Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) vs. SUSE Harvester

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.

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It's great for provisioning any kind of virtual servers, but for now, we use it to provision only servers for Rancher managed Kubernetes clusters. But we are considering to provision also virtual servers for all kinds of needs on SUSE Harvester in the near future, as it's getting more and more mature with every release.

• 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

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• Fast to deploy new virtual machines
• It's easy to use
• Stable and ready for production
• Free and open source
• Has a strong community

• KVM itself doesn't ship with a management interface
• KVM itself is a bit complicated to handle
• KVM needs Qemu to virtualize Windows guests

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• It takes expertise to set up SUSE Harvester for production
• You need to get used to SUSE Harvester to be as "fluent" as in VMWare ESXi
• You need to well prepare for system upgrades

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.

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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.

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We used ESXi for years and were happy with it. Then we implemented Rancher managed Kubernetes clusters with nodes provisioned on VMware ESXi. Later, when SUSE Harvester came out, we started to provision SUSE Rancher nodes on Harvester. Both VMware ESXi and SUSE Harvester are great products, and I think - we are keeping both, at least for now, when SUSE Harvester is a young project.

• 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.

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• We can provision more virtual servers
• It's cheaper than competitor products (tbh - it's free, if you don't need support)
• It's easy to manage when you get used to it