The new killer features of VirtualBox

[Technologov]

Each version of VirtualBox provides many new features, some of them become so-called "killer features" -- features that significantly improve the way I use virtualization software, and without which, I really feel something is lacking.

I use ' +++ ' triple plus notation for such killer features.

==========================================================
Changelog

VirtualBox 3.2.0 (released 2010-05-18)

This version is a major update. The following major new features were added:

Following the acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle Corporation, the product is now called Oracle VM VirtualBox and all references were changed without impacting compatibility
+ Experimental support for Mac OS X Server guests (see the manual for more information)
Memory ballooning to dynamically in- or decrease the amount of RAM used by a VM (64-bit hosts only) (see the manual for more information)
+ Page Fusion automatically de-duplicates RAM when running similar VMs thereby increasing capacity. Currently supported for Windows guests on 64-bit hosts (see the manual for more information)
CPU hot-plugging for Linux (hot-add and hot-remove) and certain Windows guests (hot-add only) (see the manual for more information)
New Hypervisor features: with both VT-x/AMD-V on 64-bit hosts, using large pages can improve performance (see the manual for more information); also, on VT-x, unrestricted guest execution is now supported (if nested paging is enabled with VT-x, real mode and protected mode without paging code runs faster, which mainly speeds up guest OS booting)
Support for deleting snapshots while the VM is running
+ Support for multi-monitor guest setups in the GUI for Windows guests (see the manual for more information)
+ USB tablet/keyboard emulation for improved user experience if no Guest Additions are available (see the manual for more information).
LsiLogic SAS controller emulation (see the manual for more information)
RDP video acceleration (see the manual for more information)
NAT engine configuration via API and VBoxManage
Use of host I/O cache is now configurable (see the manual for more information)
++ Guest Additions: added support for executing guest applications from the host system (replaces the automatic system presimparation feature; see the manual for more information)
OVF: enhanced OVF support with custom namespace to preserve settings that are not part of the base OVF standard
+ VDE, Virtual Destributed Ethernet (Linux/FreeBSD hosts only)
+++ Guest Additions: support seamless and dynamic resizing on older X11 guests (bug #5840)
VNC: OSE version now includes VNC server for headless mode

VirtualBox 3.1.0 (released 2009-11-30)

This version is a major update. The following major new features were added:

Teleportation (aka live migration); migrate a live VM session from one host to another (see the manual for more information)
+++ VM states can now be restored from arbitrary snapshots instead of only the last one, and new snapshots can be taken from other snapshots as well ("branched snapshots"; see the manual for more information)
2D video acceleration for Windows guests; use the host video hardware for overlay stretching and color conversion (see the manual for more information)
+ More flexible storage attachments: CD/DVD drives can be attached to an arbitrary IDE controller, and there can be more than one such drive (the manual for more information)
+ The network attachment type can be changed while a VM is running
Complete rewrite of experimental USB support for OpenSolaris hosts making use of the latest USB enhancements in Solaris Nevada 124 and higher
Significant performance improvements for PAE and AMD64 guests (VT-x and AMD-V only; normal (non-nested) paging)
Experimental support for EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface; see the manual for more information)
+ Support for paravirtualized network adapters (virtio-net; see the manual for more information)

rdware acceleration to be enabled for virtual machines that had no explicit configuration in the XML.

VirtualBox 3.0.0 (released 2009-06-30)

This version is a major update. The following major new features were added:

+ Guest SMP with up to 32 virtual CPUs (VT-x and AMD-V only; see chapter 3.7.2.2 of the user manual)
+++ Windows guests: ability to use Direct3D 8/9 applications / games (experimental; see chapter 4.8 of the user manual)
++ Support for OpenGL 2.0 for Windows, Linux and Solaris guests

VirtualBox 2.2.0 (released 2009-04-08)

This version is a major update. The following major new features were added:

