Dragon Slayer

Author: Marc Staimer

T E C H N I C A L P A P E R

Why KVM is Winning Over VMware vSphere What Yo

Databas
 TECHNICAL PAPER • Why KVM is Winning Over VMware vSphere
Why KVM is Winning Over VMware vSphere

Introduction
It’s hard to believe that it wasn’t all that long in the past that most IT applications were run directly on
physical servers. Those physical servers predictably ran about 85% idle most of the time, especially x86
servers. Data centers and server rooms were becoming overrun with server sprawl. Focus was on putting
more physical servers in less space. Blade servers were all the rage. Data center power was becoming a
major issue. Seems like a lifetime ago.
All that changed during the 2000s. Server virtualization enabled oversubscription of hardware. It became
common to oversubscribe the hardware more than 100% because it was statistically rare for all or even
most virtual machines (VM) to be demanding resources concurrently. The cost savings proved to be
enormous making server virtualization an industry standard practice. So much so that per Spiceworks state
of the virtualization industry in 2020, more than 92% of all businesses are virtualized with another 5%
planning to virtualize within 2 years. Server virtualization has been the primary technology enabler for
public clouds, although that appears to be shifting to containers or application virtualization. More on that
later in this research paper. It is absolutely clear to the most lay observer that server virtualization is
ubiquitous today.
VMware vSphere is the current on-prem market leader each business size category – SMB, Mid-tier, and

Enterprise – per that Spiceworks survey. This is mostly because it was the first to bring server virtualization
to the masses with standard x86 servers. Its popularity grew thanks to advanced capabilities it introduced
such as application isolation, enhanced workload portability, augmented scalability, top of rack
virtualization, storage virtualization, simple high availability options, integration with backup applications,
and disaster recovery options. These advances enabled IT businesses to deploy faster, greatly improve
application availability, while operating and managing more efficiently with lower capital expenditures
(CapEx). So then how can it be asserted that KVM winning if VMware is the predominant hypervisor?
Especially since those current market share numbers make that leadership crystal clear.
VMware vSphere cost savings have been lost over time. Licensing costs and the proprietary lock-in nature
of VMware have become increasingly much larger parts of the IT budget. It has been causing elevated
anxiety levels among CIOs and CFOs. IT organizations are under constant pressure to reduce costs without
reducing capabilities. Hypervisors are not immune to that pressure. Those costs have become an enormous
issue for every IT organization tasked with doing more with less.
Many evaluated and switched to or added Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor as a lower cost alternative to
VMware vSphere. However, that cost differentiation proved to be insignificant.
KVM is an increasingly popular open source hypervisor. It’s part of the Linux kernel and distributed with
Linux. There are no license costs for KVM just as there are no license costs for Linux. The only direct costs
of KVM are distributor support costs unless the IT organization wants to handle support on their own. KVM

DSC 2
 TECHNICAL PAPER • Why KVM is Winning Over VMware vSphere
has additional indirect cost savings over VMware vSphere. The combination gives KVM a significant cost
advantage over VMware and vSphere right out the chute. That’s an important reason KVM is winning right
now in the market but far and away not the only one. Price is always a factor. Total cost of ownership (TCO)
is the much bigger factor.
There are also several other significant factors as to why KVM is rapidly overtaking the market. This paper
takes a deeper dive into those factors where KVM has the advantage and how the additional advantages of
the Oracle Linux KVM distribution plays a significant role in why KVM is winning over VMware vSphere.

DSC 3
 TECHNICAL PAPER • Why KVM is Winning Over VMware vSphere

Table of Contents
Introduction ...............................................................................................................2
Significant KVM Advantages over VMware vSphere ....................................................5
KVM Open Source Advantage .............................................................................................5
KVM Performance Advantage ............................................................................................6
KVM Scalability Advantage.................................................................................................6
KVM TCO Advantage ..........................................................................................................6
Oracle Linux KVM Unique TCO Advantages .........................................................................7
Hard Partitioning ................................................................................................................................... 7
Oracle Linux Ksplice Zero-Downtime Patching ..................................................................................... 7
Native Bi-directional Cloud Migration .................................................................................................. 7
Accelerated Application Deployments .................................................................................................. 8
Comprehensive Management Tools ..................................................................................................... 8
Oracle Clusterware ............................................................................................................................... 8
Oracle DTrace. ....................................................................................................................................... 8
Straightforward Oracle Linux KVM Support Pricing .............................................................................. 8

Yeah, But What About VMware vSphere Advanced Features? .....................................9

Conclusion ..................................................................................................................9
For More Information on Oracle Linux KVM .............................................................. 10

DSC 4
 TECHNICAL PAPER • Why KVM is Winning Over VMware vSphere
Significant KVM Advantages over VMware vSphere
KVM has several advantages including being open source, performance, scalability, hardware resources
utilized, and total cost of ownership (TCO).

