Which is the best vir­tu­al­isa­tion software? A com­par­is­on

Vir­tu­al­isa­tion software decouples the operating system from the un­der­ly­ing hardware dividing powerful IT resources into smaller units. Among other things, vir­tu­al­isa­tion software can be used to operate several virtual machines (VM) on a single physical server. Scalable IT in­fra­struc­tures are achieved through extensive computing farms. Here, we provide a com­par­is­on of the top vir­tu­al­isa­tion software solutions.

The best VM software in com­par­is­on

The table below sum­mar­ises the most important features of the best VM programs. For details, please consult the re­spect­ive sections further down in the article.

Last updated: April 2024

What is vir­tu­al­isa­tion?

Vir­tu­al­isa­tion is a fun­da­ment­al concept in computer science. In general, it involves the provision of an ab­strac­tion layer that sits between the physical hardware and the operating system, or the operating system and ap­plic­a­tion program. By ab­stract­ing physical IT resources such as hardware, software, storage, and network com­pon­ents, the aim is to provide resources at a virtual level and dis­trib­ute them flexibly and in line with demand to different re­cip­i­ents, which is a key advantage of vir­tu­al­isa­tion.

How does vir­tu­al­isa­tion software work?

Depending on the type of vir­tu­al­isa­tion software used, the un­der­ly­ing mech­an­isms differ. In the case of hardware vir­tu­al­isa­tion, hy­per­visor software is used. The hy­per­visor acts as an interface between physical hardware and virtual machines. Usually, a hy­per­visor runs on a specific operating system (OS), the host OS, and provides vir­tu­al­ised hardware to a guest OS. Here are the dif­fer­ences between the two types of hy­per­visors:

In the case of operating system level vir­tu­al­isa­tion, special software is used which creates isolated execution en­vir­on­ments based on the operating system. Docker, Kuber­netes, and OpenVZ are well-known examples of vir­tu­al­isa­tion software at the operating system level.

What is vir­tu­al­isa­tion software used for?

Vir­tu­al­isa­tion software is used to create a virtual machine based on physical hardware. This process, known as ‘pro­vi­sion­ing’, forms the basis for scalable cloud platforms. AWS and al­tern­at­ives thus enable In­fra­struc­ture as a Service (IaaS), i.e. automated pro­vi­sion­ing of vir­tu­al­ised hardware at the push of a button.

In contrast to operating systems installed on physical hardware, virtual machines (VM) offer another decisive advantage. The state of a VM can be saved as a ‘snapshot’. If something goes wrong while working with the VM, you can quickly revert to the last snapshot.

Another advantage of using VM software is that some allow access to remote systems. When it comes to desktop vir­tu­al­isa­tion, VM software runs locally while the virtual machine runs on a remote host. Sep­ar­at­ing the operating system into multiple, isolated systems is also at­tract­ive from a security per­spect­ive.

The best vir­tu­al­isa­tion software

Below, we take a closer look at some of the top VM software available. We have excluded bare-metal hy­per­visors like ESXi and Xen, and tools for pure container vir­tu­al­isa­tion, like Docker, Kuber­netes, and OpenShift from our com­par­is­on and instead focus on VM software for users, grouped by their guest operating system. It is important to note that VM software coun­ter­parts running on the server may be slightly more expensive.

The best vir­tu­al­isa­tion software for Windows

Tra­di­tion­ally, Windows has been re­l­at­ively weak in terms of vir­tu­al­isa­tion, as Linux has always been the strong­hold of vir­tu­al­isa­tion. That said, Windows has been quick to catch up. For example, Microsoft’s Hyper-V hy­per­visor is an integral part of modern Windows versions. The tech­no­logy also forms the basis for the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL / WSL2). Running various Linux dis­tri­bu­tions under Windows in high-per­form­ance virtual machines is par­tic­u­larly in­ter­est­ing for de­velopers.

With Windows in par­tic­u­lar, using vir­tu­al­isa­tion software is worth­while. After all, the operating system has been plagued by driver issues, viruses, and Trojans for decades. Using virtual machines makes it easier to work securely in isolated en­vir­on­ments. For example, online banking can be done in a guar­an­teed virus-free Linux en­vir­on­ment. Fur­ther­more, VMs allow snapshots to be created. Should the system be damaged, it is possible to revert to a safe initial state.

Microsoft Hyper-V Manager

Microsoft’s Hyper-V Manager is part of Windows Server 2008 and newer versions. The vir­tu­al­isa­tion software enables virtual machine (VM) man­age­ment on Windows 10 En­ter­prise, Pro and Education editions. The VM program can be used free of charge, although a Windows 10 license may apply.