+ OVF (Open Virtualization Format) appliance import and export (see chapter 3.8, Importing and exporting virtual machines, User Manual page 55)
Host-only networking mode (see chapter 6.7, Host-only networking, User Manual page 88)
Hypervisor optimizations with signficant performance gains for high context switching rates
Raised the memory limit for VMs on 64-bit hosts to 16GB
VT-x/AMD-V are enabled by default for newly created virtual machines
USB (OHCI & EHCI) is enabled by default for newly created virtual machines (Qt GUI only)
Experimental USB support for OpenSolaris hosts
Shared folders for Solaris and OpenSolaris guests
+ OpenGL 3D acceleration for Linux and Solaris guests (see chapter 4.8, Hardware 3D acceleration (OpenGL), User Manual page 70)
Added C API in addition to C++, Java, Python and Web Services


VirtualBox 2.1.0 (released 2008-12-17)

This version is a major update. The following major new features were added:

Support for hardware virtualization (VT-x and AMD-V) on Mac OS X hosts
+++ Support for 64-bit guests on 32-bit host operating systems (experimental; see user manual, chapter 1.6, 64-bit guests, User Manual page 16)
Added support for Intel Nehalem virtualization enhancements (EPT and VPID; see user manual, chapter 1.2, Software vs. hardware virtualization (VT-x and AMD-V), User Manual page 10))
+++ Experimental 3D acceleration via OpenGL (see user manual, chapter 4.8, Hardware 3D acceleration (OpenGL), User Manual page 66)
Experimental LsiLogic and BusLogic SCSI controllers (see user manual, chapter 5.1, Hard disk controllers: IDE, SATA (AHCI), SCSI, User Manual page 70)
+ Full VMDK/VHD support including snapshots (see user manual, chapter 5.2, Disk image files (VDI, VMDK, VHD), User Manual page 72)
++ New NAT engine with significantly better performance, reliability and ICMP echo (ping) support (bugs #1046, #2438, #2223, #1247)
+++ New Host Interface Networking implementations for Windows and Linux hosts with easier setup (replaces TUN/TAP on Linux and manual bridging on Windows)

VirtualBox 2.0.0 (released 2008-09-04)

This version is a major update. The following major new features were added:

+++ 64 bits guest support (64 bits host only)
New native Leopard user interface on Mac OS X hosts
The GUI was converted from Qt3 to Qt4 with many visual improvements
New-version notifier
Guest property information interface
Host Interface Networking on Mac OS X hosts
New Host Interface Networking on Solaris hosts
Support for Nested Paging on modern AMD CPUs (major performance gain)
Framework for collecting performance and resource usage data (metrics)
Added SATA asynchronous IO (NCQ: Native Command Queuing) when accessing raw disks/partitions (major performance gain)
Clipboard integration for OS/2 Guests
Created separate SDK component featuring a new Python programming interface on Linux and Solaris hosts
Support for VHD disk images
Network: added support for jumbo frames (> 1536 bytes)

VirtualBox 1.6.0 (released 2008-04-30)
*** LONGEST RELEASE EVER - 8 months !!! ***

This version is a major update. The following major new features were added:

+++ Solaris and Mac OS X host support
+++ Seamless windowing for Linux and Solaris guests
Guest Additions for Solaris
A webservice API
SATA hard disk (AHCI) controller
++ Experimental Physical Address Extension (PAE) support
+ Audio: SoundBlaster 16 emulation
- Dropped Windows 2000 host support

VirtualBox 1.5.0 (released 2007-09-03)

+++ Major: Seamless windows
+ Major: Virtual serial ports
++ Major: Support for 64-bit Windows hosts
Major: Intel PXE 2.1 network boot
Major: Guest Additions for IBM OS/2 Warp
++ Guest Additions: added DirectDraw support to the Windows display driver

VirtualBox 1.4.0 (released 2007-06-06)

++ General: added support for OS X hosts (BETA stage)
+++ General: added support for AMD64 hosts (Linux hosts only)
GUI: added localizationss
GUI: added user interface for Shared Folders
Storage: experimental support for VMDK images (writethrough mode only, no snapshots yet)
Storage: raw host disk support, including individual partitions
Serial: added serial ports with support for named pipes (local domain sockets) on the host

VirtualBox 1.3.2 (released 2007-01-15)

first public version

==========================================================
Please share your experiences...
Which features you like the most? Which are *your killer features?

