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DigitalOcean Droplets vs. Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    DigitalOcean Droplets

    Score9.7 out of 10
    N/ADigitalOcean's Droplets is designed to help the user spin up a virtual machine in just 55 seconds. Standard, General Purpose, CPU-Optimized, or Memory-Optimized configurations provide flexibility to build, test, and grow an app from startup to scale.

    $4

    per month

    KVM

    Score9.5 out of 10
    N/AKernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is a virtualization solution developed by small Israeli software company Qumranet and supported by Red Hat since that company's acquisition in 2008.N/A
    Pricing
    DigitalOcean DropletsKVM
    Editions & Modules
    Basic
    $4
    per month
    CPU-Optimized
    $42
    per month
    General Purpose
    $63
    per month
    Memory-Optimized
    $84
    per month
    Storage-Optimized
    $131
    per month
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    DigitalOcean DropletsKVM
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsPricing for DigitalOcean Droplets varies depending on the size of the virtual environment and the associated data needs.—
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    DigitalOcean DropletsKVM
    Considered Both Products
    DigitalOcean
    No answer on this topic
    Red Hat
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    8 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    8 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    88%
    Happy with the feature set
    7 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    7 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    88%
    Implementation went as expected
    7 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    DigitalOcean DropletsKVM
    Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
    Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of DigitalOcean Droplets and Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)
    Feature
    DigitalOcean Droplets
    8.8
    1 Ratings
    6% above category average
    Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)
    -
    Ratings
    Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Dynamic scaling10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Elastic load balancing5.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Pre-configured templates5.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Monitoring tools10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Pre-defined machine images9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Operating system support10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Security controls10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Automation10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Server Virtualization
    Comparison of Server Virtualization features of DigitalOcean Droplets and Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)
    Feature
    DigitalOcean Droplets
    -
    Ratings
    Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)
    9.2
    6 Ratings
    13% above category average
    Virtual machine automated provisioning00 Ratings7.05 Ratings
    Management console00 Ratings10.04 Ratings
    Live virtual machine backup00 Ratings10.04 Ratings
    Live virtual machine migration00 Ratings10.05 Ratings
    Hypervisor-level security00 Ratings9.04 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    DigitalOcean DropletsKVM
    Small Businesses
    IBM Cloud Object Storage
    Score9 out of 10
    Proxmox VE
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers
    Score8.7 out of 10
    VMware vSOM (discontinued)
    Score10 out of 10
    Enterprises
    SAP on IBM Cloud
    Score9 out of 10
    IBM PowerVM
    Score9.6 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    DigitalOcean DropletsKVM
    Likelihood to Recommend
    10.0
    (8 ratings)
    10.0
    (6 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    DigitalOcean DropletsKVM
    Likelihood to Recommend
    DigitalOcean
    DigitalOcean Droplets are the best choice for developers teams that need reliable Linux servers to deploy their projects, the ability to create a droplet for testing purposes then destroy it, and only get charged for the few hours used makes the chances of messing up very slim. DigitalOcean Droplets is a great solution because the servers are scalable and the process of adding more resources like CPU or RAM to an existing droplet takes only a few minutes and once a server is scaled up it can also be scaled down if necessary which is perfect for supporting a temporary peak in traffic for example.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Red Hat
    KVM is the best solution in the case you need to test and turn up any virtual environment with limited vCPU/RAM resources. The obvious area of its use is a network environment when we want to avoid being tied to one type of hardware/vendor and being able to swap from one instance to another with no downtimes. The use of a vSwitch (that supports VLAN tagging) is a significant bonus for network engineers that some other hypervisors do not provide.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    DigitalOcean
    • Simplicity to scale services--the interface is very quick and effective to use
    • Reliability--this is key for us, as any downtime effects our reputation
    • Keeps the costs down--hosting our own equivalent infrastructure would cost a lot more
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Red Hat
    • KVM is really good at providing fast and reliable virtualization for Linux guests
    • Since KVM is a kernel module, every VM is a Linux process which can be managed by Linux system tools
    • KVM integrates very well with the management framework libvirt, which is why KVM can be integrated in automation tools as well
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    DigitalOcean
    • In terms of an availability zone, they have limitations not available in most of the geographical locations.
    • No live support is available which can cause problem if you have outage.
    • Number of service is quite limited.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Red Hat
    • KVM itself doesn't ship with a management interface
    • KVM itself is a bit complicated to handle
    • KVM needs Qemu to virtualize Windows guests
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    DigitalOcean
    Other platforms dashboard console is more difficult to use. DigitalOcean's dashboard is clean, simple, and straightforward
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Red Hat
    It does the job and stays out of the way. The specifics of usability relies on the implementation, but with things like Icarus and libvirt, things are standardizing nicely.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    DigitalOcean
    DigitalOcean Droplets is continuously evolving to be more and more powerful. It has great features and has low cost options, which is really great for developers. Its CDN, Loadbalancer, etc. make it a good place to host a high-traffic application. Moroever, DigitalOcean Droplets has a nonprofit program that helps nonprofit sites to run their infrastructure, which is tremendous and no competitor of DigitalOcean Droplets does that.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Red Hat
    It is a very reliable solution that can be used for x86 architecture virtualization with low overhead. It is a free and open source software. Easy to use withOpenStack.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    DigitalOcean
    • Digital Ocean has been great helping us move web apps to the cloud
    • Digital Ocean has been really helpful when hiring contractors
    • The interface could use some work, but overall its not terrible
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Red Hat
    • Fast provisioning of new servers.
    • Huge drop of the cost of servers compared to bare metal.
    • Easy upgrades of resources, sometimes now even requiring a server restart.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
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