VirtualBox 3.2.0 brings support for current Intel CPUs

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 20 May 2010 08:55

Business IT - Technology

The release of VirtualBox 3.2.0 brings some important new features to Oracle's virtualisation software just over a week since the release of version 3.1.8.

Top of the list of new features in VirtualBox 3.2.0 is support for Intel Core i5, Core i7 and Xeon 5600 series processors to provide faster boot times for guest operating systems.

Other performance improvements come from the addition of Large Page support, optimisation of the networking subsystem to increase throughput by up to 25%, a completely re-worked virtual disk subsystem giving high performance without sacrificing data integrity, and the provision of video acceleration in VirtualBox Remote Display Protocol (VRDP) to improve virtual desktop performance.

Version 3.2.0 delivers a variety of features designed to improve efficiency and manageability. Virtual machine density is improved by memory ballooning (the ability to transfer memory between VMs) and page fusion (a technique for de-duplicating memory pages), guest automation allows host-based logic to drive operations in the guest, and online snapshot merging allows snapshot files to be pruned without shutting down the relevant VMs.

The virtualisation software now allows hot-plugging virtual CPUs (where supported by the guest OS), provides a virtual Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) controller, and allows up to eight virtual monitors to be attached to a guest.

VirtualBox 3.2.0 gains guest support for Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.5, Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx, and Mac OS X (on Apple hardware only, and Apple's software licence agreement for Mac OS X Server contains language apparently permitting use on virtual machines that is missing from the Mac OS X licence).

VirtualBox is free for personal use (defined as being where the user personally installs VirtualBox), with enterprise licenses starting at $US50 per user. It can be downloaded here.