Advantages of VirtualBox vs. competition

[Technologov]

Hi All !

Here I would like to list some of the advantages of this virtualization product vs. VMware Workstation 7 (and VMware Fusion 3).

In the past (year 2007) this product was mostly playing catch-up, but by now, things have changed greatly, and in some ways, VirtualBox started to surpass the main competitor.

VirtualBox now offers several features not found in VMware Workstation:
1. OpenGL for Linux guests (since VirtualBox v2.2) -- allows you to run Linux guests with Compiz effects (+GNOME3 + Unity)
NOTE: VMware WS 8 has unstable drivers for Linux 3.x guests.
2. VDE: connect directly to Virtual Distributed Network (since VirtualBox v3.2)
3. Ability to run on Solaris and FreeBSD UNIX hosts
4. Documentation is so much easier to read than VMware user's guide - more clear, and easier to find info. (subjective)
5. EFI firmware - something not found even on newest PCs, already supported here.
6. UDP Tunnel

Any thoughts? comments?

Some features are big-iron oriented, and present in VMware ESX: (but not Workstation)

• Memory Page Sharing (PageFusion)
• Memory ballooning
• Live Migration (Teleportation)
• PCI pass-through

-Technologov

[stefan.becker]

Missing features: (vs. VMware Workstation 7)

- Aero for Vista / Win 7
Technologov: Fixed in VirtualBox 4.1.
- Teams
Technologov: Teams are mostly used for network application testing. We have a GNS3 Network Simulator - VirtualBox Edition project for this purpose. link
-Clones
Technologov: Fixed in VirtualBox 4.1.
- Shrinking features in the GUI / Tools
- Drag & Drop for host/guest file copy

[HubTou]

Hi Technologov!

Hi All !
2. Ability to execute guest commands from host (since VirtualBox v3.2)
4. Ability to run on Solaris and FreeBSD UNIX hosts
Any thoughts? comments?

2. Do you mean textual commands? If i recall correctly, the possibility to inject keyboard events existed before 3.2. Or is it what is called "Guest Additions: added support for executing guest applications from the host system" in the changelog?

4. Does that mean that there will be an officially supported FreeBSD version, plus PUEL binaries?

Apart from that, i was thinking that some of the new features were closing the gap with server solutions and making VB more cloud-friendly, such as:
* Memory ballooning to dynamically in- or decrease the amount of RAM used by a VM (64-bit hosts only)
* CPU hot-plugging for Linux (hot-add and hot-remove) and certain Windows guests (hot-add only)

Best regards,

Hubert

[Technologov]

Yes, indeed many features are closing gaps... like "Branched Snapshots", "VirtIO", "SMP", etc... (VMware had PV network since ages)

I just pointed at new, unique, features.

And no, FreeBSD is not official... only OSE.

[chong67]

This is my 2nd day of using Virtualbox. I been using WW7 alot.

Trying to do a clone in Virtualbox is not easy. Still in DOS mode?

Trying to install the Tools is not easy on Virtualbox. But I got it to work.

I like the tab on WW7 with OS you can get to quickly.

[SaGGiO]

I think some of us would apreciate some kind of "exclusive mode" (like they call it in vmware) or... some way to let the guest change the host resolution... when running in full screen...

[Technologov]

>2. Ability to execute guest commands from host (since VirtualBox v3.2)
This one is gonna be a useful feature of the new release.

However, I feel it really needs better documentation. Bug #6732
Any competitor product have this feature? (besides OpenVZ)

[jorgensen]

Still we need dynamically memory allocation.
Version 3.2 has somewhat calling Memory ballooning but it is only between guests - and it is completely hidden feature

[liangsuilong]

Comparing to VMware, drag 'n' drug is an important feature for desktop user in my opinion. But vbox has lacked it for a long time.

Comparing with qemu-kvm, vbox does not support block migration. Teleportation is an interesting function, however, a few vbox users have a share storage server to migrate their VM. So block migration is a quite useful features.

The performance of virtual disk needs to improve. I hope more virtio functions get into vbox, especially virtio-block and virtio-pci. I think quite many users has waited auto-shrinking vdi file for a long time.

[Technologov]

>Comparing with qemu-kvm, vbox does not support block migration.
qemu/kvm also require shared storage. There is no block migration.

regarding drag-n-drop, I fully agree...

[liangsuilong]

>Comparing with qemu-kvm, vbox does not support block migration.
qemu/kvm also require shared storage. There is no block migration.

regarding drag-n-drop, I fully agree...

qemu-kvm-0.12.2 has supported block migration. You can find this news on phoronix and linux-kvm.com.

phoronix: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n ... &px=NzkwNQ

linux-kvm.com told us how to use block migration.

http://www.linux-kvm.com/content/qemu-k ... on-feature

Both small business users and personal users have no much money to buy extended storage devices as shared storage. And without shared storage, I think it is much easier to operate VM teleportation. I am convinced that many users are interested in this feature. Also I know this is not an easy job.

Drap-n-drog, you have told us that a developer said the feature is too difficult for them. So we need to wait for more time. I read the changelog. There are a lot of commits for WDDM support. Does Aero come to us in the next major upgrade version? Sounds expected!

[stefan.becker]

The Problem for Drag&Drop may be easy, if you have only one supported OS as host and guest.

But think about VBOX, it runs on Windows, Solaris, Mac, Linux and it runs the same guests. And for Linux you have KDE, Gnome, Fluxbox, .... You have Suse, Fedora, ...

So the developers have to support all this platforms. I think, this is a waste time for a feature not often needed. I have no problems in using a filemanageron the guest with drag&drop. This does the same and it works now and ever.

[liangsuilong]

VMware workstation and Fusion support drap-n-drop. Dont they only work on specific host OS and guest OS? I really do not know.

Copy-and-Paste just support texts in VirtualBox. Does it extend to files and directories?

[Technologov]

>VMware workstation and Fusion support drap-n-drop. Dont they only work on specific host OS and guest OS? I really do not know.
They work across OSes.

>Copy-and-Paste just support texts in VirtualBox. Does it extend to files and directories?
No, but it extends to bitmaps.

[Technologov]

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