Kernel-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.
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Oracle VirtualBox
Score8.2 out of 10
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Oracle VirtualBox is an open source, cross-platform, virtualization software, enables developers to deliver code faster by running multiple operating systems on a single device.
System Administrator in Information Technology at JET e-business (Information Technology & Services, 51-200 employees)
Chose Hyper-V
Oracle VirtualBox works just fine on workstations, for testing pourposes. But sometimes the virtual network conflicts with the physical cards on the workstation. VMware is the state of the art, but it costs more than gold, and you will have to license every Windows Server VM …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Hyper-V
Though Docker provides cross-platform support and isolation, Hyper-V provides true virtualization over the host OS and creates boundary over guest OS that protects the security threats, resource-hogging on the host OS.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
IT Admin in Information Technology at Mepal (Building Materials, 51-200 employees)
Chose Hyper-V
I used VMware vSphere at another company. However, for infrastructure with only two virtual machines, the VMware license cost is not worth it, because with the Windows Server Standard license you have the possibility to install two virtual servers at no extra cost.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Hyper-V
Hyper-V is powerful and virtualizes Windows exceptionally well, with less tweaking. It is also cheaper, and allows our clients to budget more for more frequent expansion. Its only real competitor in my opinion is VMware, and that is because vCenter is much more intuitive than …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
IT Manager in Information Technology at Travel Planners International (Leisure, Travel & Tourism, 1001-5000 employees)
Chose Hyper-V
Hyper-V is far superior to all other virtual host software I've ever used...PLUS IT IS FREE!!! Compared to Oracle Virtual Box, which is also free, Hyper-V is giving you enterprise-level security, management, features and deployment/failover functionality not found elsewhere. …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Director of IT Engineering in Information Technology at Pearl River Resort (Gambling & Casinos, 1001-5000 employees)
Chose Hyper-V
I would say Hyper-V would be a peer to VMWare. Features and stability are solid and full-featured for both products. Each have unique shortfalls that the other does not. VirtualBox is a great tool for desktop or laptop virtualization. It is not targeted as much for the …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Hyper-V
We use VirtualBox for non-production environments and pre-production testing because it's free. In our experience, we are not confident in VirtualBox for a production environment. On the flip-side, VMware is overkill for our needs and is too complex for our small I.T. dept to …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Senior Systems Analyst in Information Technology at CymSTAR, LLC (Defense & Space, 201-500 employees)
Chose Hyper-V
Hyper-V competes very well with RHEV--not just on initial cost but also on capabilities and on learning. I know I've written a lot about learning, but it's significant when you have embraced a technology that is so difficult to use that no one wants to administer it. I've used …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Hyper-V
Installing Hyper-V from the same media as the windows servers.
The default windows GUI makes Hyper-V easier to use for junior server managers.
Hyper-V gives the feeling that you already know it, while other products like VMware and VirtualBox need their own learning curve before …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
System Administrator/Test Manager in Information Technology at Keysoft Solutions (Computer Software, 11-50 employees)
Chose Hyper-V
Hyper-V being 'free' was the main reason we went for it here. We gave VMware Workstation/Server a try when initially evaluating virtualisation options, but Hyper-V won out for ease of integration into our existing environment. VirtualBox was more of a 'plug in' solution which …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Senior Network Security Engineer in Information Technology at Insight (Information Technology and Services, 5001-10,000 employees)
Chose Hyper-V
While Hyper-V did stack better for our needs than Proxmox VE or KVM, it did not offer the features that ESXi did for our needs and we had to forgo choosing Hyper-V for the promiscuous mode needs.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Red Hat
Verified User
Chose KVM
Kernel-based Virtual Machine is an open-source and free solution, compared to Virtualbox which is a product from Oracle.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Software Engineer in Engineering at LMN (Computer Software, 1-10 employees)
Chose KVM
Compared to VirtualBox, KVM has simpler licensing terms and is supported by the operating system vendor. KVM also has more mature integrations with other open-source projects. Automating provisioning is simple with KVM since it is available in the package repositories of …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Senior Consultant IT Infrastructure in Human Resources at open *i GmbH (Information Technology and Services, 1-10 employees)
Chose KVM
KVM is free and provides environments where guests can run their own Kernel while still performing very well. It is also very native to work with KVM since it is integrated within the Linux Kernel.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Analista de Suporte de Sistemas in Information Technology at T-Systems do Brasil (Computer Software, 10,001+ employees)
Chose Oracle VirtualBox
Oracle's solution is entirely free, although a bit clumsy and visually outdated. Hyper-V can and will be a better match due to having more resources, offering full Microsoft Support, and being focused mainly on corporative uses, but for a small environment, it can be like …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Owner in Information Technology at Colorado Computer Care (Information Technology and Services, 1-10 employees)
Chose Oracle VirtualBox
The main benefits of Oracle VM VirtualBox are its licensing terms (it is free), its open-source nature, and its active community. However, its various competitors do a much better job when it comes to both ease of use and, most importantly, speed. For example, Parallels Desktop …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Freelance Consultant and Educator in Information Technology at Halfway To Infinite (Information Technology and Services, 1-10 employees)
Chose Oracle VirtualBox
Reasons why I prefer to use Oracle VM VirtualBox:
I've worked and taught in many environments where the OS used by others (or by me for employment reasons) is a mix of Windows and Mac OSX. Sometimes Linux is around if I can help it. Being familiar with VirtualBox means I won't …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Analista de Sistemas in Information Technology at Consultor independiente de software (Computer Software, 1-10 employees)
Chose Oracle VirtualBox
VM VirtualBox is the best free option on the market. While VMware Workstation can offer better performance than VM Virtualbox, it has a price. The alternative that VMware offers for free virtualization is VMware Player, but offers many fewer features, and falls far short …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Oracle VirtualBox
Oracle VirtualBox is the better choice due to its cost-effectiveness, ease of use and feature set. However VMware Workstation is more suitable due to its superior performance, better features and better integration with enterprise tools. VMware Workstation also provides a …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Oracle VirtualBox
With regards to how some of the other virtualization software packages stack up again VirtualBox, I would say VirtualBox is ahead of the game especially when it comes to cost savings, as there is no ongoing cost for running the software. A big disadvantage to one of the other …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Oracle VirtualBox
I have used Linux KVM and Oracle VirtualBox in order to virtualize and manage different VMs. Oracle's solution, in my opinion, it is better because of the GUI, documentation and API. I have managed to write scripts to automate different procedures to help in my daily duties. I …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Hyper-V makes a lot of sense in scenarios that will support several Windows Server-based OS virtual machines. The only limitation of those licensed VMs is the hardware that hosts the Hyper-V role. If you need to deploy many servers running Windows Server OS, it is worth the price. Hyper-V also does a great job of managing the server host's computational resources, including memory, CPU, network, and storage.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Easy to use GUI - very easy for someone with sufficient Windows experience - not necessarily a system administrator.
