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

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

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

• 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

• 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

• Complex networking
• GPU processing is not fully supported
• It's hard to set up without support tools

Incentivized

• 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

Kernel-based Virtual Machine is an open-source and free solution, compared to Virtualbox which is a product from Oracle.

Incentivized

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

• KVM just works and gets out of the way
• KVM is working great with other open-source technologies like QEMU and libvirt

Incentivized

• 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