VMWare beware: Sun's FOSS VirtualBox hits the sweet spot for Linux

David M Williams
Monday, 11 August 2008 10:47

Business IT - Technology

The full version has two other desirable enhancements: it has native support for iSCSI and SATA hard drives without requiring either guest operating system iSCSI support or a slower virtual IDE driver.

It’s unfortunate that this version is not open source but nevertheless it is still available as a free download without commitment. Paid support options are available for enterprises that are depending on the product. This dual licensing is not contradictory to the GPL and it does permit Sun to derive a revenue stream from VirtualBox while allowing a good many people to enjoy use of the product without restriction (and, presumably, to contribute to the product!)

VirtualBox alleges to offer excellent native performance – that is, when you emulate an operating system designed for like hardware to the physical underlying computer – it will attempt to run as much code on the processor as possible, rather than intercepting or emulating calls. This essentially means that the virtual computers are running as best they can, as if – for the most part – they were bare to the real silicon on the CPU itself.

Future versions of VirtualBox will include 64-bit guest operating systems, 3D virtualisation, support for the VMWare and Virtual PC hard drive formats (.vmdk and .vhd) allowing greater interoperability, as well as optimisations concerning processor and memory usage and allocation.

Support can easily be found online at the VirtualBox forums covering a wide range of topics and in both English and German languages. You will find help with installing and using VirtualBox on a range of native operating systems and for equally as many guest operating systems. You’ll find assistance on cloning virtual hard drives, managing hardware, correcting sound and video issues, using the command line interface, starting machines with web services, optimal settings for different circumstances and so on.

With the range of features available, and the tremendous effort which has gone into programmability and extensibility, it is easy to see why fans of VirtualBox are passionate about it as a virtualisation solution.

With both versions available for free and one being truly permissive open source you can be assured it is a product that has benefited from the collaborative gaze of the open source community. The disk footprint is a mere 30MB and all this combines to produce a very compelling offering.