Now that Red Hat acquired Qumranet, the maintainer of KVM, the interest around the open source virtualization engine included into the Linux kernel is raising over the top.
Those customers considering the product should be happy to know that the newest version, KVM 75, introduces the memory ballooning.
The ballooning is the most common approach to achieve memory overcommit, a feature available only in VMware ESX at today.
While the real value of ballooning has been questioned several times, it’s really notable to see that the youngest newcomer in the virtualization arena is already stacking up the right features to compete with the most mature products.
Of course KVM is too new and its diffusion too limited to really prove its reliability against the well-known competitors. With or without cutting-edge features, Red Hat will have to work a lot to build confidence in the new platform.