We performed a comparison between KVM and VMware VSphere based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: VMware VSphere is the winner in this comparison. It is a powerful solution with good customer support and a proven ROI. It is, however, more expensive.
"It is an easily scalable solution."
"I appreciate the network passcode feature in KVM, as it provides a convenient way to manage DNS and cloud hosting."
"I think nine out of the ten supercomputers in the world use Linux KVM, so I think that attests to the fact that it is a scalable product."
"One of the best features of KVM is its user-friendly interface."
"KVM has a rich options set which can be directly used or via wrappers, such as libvirt."
"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."
"It is an open ecosystem, and we see there is a benefit in open-source solutions."
"The most helpful aspect of KVM is the fact that the interface is so minimal. It includes just what you need to set up the VMs and manage them, and it's very simple to do so."
"It's extremely simple. Installing the ESXi is a piece of cake and then putting servers on there is really simple and having HA and building a cluster for our VM servers. It's very easy."
"It is very versatile. All features are beneficial and very good, especially DRS and resource pooling."
"It is highly scalable. We can add new hardware and expand the infrastructure easily."
"As an end-user, I would say it has allowed us to have the flexibility of moving around our workloads on different machines, and not having to worry if anything is down."
"Valuable features include VHA, DRS, VMotion, and redundancy and failover; any DR situation."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its performance."
"It's easy to use, and it is flexible."
"One of the most valuable features of this solution is the ease of deployment. It's also user-friendly and has been on the market for more than a decade, so it's a leading technology in hypervisor solutions."
"KVM is very difficult to manage and run on daily operations."
"The virtual manager and the graphical QEMU for KVM need some improvement."
"Business continuity features need to be added."
"The speed is around thirty percent slower than another competitor. This would be something to work on."
"The main drawback in the solution is probably disaster recovery."
"The initial setup of this solution is more difficult than some of the competing products and it could be improved."
"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."
"We are not getting good support from KVM, and it is not that user-friendly."
"I would like to see AI in future releases."
"The vSphere Client always feels slow, and/or like it doesn't keep up with what I'm trying to do. So I usually use the thick client most of the time."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"VMware vSphere could be improved with cheaper costs."
"I do not find it to be simple and efficient to manage. The tools, the interface to manage it, are a pain. In the latest version, they moved us to web-only, the Web Client and it's terrible. It's slow. It crashes. It's annoying. I used the Web Client in the older version and was happy. I would go back to the regular thick client but I don't have that option anymore, so I am always fighting it."
"vSphere itself is great when you don't need to make updates, but any time you have to touch it, unfortunately it's always the little bit of a fight to get it to do what you want."
"The solution's technical team is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"The initial setup is a bit complex."
KVM is ranked 4th in Server Virtualization Software with 39 reviews while VMware vSphere is ranked 2nd in Server Virtualization Software with 446 reviews. KVM is rated 8.0, while VMware vSphere is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of KVM writes "Delivers good performance because of kernel-based virtualization". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSphere writes "Offers good performance and is useful for banking systems". KVM is most compared with Proxmox VE, Oracle VM VirtualBox, Hyper-V, VMware Workstation and Oracle VM, whereas VMware vSphere is most compared with Hyper-V, Proxmox VE, Oracle VM, VMware Workstation and Nutanix AHV Virtualization. See our KVM vs. VMware vSphere report.
See our list of best Server Virtualization Software vendors.
We monitor all Server Virtualization Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.