virtualbox.org

Hey there,

Could somebody point me or at least describe what type of virtualization is used by VBox in Solaris 11 hosts?
Is that a pure software-based or does it lavarage x86 hardware virtualization?

Thanks!

There's no specific Solaris-only virtualization in VirtualBox, it's pretty much the same across host OSes. So, I'm moving this from "Solaris Hosts" to "Using VirtualBox", much wider audience.

VirtualBox does uses hardware virtualization for its engine, it's not software based. There used to be a raw-mode for systems that didn't have VT-x/AMD-V enabled, but given the current (last 10 years) state of the hardware, where VT-x/AMD-V is almost always available in the CPUs, that mode is fading away. It's still there, just not getting enough "love"...

For more information, see the following chapters from the User Manual:

• 10.3. Hardware vs. Software Virtualization
• 10.5. Details About Software Virtualization
• 10.6. Details About Hardware Virtualization

Thanks a lot for your answer.
I’m recently doing some performance tests in order to compare VBox Linux vs Solaris how it perform.
I’ll post my findings soon