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

by David M Williams

Monday, 11 August 2008

Page 1 of 3 ! When it comes to virtualising Linux, VMWare has always had the edge of Microsoft’s Virtual PC which has limited video display support. Although these were the best two, there have been other lesser-known options like XENSource. Here’s Sun’s VirtualBox and why it is truly kick-ass. You know what virtualisation is; it lets you run – on one physical computer – multiple, separate, computer environments. Each environment behaves as if it is genuinely running on real hardware directly. Virtualisation lets you run an operating system with all its bits and pieces on top of your existing operating system. There are lots of reasons why this is useful and desirable. You can experiment – network designers can mock up a sample network with a handful of virtual machines on their laptop before building and deploying physical computers. Software developers can test their apps on a “clean” computer. Data centres can consolidate masses of individual servers, including those supporting legacy apps, onto a smaller number of actual servers thus conserving space and energy. The two major players have largely been consider Microsoft’s Virtual PC/Virtual Server pair and VMWare’s range of products. We’ve talked about some others in the past, including Xen, but here’s one which really deserves attention – Sun’s VirtualBox. (Actually, VirtualBox was originally created by German software company Innotek but is now being developed under the name Sun Microsystems, the creators of Java and the popular SunOS/Solaris operating system line, after they acquired Innotek in February this year.) VirtualBox was released in its 1.6.4 version just recently, on August 1st. It has the competition in sight and points out that it specifically will allow an unmodified operating system to run in its virtual machines. By contrast, Xen mandates the guest operating system be modified to suit. Where VirtualBox really comes into its own is that it is the only professional virtualisation solution that is freely available as open source software under the GNU General Public License (GPL.) Why this matters is because it’s truly free, as in freedom. Any person is able to inspect the source code and determine if there are security vulnerabilities or problems, and any person is able to use the project for their own requirements however they need, and any person is able to enhance the program code to add new features or resolve problems. Even though the source code is completely transparent, Sun also make a software development kit available. This means that they actively encourage developers to produce add-ons and enhancements to the product and support them in doing so. Where this is particularly relevant is because VirtualBox has an interesting design philosophy that harks back to much of what has always been elegant in UNIX and Linux. Specifically, the virtual machines run as their own background service and the graphical user interface is only loosely connected. When you fire up the GUI it connects to the background service. It acts exactly as you would expect, but where the separation between the virtual machine and the user interface comes in is that you can replace the user interface with any other and the virtual machine is none the wiser. CONTINUED << First page <   1 2 3 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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