Free VMWare like virtualization with VirtualBox
According to their website “VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer
for x86 hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is
now the only professional-quality virtualization solution that is also
Open Source Software.” -www.virtualbox.org
Some of the features quoted from their website:
- Modularity.
- Virtual machine descriptions in XML.
- Guest Additions for Windows and Linux.
- Shared folders.
Commercial Features (Free for personal use and evaluation, seperate version):
- Virtual USB Controllers.
- Remote Desktop Protocol.
- USB over RDP.
My Walk through:
They don’t mention this initally on the website, but I’ve found that I’ve been able to open all of my existing VMWare images with VirtualBox without having to run some sort of conversion tool. After I had opened and played with those VMWare images with VirtualBox they still opened without problem in VMWare.
VirtualBox does has it’s own imaging format. I’m not sure of the performance difference between the VMWare and VirtualBox native formats but having the ability to open either one in VirtualBox is a great feature. If any readers have any preformance comparisions between VMWare and VirtualBox please send it my way (keith at my domain).
I did notice that if I used a VMWare image with guest tools installed, those extra features didn’t work in VirtualBox until I added VirtualBox’s own version of guest tools. The guest tools have pretty much the same installation method as it does in VMWare, so overall not a problem.
Issues:
Oh how I hate the networking. Doing a dynamic local system IP is default and easy enough but getting the guest to use the hosts IP address is a pain in the ass. There should be a easier process for doing that. Overall VMware has better, easier to use networking options compared to VirtualBox.
Conclusion:
The best and easiest VM solution out there. Comparable to VMWare in multiple asspects and able to open VMWare images. Network options can use improvement, but usable overall.