KVM Open Source Advantage

The open source movement started towards the very
end of the 20th century. Despite initial skepticism, it
has become wildly successful by any measure. It is
now a staple in most business organizations. Per
Simon Phipps, former president of the Open Source
Initiative, 78% of businesses are operating on open
source software and that number is increasing.
One of the pre-eminent open source initiatives has
been Linux. Linux was introduced in 1990s. The 1990s
was a time of Microsoft operating system dominance with several UNIX variants in the distant “other”
category of market share. Times have certainly changed. As of 2019, with the exception of desktops,
laptops, and tablets, Linux is the dominant operating system in the world. Per HostingTribunal.com, Linux
runs:
 100% of the world’s top 500 supercomputers
 96.3% of the world’s top 1 million servers
o 1.9% use Windows
o 1.6% use FreeBSD
 All major space programs
o SpaceX Falcon 9, their primary rocket, runs on Linux
 90% of all cloud infrastructure
 90% of all Hollywood’s special effects
 23 of the top 25 world websites
 US Department of Defense since 2007 because of better security and lighter load
 US Navy warships
 And more than 85% of the world’s smartphones – Android is a modified version of Linux
 Linux is the largest and most successful open source project
The numerous advantages of open source include but are not limited to the following:
 Free distribution
 Multi-vendor, multi-source innovation
 Modern software development practices
o Developers rarely write open source into old code
 Modular design
 Focuses developers on core competencies
 Reduces duplication efforts
o No need to reinvent the wheel
 Leverages large company R&D works
 Available source code
 Allowable derived works
 Author’s source code integrity
 No discrimination against persons or groups
 No discrimination against fields of use
 Redistribution maintains all rights
 Large community support
 Easy integration with other open source projects such as
o Ansible
o Kubernetes containers

DSC 5
 TECHNICAL PAPER • Why KVM is Winning Over VMware vSphere
 Freedom to change support vendors – i.e. no vendor lock-in
 Freedom to self-support
 License not specific to a product
 License does not restrict other software
 License is technology neutral neither favoring nor discouraging specific technologies
KVM open source leverages all of these advantages. It’s why has become ubiquitous in the cloud. Oracle
Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), AWS, Alibaba, GCP, IBM and most other clouds utilize some variation of the KVM
hypervisor. Even Nutanix hyperconverged infrastructure Acropolis™ hypervisor is a variation of KVM. Oracle
KVM is additionally is a true hybrid in that on-prem implementations can be configured identically to what
Oracle utilizes in its own Cloud Infrastructure. More on this later.
VMware vSphere is a proprietary closed system hypervisor. It’s completely under the control of VMware
and locks-in users.

KVM Performance Advantage

Both KVM and VMware vSphere are type 1 hypervisors and outperform any type 2 hypervisor. There are a
few published performance comparisons of the two hypervisors with SPECvirt_sc2013. Based on this
standard benchmark, KVM runs applications faster than any other hypervisor including VMware vSphere,
at near native speeds.
In addition, KVM takes much less time to start a virtual server than VMware vSphere. It also has lower
overhead because it is relatively light with approximately tens of thousands of lines of code whereas
VMware vSphere is believed to have more than 6 million lines of code. This is unverifiable since VMware
does not publish the source code for vSphere because it is proprietary. The vSphere performance is only
marginally affected because of the use of hardware extensions to virtualize VMs.
One of the reasons for KVM’s better performance comes from the Linux kernel real-time extensions. These
extensions enable VM applications to run at lower latency with higher prioritization as compared to bare
metal. The Linux kernel also divides long compute time processes into smaller components, that are then
scheduled and processed faster.