Provisioning VMs with different OSes - we mostly rely on different flavors of Windows Server, but having a few *nix distributions was not that difficult.
Managing virtual networks - we usually have 1 or 2 VLANs for our business purposes, but we are happy with the outcomes.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
We manage Hyper-V using both System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) and the in-build Hyper-V administration tool, the former being the main product we use as the built-in tool is very light on functionality, unlike VMware ESXi.
Management of storage is not great and quite a shift away from how VMware does it with ESXi; there is no separate panel/blade/window for LUNs/data stores, which means there is a lot of back and forth when trying to manage storage.
A dedicated client with all functionality in one place would be awesome.
Having the equivalent of ESXi's virtual console is something which is absolutely needed.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Cheap and easy is the name of the game. It has great support, it doesn't require additional licenses, it works the same if it is a cluster or stand-alone, and all the servers can be centrally managed from a system center virtual machine manager server, even when located at remote sites.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
It is quite intuitive. Junior techs are able to provision and administrate Hyper-V virtual server infrastructure with little to no additional training. Documentation from Microsoft is easily avaliable and decently well written. Hyper-V is reliable and does what it is supposed to. Can be admin from an intuitive gui, or aoutmated with extensive powershell.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
In the past 2 years our Hyper-V servers have only had a handful of instances where the VM's on them were unreachable and the physical Hyper-V server had to be restarted. One time this was due to a RAM issue with the physical box and was resolved when we stopped using dynamic memory in Hyper-V. The other times were after updates were installed and the physical box was not restarted after the updates were installed.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Hyper-V itself works quickly and rarely gave performance issues but this can be more attributed to the physical server specifications that the actual Hyper-V software in my opinion as Hyper-V technically just utilizes config files such as xml, and a data drive file (VHD, VHDX, etc) to perform its' duties.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
I gave it a middle of the road rating - as far as getting direct help from Microsoft this never seems to happen. (Good luck getting ahold of them.) Getting help from online support forums is pretty much where I get all my help from. Hyper-V is used quite widely and anything you could need help with is out there and easily searched for on your favorite search engine.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
We had in person training from a third party and while it was very in depth it was at a beginner's level and by the time we received the training we had advanced past this level so it was monotonous and redundant at that point. It was good training though and would have provided a solid foundation for learning the rest of Hyper-V had I had it from the beginning.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The training was easy to read and find. There were good examples in the training and it is plentiful if you use third party resources also. It is not perfect as sometimes you may have a specific question and have to spend time learning or in the rare case you get an error you might have to research that error code which could have multiple causes.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
initial configuration of hyper-v is intuitive to anyone familiar with windows and roles for basic items like single server deployments, storage and basic networking. the majority of the problems were with implementing advanced features like high availability and more complex networking. There is a lot of documentation on how to do it but it is not seamless, even to experienced virtualization professionals.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
VMware is the pioneer of virtualization but when you compare it with Hyper-V, VMware lacks the flexibility of hardware customization and configuration options Hyper-V has also GPU virtualization still not adequate for both platforms. VMware has better graphical interface and control options for virtual machines. Another advantage VMware has is it does not need a dedicated os GUI base installation only needs small resources and can easily install on any host.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Nothing is perfect but Hyper-V does a great job of showing the necessary data to users to ensure that there is enough resources to perform essential functions. You can also select what fields show on the management console which is helpful for a quick glance. There are notifications that can be set up and if things go unnoticed and a Hyper-V server runs out of a resource it will safely and quickly shut down the VM's it needs to in order to ensure no Hardware failure or unnecessary data loss.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Massively positive impact on expenses in my company by reducing our storage needs drastically. We were able to reallocate the budget to upgrading our primary Hyper-V server with pure enterprise SSD's as we reduced the storage needs by over 50% and by this we increased performance by over 400%.
We have deployed more than 8 servers with EXTREMELY minimal cost using Hyper-V and not requiring another hardware server to host it. We have leveraged our hardware resources in our 2 servers so well that we were able to add many new services, not in place prior, as we did not have the servers to host them. Now with Hyper-V, we deployed many more servers in VM's, purchased OS's & CAL's, but did not need any hardware, which is the greatest expense of all.
With Hyper-V, our ROI was reduced from 36-40 months on our primary server, down to only 13 months by reducing costs of storage and adding so many more servers, by calculating the "would-be" cost of those servers that was avoided by creating them in Hyper-V.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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).
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
