Firecracker vs. Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)

Firecracker

Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
Firecracker	Score 4.0 out of 10	N/A	Firecracker is an open source virtualization technology that is purpose-built for creating and managing secure, multi-tenant container and function-based services. Firecracker enables users to deploy workloads in lightweight virtual machines, called microVMs that may provide security and workload isolation over traditional VMs, while enabling the speed and resource efficiency of containers. Firecracker was developed at Amazon Web Services with the goal of improving services like AWS Lambda…	N/A
KVM	Score 2.1 out of 10	N/A	Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is a virtualization solution developed by small Israeli software company Qumranet and supported by Red Hat since that company's acquisition in 2008.	N/A

Pricing

Firecracker

Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)

Editions & Modules

No answers on this topic

Offerings

Pricing Offerings
Firecracker	KVM
Free Trial
No	No
Free/Freemium Version
Yes	No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

Entry-level Setup Fee

No setup fee

Additional Details

—

More Pricing Information

Community Pulse
	Firecracker	Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)
Considered Both Products	Firecracker No answer on this topic	KVM Verified User Anonymous Chose KVM Kernel-based Virtual Machine is an open-source and free solution, compared to Virtualbox which is a product from Oracle. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose KVM The key points why I made my decision for KVM in comparison with VMWare are: Freeware software (I am using an Ubuntu server OS), Fewer resources usage, vSwitch using that provides the ability to configure dot1q trunks to/between VMs, Stability, and simplicity of … Incentivized Helpful? RM Robert Munteanu Software Engineer Chose KVM Compared to VirtualBox, KVM has simpler licensing terms and is supported by the operating system vendor. KVM also has more mature integrations with other open-source projects. Automating provisioning is simple with KVM since it is available in the package repositories of … Incentivized Helpful? Valentin Höbel Senior Consultant IT Infrastructure Chose KVM KVM is free and provides environments where guests can run their own Kernel while still performing very well. It is also very native to work with KVM since it is integrated within the Linux Kernel. Incentivized Helpful? Stenio Pereira Filho IT Group manager Chose KVM It is a very reliable solution that can be used for x86 architecture virtualization with low overhead. It is a free and open source software. Easy to use withOpenStack. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose KVM We've found KVM to be less problematic, both from a stabilty standpoint, but also in a flexibility and licensing standpoint. We love being able to deploy the hardware we want, as we want it, without needing the blessing of a specific vendor. Incentivized Helpful?

Features

Firecracker

Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)

Server Virtualization

Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Product A and Product B
	Firecracker 6.4 Ratings 24% below category average	Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) 9.2 Ratings 12% above category average
Virtual machine automated provisioning	6.00 Ratings	9.00 Ratings
Management console	8.00 Ratings	9.00 Ratings
Live virtual machine backup	6.00 Ratings	9.70 Ratings
Live virtual machine migration	7.00 Ratings	9.00 Ratings
Hypervisor-level security	5.00 Ratings	9.50 Ratings

Best Alternatives
	Firecracker	Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)
Small Businesses	DigitalOcean Droplets Score 8.7 out of 10	DigitalOcean Droplets Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies	VMware vSOM (discontinued) Score 10.0 out of 10	VMware vSOM (discontinued) Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises	VMware vSOM (discontinued) Score 10.0 out of 10	VMware vSOM (discontinued) Score 10.0 out of 10
All Alternatives	View all alternatives	View all alternatives

User Ratings
	Firecracker	Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)
Likelihood to Recommend	4.0 (0 ratings)	9.3 (0 ratings)

User Testimonials
	Firecracker	Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)
Likelihood to Recommend	While deploying workloads in lightweight microVMs presents a couple of perks, Firecracker may not be the best software to handle this. Startup times are slow and scalability is quite limited because of the jailer and virtualization barriers. We have had security breaches on isolated EC2 instances while using Firecracker. It however has a silver lining by improving how serverless functions in container ecosystems are run with their VMMs. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Kernel-based Virtual Machine is very well suited when one needs a single-node virtualization host or needs to build a complex demo setting on their own notebook (e.g. when demonstrating solutions to a customer). Incentivized Valentin Höbel Senior Consultant IT Infrastructure Read full review
Pros	It makes it easy to secure virtual machines as they are segmented into microvms with a minimal attack surface area Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Lightweight built-in implementation for all *nix based OS. Easy to deploy and manage VMs. Freeware (is you are using a free OS). Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Cons	Excludes devices unnecessarily Has a slow startup time the basis being to improve security which is quite irrelevant. It has limited functionalities on monitoring VMs despite being an open source. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	KVM itself doesn't ship with a management interface KVM itself is a bit complicated to handle KVM needs Qemu to virtualize Windows guests Incentivized Valentin Höbel Senior Consultant IT Infrastructure Read full review
Usability	No answers on this topic	It does the job and stays out of the way. The specifics of usability relies on the implementation, but with things like Icarus and libvirt, things are standardizing nicely. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Alternatives Considered	No answers on this topic	The key points why I made my decision for KVM in comparison with VMWare are: Freeware software (I am using an Ubuntu server OS), Fewer resources usage, vSwitch using that provides the ability to configure dot1q trunks to/between VMs, Stability, and simplicity of using/troubleshooting, Well-known interface (for Linux geeks). Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Return on Investment	Low memory overhead on each microVM We can run workloads from different customers on the same machine. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Capital expenditure costs are low, because is open-source and free Operational expenditure costs are medium because it's necessary [to have] an IT team with experience in Linux First step to the virtualization world. Wake up, we are in the 21st century Incentivized Stenio Pereira Filho IT Group manager Read full review
ScreenShots