KVM Scalability Advantage

KVM has a significant scalability advantage over VMware vSphere. It’s one of the reasons why it’s the
hypervisor of choice for hyperscalers and cloud service providers.
Oracle Linux VMware
Scale Limits
KVM vSphere ESXi 6.7
Max hosts/cluster 128 64
600 Tested, but real
VMs/host limit is significantly 1,024
higher
vCPUs/VM 256 128

KVM TCO Advantage

KVM has several cost advantages over VMware vSphere. It starts with licensing. There is none. Yes, there
are support costs whether from the KVM distributor or internal administrators. Those costs are also less
than VMware vSphere. VMware requires the purchase of licenses for add-on products and features such as
VSAN (virtualized storage) and NSX (virtualized switching). The licensing generally requires an Enterprise
license agreement (ELA). The ELA can save some budget up front while increasing costs over time as capacity
and functionality are added. VMware has a free variation of that just has support costs. It is meant for low
end users to compete with KVM. However, the free is functional but stripped of the most useful and
commonly utilized features. It’s designed to motivate users to the license version.
Other cost savings include reduced hardware, supporting infrastructure hardware, power, cooling,
management, operations, and troubleshooting time costs.

DSC 6
 TECHNICAL PAPER • Why KVM is Winning Over VMware vSphere
Oracle Linux KVM Unique TCO Advantages
Oracle Linux KVM brings substantial unique TCO advantages. There are several meaningful, useful, time,
and cost saving advantages.

Hard Partitioning
Hard partitioning enables a VM application to be CPU pinned. Hard partitioning means binding virtual CPUs
(vCPU) to physical CPU threads or cores and preventing these vCPUs from being scheduled on physical CPUs
- threads or cores other than the ones specified. This is crucially important when it comes to minimizing
application licensing. Application licensing or subscriptions are commonly based on vCPUs. For Oracle
software and several other Enterprise applications, those costs are based on all potentially available vCPUs
and not just the ones the application is running on. If that application can be shifted to other vCPUs via
policy, the license costs go up. This applies to the Oracle Database, Oracle Fusion Middleware, and Oracle’s
applications. Hard partitioning reduces those license costs by multiple factors.
Neither VMware vSphere nor any other KVM distribution is recognized by Oracle software as delivering
valid hard partitioning. Oracle Linux KVM uniquely creates value by managing and reducing Oracle software
license costs.

Oracle Linux Ksplice Zero-Downtime Patching

Ksplice solves a major costly problem. Patching a hypervisor is non-trivial because it’s frequently disruptive
to all of the VMs and applications that it is supporting. Disruptive processes require scheduling. Few
applications can tolerate an outage during business hours. Most IT organizations schedule vulnerability
patching disruptive processes for a weekend sometime within a 90-120-day timeframe1. Patching is put off
so the different stakeholders, applications, servers, hypervisors, storage, networking, etc., have time to
coordinate their efforts. When that scheduled date rolls around, assuming it hasn’t been deferred, the first
24 hours is when all disruptive patch processes are implemented. The next 24 hours is reserved to back out
the patches that didn’t work or caused problems. These processes are labor intensive and error prone.
Until those vulnerabilities are patched, they are subject to exploitation. Make no mistake, cybercriminals
are doing their best to exploit them. The potential costs of exploitation can be enormous in lost productivity,
lost data, lost revenue, lost income, lost customers, lost reputation, and potential non-compliance fines.
Oracle’s unique2 Ksplice technology and service updates the kernels, KVM, and critical user space libraries
without requiring a reboot or interruption. This means when a patch is released, including patches for
exploitable vulnerabilities, Ksplice enables those patches to be implemented quickly in a timely manner,
without having to be scheduled or coordinated with anyone.
As previously mentioned, the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) utilizes Oracle Linux KVM. When Oracle
upgraded their previous OCI gen 1 to OCI gen 2, they took full advantage of Ksplice. Disrupting thousands
of applications in the cloud would be disastrous. Oracle documented that they were able to implement 150
million patches – some for the Spectre and Meltdown CPU vulnerabilities to more than 1.5 million CPU
cores without disruption. It was all done online in approximately 4 hours with zero downtime.
Neither VMware vSphere nor any other KVM distribution, not IBM Red Hat, not SUSE, nor Ubuntu, have
Ksplice. Oracle is the only KVM distribution that solves this patching problem. And the cost savings are
enormous in time, people, disruptions, and potential malware/ransomware exploitations.