For me it was 2.1.0 release, that made most killing features.
What was yours?

-Technologov

[sej7278]

2.1.0 for me too, i never really started using vbox on a daily basis until they replaced the tun/tap rubbish with proper bridging support.

smp was a bit of a let down in 3.0, like vmware it seemed to actually slow things down.

3.2's killer features are all a bit hidden to the user, especially if you're not a mac user or don't have the latest core-i7's and a san.

can't really see what killer features there are to add to 3.3 - possibly more enterprisey features like online backup, clustering, vt-d etc.

are we ever going to see accelerated 2d on linux guests? what about a better media manager? i'd like to see i/o improvements - tasks like compilation are still slow as hell....

[Leak]

Maybe it's just me, but multi-monitor support for guests is THE killer feature for me in the 3.2 release - and that's very user-visible...

[mpack]

Am I the only one who is uncomfortable with the implications of this topic title? I'm not talking about the "killer" word, I'm talking about the emphasis on features as a goal in themselves, as opposed to creating a rounded application which does a job simply and well. IMHO creeping featuritis has killed many a good application before.

I personally hope that the next major release of VBox will be all about addressing usability issues.

[Technologov]

Feel free to start a new topic with a better naming, and put your point of view there.

[mpack]

No offence intended, I too have some particular features of VBox that I like. I just felt that this boat needed a touch on the tiller...

[sej7278]

Maybe it's just me, but multi-monitor support for guests is THE killer feature for me in the 3.2 release - and that's very user-visible...

i bet you're a mac user - us linux users just use virtual desktops and TTY's, i have no need for more than one BIG monitor.

[Technologov]

Leak seems to be a Windows user.

But let's go back to features please... who likes what?

[liangsuilong]

I like VDE support. If VirtualBox offers VDE built-in support just like bridge, I think it will be better. I am a Fedora user. Unluckily, Fedora does not provide VDE package. I need to compile from VDE source and configure the network. It is a little difficult for me.

I read vbox svn change log. I find that a lot of commits is about WDDM model. Does Aero support become a killer features in vbox-3.3 (maybe named as vbox-4.0)? Just hope soon.

vbox-ose has given us VNC server. There is a discussion on vbox-dev mail list about SPICE and RDP. A developer wants SPICE to replace RDP. VNC is quite slow. SPICE is not widely used on Windows platform. In my opinion, SPICE can be built in VirtualBox-OSE for testing. If it is stable enough, SPICE can be get into PUEL version.

[fixedwheel]

seems i needed some time to detect that ...

VirtualBox 3.2.0 (released 2010-05-18)
...
+ USB tablet/keyboard emulation for improved user experience if no Guest Additions are available (see the manual for more information).

+++ this feature is awesome!



hmm ...oO(additional possibility to preset the virtual monitors DDC or EDID data to some more than 640x480 or 800x600 could be the way to obsolete guest additions in many cases)

[Entity]

I wish they add drag and drop and copy paste files some day, that would be the killer feature for me. Not funny to copy files to shared directory, and then from shared to the guest hdd (not to mention how slow shared folders are, something that I still don't get).

[oraculix]

Howdy Y'all,
I'd like to add something from release 3.2.8 to the list:

+++ Sharing disks: support for attaching one disk to several VMs without external tools and tricks

This should make it much easier to set up clustered systems with a shared-storage architecture (like Oracle RAC).
I wonder how this got hidden so deeply in a maintenance change log.

[Technologov]

4.1.0 adds several more killer features:

WDDM / Aero support for Windows Guests
PCI pass-through
UDP Tunnel