We performed a comparison between KVM and Proxmox VE based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, KVM and Proxmox VE had a similar user rating regarding ease of deployment, pricing, and service and support. When it came to features, reviewers felt KVM was complex and not scalable, while users of Proxmox VE were unhappy that certain processes weren’t automatic, and moving things to the cloud was difficult.
"It is an open ecosystem, and we see there is a benefit in open-source solutions."
"Good screen and keyboard sharing feature."
"KVM is stable."
"The initial setup was simple."
"The key aspect is that the KVM directly interacts with the Kronos. There's no clear indication of indirect communication with Kronos. It is not linked to Kronos, and interaction is straightforward without any intermediaries."
"This solution is open source and easy to configure."
"I like that this is an open-source solution. It is very powerful, and it's easy."
"The tool's most valuable feature is backup. The product makes it easy to manage virtual machines. Other tools require third-party applications like VMware and vSphere. However, KVM doesn't require these applications."
"The affordability of the solution is the product's most valuable aspect."
"It is easy to deploy."
"KVM hypervisor is a valuable part of the solution."
"The most valuable features of Proxmox VE are the ease of containerization. Overall the solution is generic, feature-rich, and has compatibility."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is migration."
"It is easier to balance loads across hypervisors if a given container or virtual machine uses more resources than its peers."
"The solution is stable."
"The backup service, which was released recently, and that we are already using, is wonderful."
"One problem I have is that it's not very scalable when it comes to resizing the VM disk dimensions. For example, if you have initially set a virtual drive to 10 GB and you want to upgrade it to 15 GB, it's not that easy."
"I have encountered difficulties in getting the tool's documentation."
"In KVM, snapshots and cloning are areas where there could be a little more sophistication, like VMware."
"The product must provide better performance monitoring features."
"I believe KVM offers a unified answer, while ProxMark addresses orchestration. KVM lacks orchestration. If the aim is to centrally oversee multiple KVMs – let's say to freeze them – a centralized management solution is absent."
"The stability of this solution is less than other products in the same category."
"Technical support could be better. In the next release, I would like to see an improved user interface and dashboard. This type of improvement will make it easy or help our engineers understand the solution from a requirement point of view."
"I would like to see more focus on microservices and integration with Kubernetes or OpenShift."
"The only issue I have with Proxmox VE is updating it. You have to manually update it or you have to have a way to update it automatically."
"Some of the more advanced features and options required for setup still need to use the console and hand edit config files."
"We are facing issues with disk utilization and disk performance."
"Proxmox VE needs to make a deal with Veeam. I was also unable to make version upgrades. I have also encountered backup problems."
"The management can be better. It's not like VMware where you can get all clusters on a single dashboard. In VMware, you can literally see all the VMs running in one cluster regardless of the host."
"It is a good solution, but it is very complicated in some ways. It is not easy. You must have experience in the console mode to do some configurations. A lot of documentation and YouTube videos are available that you can use to learn about it."
"The tool needs to add a lot of containers."
"The initial setup has a pretty steep learning curve."
KVM is ranked 4th in Server Virtualization Software with 39 reviews while Proxmox VE is ranked 1st in Server Virtualization Software with 58 reviews. KVM is rated 8.0, while Proxmox VE is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of KVM writes "Delivers good performance because of kernel-based virtualization". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Proxmox VE writes "Easy to use and supports multi-monitors on multiple VMs in KVM". KVM is most compared with Oracle VM VirtualBox, Hyper-V, VMware vSphere, VMware Workstation and Oracle VM, whereas Proxmox VE is most compared with VMware vSphere, Oracle VM VirtualBox, Nutanix AHV Virtualization, Hyper-V and Citrix Hypervisor. See our KVM vs. Proxmox VE report.
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I use Proxmox VE and have been very happy with it. In my opinion, it is a complete and stable solution with excellent tools for managing servers. It has a lot of different features, and I also love the user interface. Setup is easy, it is very stable, scales well, and is a great fit that is suitable for my organization. Besides those advantages, another huge plus for me is that it doesn’t require any additional resources for memory RAM and it has independent nodes. I also chose Proxmox VE because it allows me to run services without needing dedicated hardware. With all that in mind, there are still some downsides to the product. Because it is still a very young solution, it sometimes has bugs. In addition, some processes need to be completed manually by command line because not all processes are automatic. And in the future, I hope they will add application storage.
KVM is easy to set up, deploy, and use. I think its ability to scale could be improved, though. If your organization relies on command lines a lot, KVM has several different command line options to choose from. From the information I have gathered from other users, KVM seems to have good customer service and technical support. In addition, the GUI interface is solid. In general, KVM seems like it performs well but it lacks good management features and needs to offer more integration options. However, in comparison to other solutions,KVM has a reputation for being faster. And while it provides a good screen sharing feature, the resolution isn’t great. Even though KVM is cost-effective, I think it lacks high availability across clusters.
Conclusion: Ultimately I chose Proxmox VE because it was a better option for my particular needs.
In a marketing services-related company security is paramount.
Therefore, you probably will rely on services, especially during maintenance of your network and need support for that.
When it comes to security and support KVM would be the better option. With in-house engineers, both Proxmox VE and KVM could be chosen. But qualified engineers are hard to come by nowadays, depending on where you live.
As a side note, I maintain mainly Xenserver, VMware and KVM. When it comes to performance per watt Xenserver would be the king, especially on larger setups.
Since your setup is of medium size and if you decided not to go for the aforementioned setups, KVM would be the lesser of the worse.
Your question depends a lot on the hardware/cloud system you have in mind. More details would make my recommendations more precise.
Kind regards,
KVM is a kernel base hypervisor while Proxmox VE is open-source. Technically, Proxmox VE fulfills the smallest business users than KVM.
And if we go for the quality and support KVM is better.
But Proxmox VE has also more features according to business growth.