crosvm vs oVirt
crosvm
chromium.googlesource.com
oVirt
ovirt.orgSide by side
| Figure | crosvm | oVirt |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | — | Yes |
| Android | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 2 |
| Spec score · Hypervisor Software | 9.0 (#1) | 8.6 (#5) |
| License | crosvm is released under the BSD-3-Clause license. | oVirt uses Apache License 2.0 as its primary license, while some complementary projects may use LGPL or GPL. |
| Networking | Networking is provided through virtio-net with optional vhost and slirp backends. | The current homepage identifies OVN networking as a built-in industry-standard foundation. |
| Self-hosting | Users obtain the source with git clone and build the executable locally with Cargo. | The engine can run as a virtual machine in a self-hosted-engine deployment, while hosts can be oVirt Node or Enterprise Linux systems. |
| Storage | The virtio-block device supports raw, qcow2, zstd and Android sparse disk formats. | oVirt uses centralized storage for virtual machine disks, ISO files, and snapshots, with options including NFS, GlusterFS, iSCSI, local storage, Fibre Channel, pNFS, and other POSIX-compliant filesystems. |
| What it does | crosvm is a hosted, type-2 virtual machine monitor that runs guest operating systems through a host hypervisor. | oVirt is a free, open-source distributed virtualization platform for managing enterprise infrastructure through a centralized interface. |
Plans
In their own words
crosvm
crosvm is a free, open-source virtual machine monitor written in Rust for running Linux and Android guest systems in sandboxed environments. Developed for ChromeOS, it is also used in TerminalApp on Android, Cuttlefish, and Windows. Each virtual device runs in its own Minijail sandbox by default, with syscall policies, namespaces, seccomp filters, and dropped capabilities contributing to isolation. Supported CPU architectures are x86_64, aarch64, and riscv64. The project lists KVM, Gunyah, GenieZone, and Halla for Linux or Android, and WHPX and HAXM for Windows. Virtio devices cover networking, storage, GPU, audio, filesystems, console, RNG, ballooning, vsock, TPM, and video. Block storage supports raw, qcow2, zstd, and Android sparse formats. Linux hosts need kernel 4.14 or newer with KVM support; some devices have additional host requirements. The project documents obtaining crosvm from its source repository and building it with Cargo. SCSI, video, shared host directories via virtio-pmem, and snapshotting are marked experimental or highly experimental.
oVirt
oVirt is a free, open-source distributed virtualization system for managing enterprise infrastructure. It uses the KVM hypervisor and builds on community projects including libvirt, Gluster, PatternFly, and Ansible. Deployment options include a self-hosted Engine and a standalone Engine; the project recommends the self-hosted option, which runs as a virtual machine on specialized hosts and is highly available without external HA management. Centralized storage holds virtual machine disks, ISO files, and snapshots, with options including NFS, GlusterFS, iSCSI, local storage, Fibre Channel, pNFS, and other POSIX-compliant filesystems. Automation and integration are available through Ansible roles and collections, Python, Java, and Ruby SDKs, and a REST API. The download page identifies version 4.5.7 as intended for production use, with Engine and host support for Enterprise Linux 9 or 10 and CentOS Stream 9 or 10. Installation is by command line. At least one additional host is required for advanced features such as migration and high availability. The project points users to community forums, IRC, and Matrix, and invites contributions.