The Hyper-V Manager is used to manage Hyper-V hosts and virtual machines. These can be located locally or on remote machines. A graphical user interface enables easy man­age­ment of virtual en­vir­on­ments from a central platform.

VMware Work­sta­tion Pro

The vir­tu­al­isa­tion software Work­sta­tion Pro from vir­tu­al­isa­tion heavy­weight VMware is aimed at IT pro­fes­sion­als, de­velopers, and companies. The VM program enables vir­tu­al­isa­tion of most x86 operating systems on a standard desktop PC. Remote access to remote vSphere en­vir­on­ments is also possible. But Work­sta­tion Pro can do a lot more.

Work­sta­tion Pro sim­pli­fies building, testing, and deploying software across a wide range of devices, platforms, and clouds. The vir­tu­al­isa­tion software enables con­fig­ur­a­tion of virtual networks and other vir­tu­al­ised resources. Fur­ther­more, local OCI con­tain­ers and Kuber­netes clusters can be run with VM isolation. In addition to the graphical user interface, the command line tool ‘vctl’ is available to automate workflows.

As usual with VM programs, snapshots of the virtual machines can be created and restored later. Fur­ther­more, the vir­tu­al­isa­tion software can be used to run a second desktop, secured by stricter privacy and network settings. The inclusion of 3D tech­no­lo­gies such as DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.3 within virtual machines is par­tic­u­larly be­ne­fi­cial for gaming and high-per­form­ance graphic ap­plic­a­tions.

Despite the high level of func­tion­al­ity, the VM software is quite af­ford­able with a price of around £150. Current and future college or uni­ver­sity students, their parents and faculty members and employees of edu­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions receive a discount. A trial version can be used free of charge for 30 days.

Oracle Vir­tu­al­Box

The Vir­tu­al­Box from Oracle is the father of all vir­tu­al­isa­tion software. Vir­tu­al­Box enables the use of virtual machines (VM) from a home desktop with ease. Even if the user interface seems a bit dusty now, the VM software impresses with its user friend­li­ness. Fur­ther­more, Vir­tu­al­Box is published as a ‘Free and Open Source Software’ (FOSS) – a special feature among VM programs from com­mer­cial providers.

Vir­tu­al­Box serves as the basis for operating virtual machines on a host system and is often used in con­junc­tion with other, spe­cial­ised software. For example, the popular tool ‘Vagrant’ automates the creation of re­pro­du­cible de­vel­op­ment en­vir­on­ments. Vagrant acts as an interface between vir­tu­al­isa­tion software such as Vir­tu­al­Box, VMware, Hyper-V, and Docker and pro­vi­sion­ing software such as Puppet, Chef, and Ansible.

The best vir­tu­al­isa­tion software for Mac

In principle, vir­tu­al­isa­tion software allows a guest operating system to run on a host operating system. Thus, a Linux dis­tri­bu­tion can be launched from a Windows desktop or a Windows in­stall­a­tion can be run on Linux. With Mac, however, there is a special feature. Because macOS as a guest system can (legally) only be run on a macOS host.

VMware Fusion Pro

Fusion Pro from VMware is more or less the Mac coun­ter­part to VMware Work­sta­tion. The VM software became widely known because users can run Windows on a Mac. When the vir­tu­al­isa­tion software was released in 2007, that was a sen­sa­tion­al achieve­ment. Nowadays, the tool has plenty more to offer.

Fusion Pro enables Mac virtual machines (VM) to run macOS, Windows, and Linux operating systems. The vir­tu­al­isa­tion software also boasts func­tion­al­ity for creating, managing, and running OCI con­tain­ers and Kuber­netes clusters. The high security and strong isolation of virtual machines come into play here. This allows a complete cloud stack to be run and tested on a single Mac.

Built-in snapshot func­tion­al­ity makes it easy to revert to secure storage points as required. The graphical user interface allows you to connect to remote vSphere and ESXi servers. Virtual machines and physical hosts are easy to control and manage while VMs can be dragged and dropped between hosts.

A license costs around £150 and upgrading an existing one costs half of the full price. Like VMware’s big brother Work­sta­tion Pro, Fusion Pro can be tested free of charge for 30 days.

Parallels Desktop for Mac

Besides VMware Fusion, Parallels Desktop for Mac is the classic VM program for Mac. De­velopers and users can work with multiple operating systems on Mac without a dual boot setup. Using the vir­tu­al­isa­tion software elim­in­ates the need for frequent reboots.

