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.
"Documentation and problem-solving troubleshooting are the most valuable features. Performance (when fine-tuned and with "special" HW) is awesome, equal to or more than other enterprise closed-source solutions."
"I find the density of the product most valuable. It is density that a technologist can just assign page merging. This is what makes KVM one of the important players of the virtualization market."
"There is a strong emphasis on availability, and they have numerous API interfaces for distributed storage and the solution is quite known for its openness."
"The KVM service is well managed with a central policy interface."
"The initial setup was very easy."
"The most valuable feature of KVM is its stability."
"KVM is stable."
"Good screen and keyboard sharing feature."
"The template option allows us to build a desktop in a VM, then quickly deploy as a linked clone."
"The initial setup was really straightforward and easy."
"The most valuable feature of Proxmox VE is its storage."
"The solution is extremely scalable."
"It is easier to balance loads across hypervisors if a given container or virtual machine uses more resources than its peers."
"Proxmox is free, very stable, and doesn't require more resources for memory RAM. It's fine for a small data center."
"The solution has good high availability."
"Less infrastructure required; simple to use."
"The product must provide better performance monitoring features."
"One thing that maybe could be improved is making it easier to scale. It needs to be more clear on how to scale the storage space for virtual machines."
"The virtual manager and the graphical QEMU for KVM need some improvement."
"In our setup, we do not have any dashboards or orchestration, and it is hard to manage. We have 25 gig network cards, but the software driver we have only supported 10 gigs."
"I have previously used VMware and KVM is easier to use. However, they both have their strengths depending on their use cases. They are mostly equal. One of VMware's advantages is it has better support."
"Support for VF is needed, where you can, for example, export from VMware to KVM."
"The main drawback in the solution is probably disaster recovery."
"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."
"The compatibility with non-English operating systems needs to be improved."
"One issue with Proxmox is that some processes are not automatic. For some processes, you have to do it manually by command line."
"We have only command lines for a management application to remove sites. The solution needs a proper GUI."
"The virtualizer in Proxmox VE could improve."
"Proxmox VE doesn't offer a good interface for monitoring."
"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."
"The tool needs to add a lot of containers."
"I would like to see more monitoring in the next release of this solution."
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.