#1 most frequent
United States of America
39.4%1,961 installations of 4,974
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.
Categories & Use Cases
Product Demos
Top Performing Features
Management console
Management console for central administration of vm environment
Category average: 7.9
Live virtual machine backup
Ability to backup vms without interrupting service
Category average: 7.7
Live virtual machine migration
Downtime minimization by migrating live vms between hosts and across clusters
Category average: 7.7
Areas for Improvement
Hypervisor-level security
Hypervisor-level security including antivirus and anti-malware
Category average: 8.2
Virtual machine automated provisioning
Automation of virtual machine provisioning through use of vm templates
Category average: 7.6
Who Buys & Uses Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)
#2 most frequent
India
6.9%342 installations of 4,974
#3 most frequent
Germany
6.0%298 installations of 4,974
Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
KVM is the underlying technology for all of the virtualization that we run. We wanted to ensure that we weren't tied into a specific vendor and could easily migrate if one started to misbehave. By using KVM based solutions, we can easily shift to new solutions as things improve, set up low cost lab/testing environments, and provide solid virtualization environments for our clients.
Pros
- Virtualization
- Snapshotting
- Management
Cons
- Graphical performance is lacking
- Sometimes documentation isn't as strong as we would like.
Return on Investment
- Deploy low/no cost software solutions
- Become hardware agnostic
- Free ourselves of vendor lock-in
Usability
Alternatives Considered
VMware ESXi and XenServer
Other Software Used
TrueNAS, Fedora Linux, Debian OS, KeePassXC
KVM - Open-Source virtualisation solution
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
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.
Pros
- high-performance virtualisation
Cons
- no major problems with kvm
Return on Investment
- KVM just works and gets out of the way
- KVM is working great with other open-source technologies like QEMU and libvirt
Alternatives Considered
Oracle VM VirtualBox
Other Software Used
openSUSE Leap, openSUSE Open Build Service (OBS), openSUSE Tumbleweed
The great tool contemporary virtual world.
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Linux KVM is a powerful and free (in the case of using Ubuntu for example) virtualization tool. In our organization KVM plays a significant role in DevNet related implementations (especially by using in pair of network appliances + KVM with a variety of firewall/router/VPN box images). AT&T which is one of our carriers and the most well-known SP is also using KVM in its FlexWare environment (Juniper NFX hardware + KVM + vEX/vSRX images).
Pros
- Lightweight built-in implementation for all *nix based OS.
- Easy to deploy and manage VMs.
- Freeware (is you are using a free OS).
Cons
- Monitoring features (unclear SNMP MIB DB, do not support by the monitoring systems, like Solarwinds and etc.)
Return on Investment
- Money saving.
Alternatives Considered
VMware ESXi
Other Software Used
VMware ESXi
Linux KVM is a mature production ready solution
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
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.
Pros
- Segregation of guess systems.
- Fair allocation of resources.
- Hardware virtualization.
Cons
- Handling of hardware failures.
- Hot migration of systems between KVM hosts.
Return on Investment
- 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.
Alternatives Considered
Oracle VM VirtualBox
Great Linux-integrated virtualization foundation
Pros
- 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
Cons
- KVM itself doesn't ship with a management interface
- KVM itself is a bit complicated to handle
- KVM needs Qemu to virtualize Windows guests
Return on Investment
- KVM normally enables customers to fullfill their business goals very fast and it is free, so there is a very small time window from implementation to "investment is returned"
- If IT staff doesn't have hardcore Linux experience, they will need proper learning time until they'll be able to handle KVM
Alternatives Considered
Xen, Oracle VM VirtualBox, VMware ESXi and VMware Player
Other Software Used
Red Hat Ceph Storage, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, Docker