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Firecracker vs. Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Firecracker

    Score4 out of 10
    N/AFirecracker is an open source virtualization technology that is purpose-built for creating and managing secure, multi-tenant container and function-based services. Firecracker enables users to deploy workloads in lightweight virtual machines, called microVMs that may provide security and workload isolation over traditional VMs, while enabling the speed and resource efficiency of containers. Firecracker was developed at Amazon Web Services with the goal of improving services like AWS Lambda…N/A

    KVM

    Score9.4 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
    FirecrackerKVM
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    FirecrackerKVM
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    FirecrackerKVM
    Server Virtualization
    Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Firecracker and Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)
    Feature
    Firecracker
    6.4
    1 Ratings
    23% below category average
    Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)
    9.2
    6 Ratings
    13% above category average
    Virtual machine automated provisioning6.01 Ratings7.05 Ratings
    Management console8.01 Ratings10.04 Ratings
    Live virtual machine backup6.01 Ratings10.04 Ratings
    Live virtual machine migration7.01 Ratings10.05 Ratings
    Hypervisor-level security5.01 Ratings9.04 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    FirecrackerKVM
    Small Businesses
    Proxmox VE
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Proxmox VE
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    VMware vSOM (discontinued)
    Score10 out of 10
    VMware vSOM (discontinued)
    Score10 out of 10
    Enterprises
    IBM PowerVM
    Score9.6 out of 10
    IBM PowerVM
    Score9.6 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    FirecrackerKVM
    Likelihood to Recommend
    4.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (6 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    FirecrackerKVM
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Open Source
    While deploying workloads in lightweight microVMs presents a couple of perks, Firecracker may not be the best software to handle this. Startup times are slow and scalability is quite limited because of the jailer and virtualization barriers. We have had security breaches on isolated EC2 instances while using Firecracker. It however has a silver lining by improving how serverless functions in container ecosystems are run with their VMMs.
    Incentivized
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    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
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    Pros
    Open Source
    • It makes it easy to secure virtual machines as they are segmented into microvms with a minimal attack surface area
    Incentivized
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    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
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    Cons
    Open Source
    • Excludes devices unnecessarily
    • Has a slow startup time the basis being to improve security which is quite irrelevant.
    • It has limited functionalities on monitoring VMs despite being an open source.
    Incentivized
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    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
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    Usability
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    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
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    Alternatives Considered
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    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
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    Return on Investment
    Open Source
    • Low memory overhead on each microVM
    • We can run workloads from different customers on the same machine.
    Incentivized
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    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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