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SPECIFICTION
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LXD vs oVirt

LXD

canonical.com

oVirt

ovirt.org

Side by side

FigureLXDoVirt
Price from$2.08/moFree
Free planYesYes
Free trialYes—
Open source—Yes
WebYesYes
Windows—Yes
macOS—Yes
LinuxYesYes
iOS—Yes
Android—Yes
APIYesYes
Self-hostedYesYes
Plans published42
Spec score · Virtualization Management Software8.6 (#4)8.7 (#3)
Community supportLXD provides documentation, a discussion forum, tutorials, and GitHub-based contribution channels.The site points users to community forums, IRC and Matrix chat, and invites contributions to the project.
IntegrationsLXD integrations are available for Juju, MAAS, Ansible, Terraform, Puppet Bolt, and Packer.The feature catalog lists OVN/OpenStack providers, Glance, Cinder, GlusterFS, SR-IOV, OpenShift, Cloud-init and Terraform-related integrations.
What it doesLXD is an open source solution for managing virtual machines and system containers.oVirt is a free, open-source distributed virtualization platform for managing enterprise infrastructure through a centralized interface.

Plans

LXD

  • LXD open sourceFree
  • Ubuntu Pro PersonalFree
  • Ubuntu Pro Enterprise workstation$25 a year
  • Ubuntu Pro Enterprise server$500 a year

LXD pricing →

oVirt

  • Community editionFree
  • Community editionFree

oVirt pricing →

In their own words

LXD

LXD is an open-source platform for managing system containers and virtual machines on Linux. It brings LXC-based containers and KVM-based virtual machines together, with images for many Linux distributions and Windows virtual machines. Management options include a command line, REST API, web UI and third-party tools; the same HTTP API supports local and remote access. An official web UI is available by default starting with LXD 5.21.0 LTS. Features include resource limits, scheduled and expiring snapshots, projects, hardware passthrough, live migration and advanced networking. Containers run unprivileged by default, and virtual machines support UEFI Secure Boot and vTPM. LXD can run from a laptop to a data-center deployment; documentation describes clusters of up to 50 servers with thousands of instances. LXD is free, with the open-source plan listed at free. Ubuntu Pro Personal is also free for up to five physical Ubuntu systems. Enterprise workstation and server subscriptions are $25 a year and $500 a year, respectively.

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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.

Visit ovirt.org