Affordability: Since it’s open source and available as a Linux kernel module, KVM costs nothing out of the box.ĭeveloped by Oracle, VirtualBox is an open source virtualization software that is a type 2 hypervisor.

Security: As part of the Linux kernel source code, KVM benefits from rigorous development and testing processes, as well as continuous security patching.

It also enables clustering for thousands of nodes, which helps set the foundation for a cloud-based infrastructure.

Scalability: The KVM hypervisor automatically scales to respond to heavy loads once the number of VMs increases.

There are plenty of experts to go to for support and questions. This high level of maturity means it’s well developed and very debugged.

Maturity: KVM is more than 15 years old and has more than 1,000 code contributors.

This gives KVM an inherent advantage in terms of performance and efficiency. This means it doesn’t have to load an underlying OS and has direct access to the underlying hardware without having to contend for virtualization with other software such as other operating systems and device drivers.

Performance: KVM is a type 1 or “bare metal” hypervisor, meaning it runs directly on the host machine’s physical hardware.

Advantages of KVMĪ KVM hypervisor enables full virtualization capabilities, giving each VM all the features of a physical system, including the basic input/output system (BIOS) and hardware, such as processors, memory, storage, and network cards. A hypervisor is software that creates and runs virtual machines (VMs), allowing a host computer to support multiple guest VMs by virtually sharing its resources, such as memory and processing. The Linux kernel is the main component of a Linux operating system (OS) that acts as the core interface between a computer’s hardware and its processes.

KVM, also known as the KVM hypervisor, is a virtualization module that turns the Linux kernel into a hypervisor.

The key differences are in how they work and the types of features and use cases they support. Both are full virtualization solutions and open source. Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) and Oracle VM VirtualBox are Linux-based virtualization solutions that allow users to run various operating systems without “bare-metal” hardware.

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