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KVM

KVM

Overview

What is KVM?

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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Pricing

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What is KVM?

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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  • No setup fee

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  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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What is Red Hat Virtualization (RHV)?

Red Hat Virtualization (formerly Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, broadly known as RHEV) is an enterprise level server and desktop virtualization solution. Red Hat Virtualization also contains the functionality of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktop in later editions of the platform.

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Product Demos

Why is KVM winning over VMware vSphere?

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Product Details

What is KVM?

KVM Technical Details

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Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Reviewers rate Live virtual machine backup highest, with a score of 9.7.

The most common users of KVM are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(17)

Reviews

(1-3 of 3)
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Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Virtualization was a turning point in technology because of its flexibility and reliability. Before virtualization, we had to deal with all the issues related to bare metal servers. Linux Kernel-based Virtual Machine became the industry de-facto for virtualization, especially for *nix related guess operating systems. It is very stable and reliable for production systems. We use virtualized servers for more than a decade on Kernel-based Virtual Machine technology with amazing results.
  • Segregation of guess systems.
  • Fair allocation of resources.
  • Hardware virtualization.
  • Handling of hardware failures.
  • Hot migration of systems between KVM hosts.
It is a very stable and reliable technology. Highly recommended for *nix production systems. It is capable of dealing with large amounts of CPU, memory, and disk, as well as, network traffic. I never used it to virtualize Microsoft Windows systems.
Server Virtualization (5)
96%
9.6
Virtual machine automated provisioning
100%
10.0
Management console
90%
9.0
Live virtual machine backup
100%
10.0
Live virtual machine migration
90%
9.0
Hypervisor-level security
100%
10.0
  • 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.
Kernel-based Virtual Machine is an open-source and free solution, compared to Virtualbox which is a product from Oracle.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use virtualisation to segregate workloads and to reduce blast radius of certain classes of problems. Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is an open-source, flexible, and performant solution to our needs. It runs natively via virt-manager on SUSE-based products, which we use prefer for production usage.
  • high-performance virtualisation
  • no major problems with kvm
Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is available for Linux systems, and most of the time supported by the operating system vendor. I would recommend using Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)whenever attempting to virtualise workloads on Linux.
Server Virtualization (4)
50%
5.0
Virtual machine automated provisioning
100%
10.0
Live virtual machine backup
100%
10.0
Live virtual machine migration
N/A
N/A
Hypervisor-level security
N/A
N/A
  • KVM just works and gets out of the way
  • KVM is working great with other open-source technologies like QEMU and libvirt
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 Linux distributions.
openSUSE Leap, openSUSE Open Build Service (OBS), openSUSE Tumbleweed
Stenio Pereira Filho | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) as part of our storage solution (OpenStack based). Our solution provides low-cost disk volumes to researchers to use for archiving and data backup. The volumes are provided by KVM virtual machines orchestrated by OpenStack Cinder. It was easier to implement this solution with KVM than XenServer Hypervisor.
  • Easy way to work with OpenStack
  • Better performance with the Linux OS
  • Lowest Cost
  • Complex networking
  • GPU processing is not fully supported
  • It's hard to set up without support tools
I recommend using KVM if you want to start a proof of concept of OpenStack services because it is very simple to configure and has much documentation about it. If your IT environment is Linux based, KVM is a great alternative to virtualize your infrastructure. It works with Windows virtual machines, but it is better with Linux obviously.
Server Virtualization (5)
50%
5.0
Virtual machine automated provisioning
50%
5.0
Management console
50%
5.0
Live virtual machine backup
N/A
N/A
Live virtual machine migration
70%
7.0
Hypervisor-level security
80%
8.0
  • Capital expenditure costs are low, because is open-source and free
  • Operational expenditure costs are medium because it's necessary [to have] an IT team with experience in Linux
  • First step to the virtualization world. Wake up, we are in the 21st century
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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