Native Bi-directional Cloud Migration

Oracle Linux KVM users can choose to configure on-premises virtualization the same way it’s configured
within the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or other Oracle products that use KVM. This makes it incredibly
simple to move VMs between on-prem and the cloud or vice versa. Configuring this way eliminates a major

1
Verizon 2020 DBIR reports only half of the vulnerabilities are patched within three months after discovery.
2
Red Hat has Kpatch and SUSE has kGraft which are somewhat similar to Ksplice, but only for the kernel and a small patch subset. Ksplice has a much broader range
of patches including the ability to patch hypervisors and critical user space bits non-disruptively.

DSC 7
 TECHNICAL PAPER • Why KVM is Winning Over VMware vSphere
devops headache when developing in the cloud for on-prem deployments. The developers can be assured
that how they see their application run in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure will run the same on-prem without
changing their code.
It's important to note that with the exception of Oracle, no other current major public cloud provider shares
their hypervisor for on-prem usage. Similarly, with the exception again of Oracle, no other Linux KVM
distributor vendor, including IBM Red Hat, have been utilized by major public cloud providers to deliver
cloud services.

Accelerated Application Deployments

Oracle offers an innovative approach to deploying a fully configured software stack with pre-installed and
pre-configured software images. Use of these virtual machine templates significantly reduces admin time
to install, configure, implement, and manage. Time is money. Reduced admin time equates into much
reduced costs. Saved time can be repurposed for more strategic developments that help accelerate
application development as well. Faster application deployments mean faster time to market which helps
generate additional revenues in addition to the lower operational costs.

Comprehensive Management Tools

The Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager (OLVM) is based on the open source oVirt project. Oracle Linux
Virtualization Manager is easily deployed and makes it incredibly simple to configure, monitor, and manage
Oracle Linux KVM environments with enterprise-grade performance. The latest versions of Oracle
Enterprise Manager (OEM) supports registration and monitoring of Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager.
Oracle Enterprise Manager enable entire Oracle stacks from soup to nut to be managed from a single pane
of glass.

Oracle Clusterware
Oracle Clusterware is software that enables servers to operate together as if they are one server. Each
server looks like any standalone server. However, each server has additional processes that communicate
with each other making the separate servers appear as if they are one server to applications and end users.
Oracle Clusterware makes it easy to scale applications, increase performance, reduce total cost of
ownership (TCO), while providing high availability (HA), reduced unplanned and planned downtime. It’s
also a requirement for using Oracle Database Real Application Clusters (RAC).

Oracle DTrace.
DTrace is KVM unique and an Oracle contribution to the code. It is not available on VMware vSphere. Oracle
Linux DTrace is a comprehensive, advanced tracing tool for troubleshooting systematic problems in real
time, providing a single view of the software stack, from kernel to application. This provides rapid
identification of performance bottlenecks and greatly simplifies troubleshooting. Simpler, faster
troubleshooting, and performance tuning saves time while greatly increasing productivity.

Straightforward Oracle Linux KVM Support Pricing

Oracle’s pricing for support is simple and flexible unlike VMware vSphere or other KVM distributions.
Support pricing is calculated on a per-system basis and customers can choose one of two levels of support
on each server in their deployment.

DSC 8
 TECHNICAL PAPER • Why KVM is Winning Over VMware vSphere
Oracle Support Comparison
Premier Basic
24x7 telephone & online support √ √
Oracle Enterprise Manager for Linux Mgmt √ √
Spacewalk support √ √
HA with Oracle Clusterware √ √
Comprehensive tracing w/Dtrace √ √
Oracle Linux load balancer √ √
Comprehensive indemnification √ √
Oracle container runtime for Docker √ √
Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager √ X
Zero-downtime patching w/Ksplice √ X
Oracle Linux Cloud Native Environment √ X
Include Kubernetes, Kata Containers, & more √ X

GlusterFS Storage for Oracle Linux √ X

Oracle Linux SW collections √ X
HA services support (Corosync & Pacemaker) √ X

Premier backports √ X
Lifetime sustaining support √ X

Yeah, But What About VMware vSphere Advanced Features?