Parallels Desktop focuses heavily on providing a Windows desktop en­vir­on­ment that runs ‘in parallel’ with macOS. The vir­tu­al­isa­tion software makes for seamless moving and sharing of content between Mac and Windows. With the ‘Coherence mode’, Windows ap­plic­a­tions can be used like Mac ap­plic­a­tions.

A license costs ap­prox­im­ately £80, making it one of the cheaper com­mer­cially available VM software. Private users and students receive a discount; upgrading an existing license costs about £40.

Oracle Vir­tu­al­Box

Vir­tu­al­Box can also be run on macOS. However, there are some re­stric­tions. Only Mac OS X Leopard or Snow Leopard can be used as guest operating systems. Un­for­tu­nately, Vir­tu­al­Box can only be used up to macOS 10.15 ‘Catalina’. Modern Macs are not supported at all because Vir­tu­al­Box requires x86 hardware and is not com­pat­ible with the new ARM-based Apple silicon chips.

The best vir­tu­al­isa­tion software for Linux

The free operating system Linux is the ‘prim­or­di­al soup’ from which vir­tu­al­isa­tion tech­no­logy emerged. Today, basic building blocks for vir­tu­al­isa­tion are deeply embedded in the operating system’s kernel. This results in the widest spectrum of VM programs for users. Alongside many freely available solutions, there are also some com­mer­cial options.

KVM

The Kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) is embedded in the Linux kernel as a basic vir­tu­al­isa­tion tech­no­logy. With the help of KVM, the kernel becomes a hy­per­visor on which Linux and Windows virtual machines are run. In addition to x86 hardware, PowerPC and some ARM pro­cessors are supported. Intel’s VT-x or AMD-V are used, if available, to improve the per­form­ance of virtual machines at processor level.

KVM enables multiple virtual machines (VM) to be run on a Linux host. Each VM is assigned its own vir­tu­al­ised hardware. In addition to processor cores and RAM, this includes network and graphics adapters and mass storage. Un­mod­i­fied Linux and Windows VM images are used to set up the VMs.

Many other vir­tu­al­isa­tion programs from the Linux universe are built on KVM. Thus, a variety of user in­ter­faces can be used to manage the virtual machines (VM). A virtual machine manager serves as a graphical user interface on the desktop. KVM and the hosted VMs can be accessed via the browser using ‘Kimchi’ or ‘Foreman’. There are also command line in­ter­faces that can be used to automate fre­quently used workflows. Under the hood, KVM is con­trolled via the libvirt API.

QEMU

The Quick Emulator (QEMU) is a complex vir­tu­al­isa­tion software. QEMU is capable of full vir­tu­al­isa­tion of x86 hardware and the emulation of other processor ar­chi­tec­tures. Thus binary files written for pro­cessors not phys­ic­ally present in a system can be executed. It is even possible to live-compile in­di­vidu­al programs for execution.

QEMU is in­teg­rated with other VM programs by default. The vir­tu­al­isa­tion software can be used with hy­per­visors such as Vir­tu­al­Box, KVM and Xen. Because of its hardware-based ‘ac­cel­er­at­ors’, it achieves near-native per­form­ance when running virtual machines. The tool is available free of charge and runs on an open-source license.

OpenVZ

With OpenVZ Linux users can test a very in­ter­est­ing vir­tu­al­isa­tion software. The open-source project emerged from the de­vel­op­ment of the com­mer­cial software ‘Virtuozzo’. The name is an ab­bre­vi­ation for ‘Open Virtuozzo’. Nowadays, OpenVZ serves as the open-source core component of the com­mer­cial offshoot.

What makes OpenVZ special is the absence of a hy­per­visor. Instead, vir­tu­al­isa­tion takes place at the operating system level; con­tain­ers are used. However, no ap­plic­a­tion con­tain­ers are executed, as is the case with Docker. Instead, OpenVZ vir­tu­al­ises multiple, isolated operating systems based on a single, specially adapted Linux kernel. The use of OpenVZ is par­tic­u­larly suitable to con­sol­id­ate server resources.

VMware Work­sta­tion Pro

VMware Work­sta­tion Pro is also available under Linux. The func­tion­al­ity is com­par­able to the Windows version of the software. However, there are some Linux-specific pe­cu­li­ar­it­ies. Instead of DirectX, which is only available under Windows, the ‘Vulkan’ rendering engine is supported. A wide range of Linux and Unix dis­tri­bu­tions such as Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, RHEL and SUSE can be run as guest operating systems.

Oracle Vir­tu­al­Box

Vir­tu­al­Box is the only VM software that also runs on Linux in addition to Windows and macOS (apart from modern Macs). The func­tion­al­ity is similar to the Windows version.