Revamped virtualisation for Linux, Mac, Solaris and Windows

Stephen Withers
Friday, 09 May 2008 09:24

Business IT - Technology

A new release of Sun's xVM VirtualBox provides Macintosh users with a fresh virtual machine option, and delivers improvements for other host operating systems.

Available for various Linux distributions including Debian, Red Hat, SUSE and Ubuntu as well as Solaris, Mac OS X on Intel and Windows, xVM VirtualBox allows "practically any x86 based OS" to run as a guest.

The main exception is Mac OS X, but Apple's licence only permits Mac OS X Server to be used as a guest operating system (not the regular desktop version), and even then only when the host operating system is Mac OS X Server and the hardware is Apple-labeled.

Features of the new release include guest additions (add-ons that improve integration between host and guest operating systems), SATA support for up to 32 hard disks per virtual machine, support for the Physical Address Extension (PAE) memory model required by some operating systems, and a Web Services API for remote management.

According to Sun, guest operating systems perform at near-native speeds and the architecture means there is no interference or data leakage between virtual machines.

xVM VirtualBox is available free of charge for personal, educational or evaluation use as defined in the licence. Other use will require the purchase of a licence.

The software is part of Sun's xVM family of desktop and server products. There is also an open source edition of VirtualBox that offered under the GPL and lacks some of Sun's enhancements.