Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) vs. VMware vSOM (discontinued)

Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)

VMware vSOM (discontinued)

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
KVM	Score 7.4 out of 10	N/A	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.	N/A
VMware vSOM (discontinued)	Score 10.0 out of 10	N/A	VSOM from VMware was a solution that delivered vSphere server virtualization, and also added capacity management and performance monitoring features. It is discontinued as of February 2019. Users were migrated to VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus and VMware vRealize Operations Standard.	N/A

Pricing

Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)

VMware vSOM (discontinued)

Editions & Modules

No answers on this topic

Offerings

Pricing Offerings
KVM	VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Free Trial
No	No
Free/Freemium Version
No	No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

Entry-level Setup Fee

No setup fee

Additional Details

—

More Pricing Information

Community Pulse
	Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)	VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Top Pros	Pro Automation tools Pro Licensing cost Pro Multiple versions	Pro Virtual environment Pro Virtual machines Pro Simple process
Top Cons	Minus Limited support Minus Setting it up Minus Hard to set	Minus Ms sql Minus Sql database Minus Data protection

Features

Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)

VMware vSOM (discontinued)

Server Virtualization

Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Product A and Product B
	Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) 9.2 5 Ratings 10% above category average	VMware vSOM (discontinued) 10.0 1 Ratings 18% above category average
Virtual machine automated provisioning	9.04 Ratings	10.01 Ratings
Management console	9.03 Ratings	10.01 Ratings
Live virtual machine backup	9.73 Ratings	00 Ratings
Live virtual machine migration	9.04 Ratings	10.01 Ratings
Hypervisor-level security	9.53 Ratings	10.01 Ratings

Best Alternatives
	Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)	VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Small Businesses	Proxmox VE Score 9.3 out of 10	Proxmox VE Score 9.3 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies	VMware vSOM (discontinued) Score 10.0 out of 10	Proxmox VE Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises	VMware vSOM (discontinued) Score 10.0 out of 10	Oracle VM VirtualBox Score 9.2 out of 10
All Alternatives	View all alternatives	View all alternatives

User Ratings
	Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)	VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend	9.3 (5 ratings)	8.0 (1 ratings)

User Testimonials
	Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)	VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend	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 Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Discontinued Products Vsphere Operation Management is suitable for automating the process of bringing up an alternate data center in case of a disaster. It also is a great way for testing your readiness of disaster. You have the ability to bring up a server in a "bubble" for testing. This way you can show your admins how the failover process will work. Incentivized Kurt Pritchett Senior System Engineer Read full review
Pros	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 Valentin Höbel Senior Consultant IT Infrastructure Read full review	Discontinued Products The best thing about VSOM is that it's built into VCenter so you only have one point of administration VSOM does a great job of making applications intuitive Re-IPing virtual machines are a must and VSOM does a great job of making this a simple process Incentivized Kurt Pritchett Senior System Engineer Read full review
Cons	Red Hat Complex networking GPU processing is not fully supported It's hard to set up without support tools Incentivized Stenio Pereira Filho IT Group manager Read full review	Discontinued Products The installation of VSOM is very tedious It uses an MS SQL database It should be able to adjust for hardware modifications in VCenter Incentivized Kurt Pritchett Senior System Engineer Read full review
Alternatives Considered	Red Hat Kernel-based Virtual Machine is an open-source and free solution, compared to Virtualbox which is a product from Oracle. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Discontinued Products vSphere with Operations Management has a much better way of automating the re-IPing of servers so you can stand them up in a different environment or location. You do, however, need another way of replicating your servers to your DR site, VSOM will not do that. We used EMC Recover Point for replication. Incentivized Kurt Pritchett Senior System Engineer Read full review
Return on Investment	Red Hat KVM just works and gets out of the way KVM is working great with other open-source technologies like QEMU and libvirt Incentivized RM Robert Munteanu Software Engineer Read full review	Discontinued Products In the case of a disaster, the ROI would be substantial. The license for VSOM is pretty expensive initially. Support for VSOM is terrific. Incentivized Kurt Pritchett Senior System Engineer Read full review
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