Oracle VM VirtualBox enables desktop or laptop computers to run multiple operating systems simultaneously, and supports a variety of host operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X, most popular flavors of Linux (including Oracle Linux), and Oracle Solaris. Version 4.0 delivers increased capacity and throughput to handle greater workloads, enhanced virtual appliance capabilities, and significant usability improvements. Support for the latest in virtual hardware, including chipsets supporting PCI Express, further extends the value delivered to customers, partners and developers.
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2006-05-11
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2010-12-12
Member since:2005-11-10
Member since:2005-07-12
The expansion packs were already separate for many users, as the USB and RDP were already propriety components (I'm not sure about the PXE components). It seems the only difference now is that they aren't included by default in the Windows builds, which, for me, is an improvement. I rarely used the USB features of VirtualBox, it is more often than not a source of frustration for me.
Member since:
2010-12-24
I am sorry to say that this release caused my windows 7 64 bit to experience its first BSOD.
Something about the VirtualBox USB 2.0 driver failed to unload something before exiting. I did not had time to capture the whole message before the machine rebooted but the above is explanatory enough. Some rough edges on the new drivers cleaning up.
Short of that, I am thrilled about Oracle support to VirtualBox. I use it extensively on Windows Mac and Linux Hosts and it is usually very dependable.
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2008-07-12
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2009-07-10
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2010-12-22
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2006-01-24
Alot of people, aswell as these benchmarks over at Phoronix http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_kvm_virtua... says there's been performance regressions in v4 compared to v3, but these were tests of the Virtual Box 4 beta releases, anyone compared the performance of the final release vs 3.2.12?
Member since:
2005-07-06
The relatively short beta program doesn't install too much confidence in VirtualBox's stability.
Plus, given the relative advantage qemu/KVM has performance wise [1], VB is looking far less attractive than it used to be.
As it stands, I'll continue using qemu/kvm (using my own VM management scripts) on supported hardware (Xeons, Athon CPUs, etc) and VB (as a sole alternative) on my ASUS 1201N netbook.
- Gilboa
[1] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_kvm_virtua...
Member since:2006-01-19
Plus, given the relative advantage qemu/KVM has performance wise [1], VB is looking far less attractive than it used to be.
As it stands, I'll continue using qemu/kvm (using my own VM management scripts) on supported hardware (Xeons, Athon CPUs, etc) and VB (as a sole alternative) on my ASUS 1201N netbook.
- Gilboa
[1] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_kvm_vi...
I am sceptical about most virtualization benchmarks because of the number of unknown factors involved. One they mentioned--by default, virtualbox caches writes that should sync to disk, inflating the results unsafely. QEMU/KVM can be configured to do this too. Another is that you can't be sure inside a VM that a measured second is really a wall clock second, since the clock ticks can get optimised out (this is why the clock slips in vmware when you don't have tools installed). If you can't reliably measure time, you can't do any xyz/second benchmarks reliably.
Anecdotally, I find QEMU/KVM to be absurdly slow on IO when using qcow2 and when the disk image is mostly unallocated. Once it gets allocated (grows), it's not as bad. An example would be compiling a kernel on a brand new guest. The first compile allocates a lot of real disk space in the qcow2, pegging the real hdd with metadata updates, etc. The next compile (after rebooting, so it's not caching) doesn't because the qcow2 doesn't really have to grow for it.
I have read that how bad this is might depend on the host FS (I use ext4), but I haven't tested this.
Member since:2005-07-06
I tend to be skeptical about benchmarks just as you.
However, according to my own private experience, qemu/KVM runs circles around VB once you start adding cores, memory and network devices, and this without using virt-io devices. (I require "real" e1000 devices on my VM's).
As for wall clock vs. real clock, well, with NTP enabled, I never experienced any massive clock drift on x86_64 guests, and I relay on having synced host / guest clock for my software.
I have read that how bad this is might depend on the host FS (I use ext4), but I haven't tested this.
I only use raw images so I can't really confirm or contradict your observation.
- Gilboa
Edited 2010-12-27 08:22 UTC
Member since:2006-01-02
Member since:2006-05-12
Member since:2005-07-06
True.
But it seems to be gaining traction in the BSD world as well [1].
Never the less, if you're a Linux user and willing to use command-line parameters, in my experience, qemu/kvm is more capable than VB, and -far- more stable.
- Gilboa
[1] http://retis.sssup.it/~fabio/freebsd/lkvm/
Edited 2010-12-27 08:21 UTC
Member since:2006-08-30
Member since:2005-07-06
I'm genuinely curious. I use vbox (and kvm) quite a lot on Linux and FreeBSD and haven't been scared off of vbox in the same way as vmware server. Vbox is quite stable for me, what are you seeing?
At least in my experience, when qemu/kvm goes down, it only takes the guest, when VB goes down, the host goes down with it.
As I don't have solid test-cases that continuously crash the host, I can't really back my claim.
- Gilboa
Member since:2006-01-02
Member since:2005-07-18
Due to my work requirements I have a Windows 7 laptop, so I don't have the choice of KVM. I have been using VMWare Player to run my linux development environment, but VMWare's UI consistently irritates me and I notice a fair amount of strange Zend/PHP segfaults.
Also, I like having a FreeBSD development environment for certain things, but VMWare player doesn't play well with FreeBSD in graphical mode. Something about event handling seems completely broken, because I can type several characters in any graphical application and they will not show up until I move the mouse--odd.
Thus I am trying out VirtualBox. So far it has done fine with FreeBSD in terminal mode... as a stress-test I am compiling the whole graphical environment, from Xorg to KDE, and it has handling things quite well. Here's hoping it will handle graphical apps well too. (Another plus about VirtualBox is you get Snapshots for free, which you don't get with the free VMWare Player.)
Member since:2006-01-02
Likewise. Aside from the annoying, but trivial bug where the pop-up menu bar was black in KDE, I haven't had any problems with VBox on Linux or Windows. Maybe KVM is more stable, but if it's in metrics that require edge cases I never run into to see, then what's the value for me?