Side by side
Harvester vs Parallel Virtual Cluster
Both stand on hyperconverged infrastructure (hci) solutions. Which one you can start free with, which one lets you read the code, and what each costs once you pay.
Free plan APILinuxSelf-hosted+1
Harvester provides virtualization and distributed storage for bare-metal workloads, with VM management and live migration. Plan around its hardware recommendations, three-node requirement for high availability and Longhorn-only backup support.
Visit Harvester Free plan Linux
Visit Parallel Virtual Cluster The facts
| Harvester | Parallel Virtual Cluster | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | Not published | Not published |
| Runs on | API, Linux, Self-hosted, Web | Linux |
| Lowest paid plan | Free or on request | Not published |
| Plans published | 1 | None |
| Maker | Not published | Not published |
| Website | harvesterhci.io | parallelvirtualcluster.org |
| On hyperconverged infrastructure (hci) solutions | #1 of 17 | #4 of 17 |
Harvester: what it does well
- Free and open-source for bare-metal deployment.
- Supports VM creation, cloning and console access.
- Live migration moves VMs without downtime.
- Provides distributed block storage and tiering.
- Rancher can manage multiple Harvester clusters.
What to know first
- Three nodes are required for multi-node features and high availability.
- Live migration requires matching physical CPU specifications.
- VM backups are limited to Longhorn volumes.
- Laptops and nested virtualization are unsupported.
Parallel Virtual Cluster: what it does well
Alternatives to Harvester Alternatives to Parallel Virtual Cluster The whole list