There are several commonly used vSphere advanced features such as vMotion, Storage vMotion, SRM,
VADP/CBT, HA, vCenter, etc. Oracle Linux KVM has equivalents as seen in the table below. There are
differences. However, most are process differences.
Oracle VMware
Feature
Linux KVM vSphere
Mgmt Console OLVM vCenter Director
Troubleshooting Dtrace vCenter Director
VM Migration Live Migration vMotion
Storage Migration Live Storage Migration Storage vMotion
Yes - Oracle Clusterware -
HA Yes
same tech as Oracle RAC
Cluster scheduler & policies,
Resource Mgmt DRS
affinity
sVirt, SELinux, firewall, & ESXi Firewall, vShield
Security
Ksplice Endpoint
Live Snapshots Yes Yes
Backup SW Integration Ltd via BU & recovery API VADP & CBT
Requires storage vendor Requires storage vendor
Native DR
integration w/SRM integration w/REST API
Ansible® Engine integration
Automation & Orchestraion vRealize
included
Role-based access control
(RBAC), Active Directory (AD) Yes Yes
integration, tiered access

Over-Commit Memory ballooning Memory ballooning

Web services API/ SDK,
REST API, Python command
common information model
API & SDK line (CLI), Hooks, Java SDK,
(CIM), Perl,
Python SDK
.NET, JavaTM SDKs
VLAN tagging, QoS,
Bonding, Jumbo Frames, Virtual LAN (VLAN) tagging,
Networking IPv6, virtual network quality of service (QoS),
interface controller (vNIC) Bonding, Jumbo Frames
profiles
Open Source Docker & Photon & vSphere Integrated
Container support
Kubernetes Containers
Open Source OpenFlow,
SW Defined Networking Open vSwitch & KVM SDN NSX
Lab Installation App
SW Defined Storage GlusterFS & 3rd party ISVs vSAN
Hot add virtual devices Disk, vCPU, memory, NIC Disk, vCPU, memory, NIC

Conclusion
KVM is winning over VMware vSphere because it has significant advantages. Advantages that include being
open source, noticeably better performance, better scalability, significantly better hardware resource
utilization, much lower licensing and support costs, and even lower TCO. Oracle Linux KVM has even lower
DSC 9
 TECHNICAL PAPER • Why KVM is Winning Over VMware vSphere
costs because of capabilities such as hard partitioning, Ksplice, native bi-direction cloud migration,
accelerated application deployments, Clusterware, DTrace, simple and flexible support pricing.
VMware vSphere is a legacy hypervisor solution with a very large install base. It is not a superior product in
any way that matters. IT organizations that have not evaluated KVM and more specifically Oracle Linux
KVM, are doing a great disservice to their organization and their budgets.

For More Information on Oracle Linux KVM

Datasheet: Oracle Linux KVM

Paper sponsored by Oracle. About DSC: Marc Staimer, as President and CDS of the 22-year-old DSC in Beaverton, OR,
is well known for his in-depth and keen understanding of user problems, especially with storage, networking,
applications, cloud services, data protection, and virtualization. Marc has published thousands of technology articles
and tips from the user perspective for internationally renowned online trades including many of TechTarget’s
Searchxxx.com websites and Network Computing and GigaOM. Marc has additionally delivered hundreds of white
papers, webinars, and seminars to many well-known industry giants such as: Brocade, Cisco, DELL, EMC, Emulex
(Avago), HDS, HPE, LSI (Avago), Mellanox, NEC, NetApp, Oracle, QLogic, SanDisk, and Western Digital. He has
additionally provided similar services to smaller, less well-known vendors/startups including: Asigra, Cloudtenna,
Clustrix, Condusiv, DH2i, Diablo, FalconStor, Gridstore, ioFABRIC, Nexenta, Neuxpower, NetEx, NoviFlow, Pavilion Data,
Permabit, Qumulo, SBDS, StorONE, Tegile, and many more. His speaking engagements are always well attended, often
standing room only, because of the pragmatic, immediately useful information provided. Marc can be reached at
[email protected], (503)-312-2167, in Beaverton OR, 97007.

DSC 10