| Type of software | Open source. | Owner | Proprietary (IBM specific) | Open source (KVM and container-based) | Proprietary (based on Kubernetes and containers) |
| It is based on | KVM. Just as OCP supports containers and also VMs. | VMkernel | Based on IBM technology inherited from Mainframe environments, with advanced processor micro-partitioning technologies and HW isolation of VMs. | KVM and LXC | KVM (for virtual machines *if installed in bare-metal mode and not on top of other hypervisors) and Kubernetes for containers |
| Web UI | Yes | Yes, but limited. vSphere is required for many functionalities. | Yes HMC (equivalent to vSphere) or PowerVC (based on OpenStack) | Yes | Yes |
| Clustering | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes (through Kubernetes) |
| High Availability | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes (with advanced Kubernetes features) |
| VM live migration | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes (via Kubernetes and OpenShift Virtualization) |
| Shared storage | Ceph | vSAN | Supports various file systems and storage | Ceph, ZFS and others | GlusterFS, Ceph and others |
| Networking | Bridge, OVN | NSX | Compatible with almost all network technologies | Bridge, VLAN, VXLAN and others | SDN, OVN and others |
| Snapshots | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Backup | Yes | Yes | Yes (with IBM and third-party management tools) | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | N/A (unlimited free use) | 30 days | Not applicable (included free with IBM hardware) | N/A (unlimited free use) | Free trial available |
| Cost | Free of charge, with enterprise support available per physical host | Full functionality requires a paid license. | Included with IBM Power hardware | Free of charge, with enterprise support by subscription | Core-based underwriting; varies by environment. |
| Number of yarns | Limited to 2 threads per core (x86) | Limited to 2 threads per core (x86) | Up to 1,920 threads (Power10 E1080) | Limited to 2 threads per core (x86) | Limited to 2 threads per core (x86) |
| Type of hypervisor | Level 1 (over KVM) | Level 1 | Level 0 (separate VMs at firmware level with CPU mapping) | Level 1 (KVM) and Level 2 (LXC) | Level 2 (on RHEL) |
| Technology maturity (years) | > 10 years | > 20 years | > 30 years (coming from Z environments / LPARs) | > 10 years | > 10 years |
| Maximum RAM capacity per VM | Up to 2TB | Up to 2 TB | Up to 32 TB | Up to 2TB | Up to 2TB |