to access multiple VMs inside the same machines which enables performing various testing and QA tasks without the need to switch hardware.
• Automatic provisioning using tools (esp. Vagrant) which enables developing a base image once, and allows for exporting/importing anywhere across the developers team.
• Very cost-effective (no fees or monthly subscriptions).

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• RHEV has provided a positive ROI as our customers are not experiencing as many outages during maintenances.
• We have not experienced any catastrophic failures as a result of vsphere losing connection to the ntp.
• There has been a level of stability in our environment that was not previously experienced with our previous vendor.

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