We performed a comparison between Oracle VM VirtualBox 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: Oracle VM VirtualBox and Proxmox VE had a similar user rating regarding ease of deployment, pricing, service and support, and ROI. However, in terms of features, Oracle VM VirtualBox users felt the solution was unstable, whereas Proxmox VE users felt some bugs needed fixing.
"I like that Oracle VM is safe and stable. It is also very easy to administer. For example, opening a VM or adding a host adapter is extremely easy."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that there is no cost because it is open source."
"The configuration and installation is pretty straightforward."
"The product gives us the flexibility to try different machines."
"The solution is very stable."
"VirtualBox provides an isolated, consistent environment"
"The scalability of the solution is very good."
"It is easy to use and does not require complex knowledge."
"The virtualization is good."
"We now have the ability to quickly build and deploy VM desktops for application testing with the snapshot ability to rollback, as required."
"The solution has good high availability."
"Ease of use, HA, internal 100gbps Virtio network, built-in backup (don't pay $1200 Veeam licence), support for multi-monitors on multiple VMs in KVM, no need to RDP in the VMs to do your stuff (Win, Linux and Mac with SPICE and using 6 screens here (11520*2160)."
"There are many features included with Proxmox."
"The solution's maintenance part was very easy."
"The setup is very easy."
"The tool has very good performance."
"They could improve the graphics functionality of the product."
"This solution needs improvement with the business continuity planning, disaster and recovery management and using centralized data storage."
"Oracle VM VirtualBox is not flexible, It's not like VMware."
"Oracle’s support team should improve its response time."
"Oracle needs to improve its hot virtual machine migration. It didn't work as intended. It should allow us to migrate between virtual machines, without stopping the database."
"The solution lacks some open source remote administration tools. The reload of individual virtual machine definitions through the vboxweb service (via its API) without restarting it and the access to shared storage (to use teleport functions) need to be improved."
"It's not as robust as server platforms, nor does it need to be."
"The solution should have more enterprise features, like migration, high availability storage, disaster recovery, and the ability to deploy to enterprise-scale usage. They should not just offer desktop usage."
"The documentation in Proxmox VE could improve."
"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 would be nice to have total CPU and RAM allocations show for all VMs/CTs to avoid overloading an individual hypervisor."
"Backup and recovery could be better. It's a bit problematic. If you're not well-versed with Linux, it tends to be a bit of a challenge when setting up and recovering. It's not really GUI-based, and if you're not a good Linux user, it becomes a bit difficult. In the next release, I would like to have something like Hyper-V's Data Protection Manager, where you could do an offsite backup and keep a copy. I haven't seen that incorporated yet, but I'm sure they will do that."
"The facility of deployment is an area that needs to improve."
"The solution can be improved by making it more secure and scalable."
"I would like to see more monitoring in the next release of this solution."
"The Windows drivers could be easier (unlike manually installing Ballon, QEMU and optionally SPICE, VIRTio, etc.)"
Oracle VM VirtualBox is ranked 5th in Server Virtualization Software with 62 reviews while Proxmox VE is ranked 1st in Server Virtualization Software with 58 reviews. Oracle VM VirtualBox is rated 8.2, while Proxmox VE is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Oracle VM VirtualBox writes "The solution is versatile, simple to use, and stable". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Proxmox VE writes "Easy to use and supports multi-monitors on multiple VMs in KVM". Oracle VM VirtualBox is most compared with KVM, Hyper-V, Oracle VM, VMware Workstation and VMware vSphere, whereas Proxmox VE is most compared with VMware vSphere, KVM, Nutanix AHV Virtualization, Hyper-V and Citrix Hypervisor. See our Oracle VM VirtualBox vs. Proxmox VE report.
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Proxmox VE is a very fast and powerful solution. It offers feature-rich virtualization, has open-standards compliance, and also includes redundancy and failover capabilities. What I like about Proxmox VE is that it lets you rack and stack two or more nodes and enables you to be up and running with a one-node failure tolerance in very little time. Proxmox VE’s integration with ZFS is also fantastic. It allows you to create pools to store your VM images and data on very easily and their great web UI makes it easy to check drive health, ZFS scrub status, and other things. I think the best part of the web UI is that everything is configurable from the web user interface without having to use the command line. It also has graphs and additional visualizations so you can evaluate the performance of everything. Beyond that, even though you can use Proxmox VE on a single server, the solution makes it easy to set up a high availability cluster on multiple hosts if needed.
Regarding Oracle VM VirtualBox, I would say its most valuable features are its virtualization, its compatibility with older OSes, and its testing of environments without causing interruptions or any harm to production. Besides making it possible to run multiple VMs on a laptop or desktop, its ease of deployment makes the solution appealing. Not only is it easy to set up, but the software is free. Moreover, it has a nice interface. However, I think Oracle VM VirtualBox could use some improvements on its reporting as well as on its network settings for VMs, which can sometimes be hard for the average user to find and understand.
Conclusion: While Oracle is a safe and excellent option when it comes to virtualizing an operating system, I would suggest Proxmox VE because it is newer, has a lot of powerful features, and is a very reliable and stable solution.