VirtualBox 2.1 Supports 64-Bit VM In 32-Bit Host 374
Stephen Birch writes "Following closely behind the mid-November 2.06 release of VirtualBox, Sun Microsystems has released version 2.1. This has a number of new features, but one of the most interesting is the ability to run a 64-bit VM inside a 32-bit host. Another useful feature is integrated host-based networking; no more fiddling around with network bridges. Sun is really giving VMWare a run for their money."
.. and .. (Score:5, Interesting)
.. opengl acceleration on windows guests on any opengl capable host! beat that vmware!
Hardware 3D acceleration (OpenGL) (Score:5, Interesting)
Another interesting new feature is the experimental 3D acceleration via OpenGL. From the manual:
With this new feature, if an application inside your Windows guest uses 3D features through the OpenGL programming interfaces, these will not be emulated in software (which is slow), but instead VirtualBox will attempt to use your host's 3D hardware.
This works for all supported host platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris), provided that your host operating system can make use of your accelerated 3D hardware in the first place.
The 3D acceleration currently has the following limitations:
1. It is only available in Windows XP and 32-bit Vista guests with the Windows Guest Additions installed.
2. Only OpenGL acceleration is presently available in those guests; Direct3D is not yet supported and will be added in a future release.
Improved snapshots? (Score:5, Interesting)
Aside from a clunky GUI, the thing that stood out the most for me about VirtualBox is the abysmal snapshot support. Both VMWare and Parallels allow for a snapshot tree where you can instantly jump to any powered-on machine state that you have saved. VirtualBox, on the other hand, seemed to only support a linear, multiple-level undo.
Anybody know if any progress has been made in this area?
Memory supported? (Score:5, Interesting)
Virtualbox is superior to VMware (Score:4, Interesting)
Virtualbox doesn't just give VMware a run for it's money, it's considerably superior in many respects:
- It's open source
- The gtk interface is at least as good as vmware's gui
- It's considerably faster on my system (no hardware virtualisation), windows xp boots in about half the time in virtualbox than in vmware, and applications generally open/run much more snappily.
- It's considerably more stable (on linux) than vmware is. In my experience vmware crashed about 30% of the times I used it, I even got a total system crash once that needed a hard reset (I think due to problems with compiz?). It uses quite an intrusive kernel module that creates a lot of latency in the kernel. This manifests itself mostly as skipping audio when audio is playing. Virtualbox has none of these problems, it's rock solid stable and doesn't hog the cpu like vmware does.
- Virtualbox seems to need less ram than vmware, I only have 1GB of ram in my laptop and swapping was unbearable with firefox and vmware open, yet firefox, virtualbox AND other applications can coexist fine with only limited swapping.
That's all the advantages I can think of of the top of my head, the only disadvantage I can see is that vmware supports USB devices whereas the free version of virtualbox doesn't. Other than that, virtualbox is just better all round.
Sam
Re:Good Alternative (Score:3, Interesting)
VirtualBox is supposed to be able to open up VMDKs. Whether or not one can get it to boot on the other hand........
"Giving VMWare a run for their money" (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the truth. Sun, Xen and even Microsoft are giving VMWare a run for their money nowadays.
There's one interesting thing which has struck me, that I haven't seen any comments on. Namely, that VMWare is stuck competing between Microsoft on the one hand, and several Open Source projects on the other (with some of the Open Source projects having serious financial backing).
Being positioned between Microsoft and Open Source generally hasn't been a good spot to be in (indeed, has anyone succeeded here?). So I have to wonder how VMWare is going to stand up in the future?
I've been a big fan of VMWare in the past, as it has saved my butt more than once. However, now I find myself using Xen more, and seriously considering Sun's offerings.
To VMWare's credit, they have arguably the best person in the world for the job as CEO (at least on paper). Some might remember Paul Maritz as being one of the top people from Microsoft, as well as having led Microsoft's original *NIX strategy (I.e. Xenix). So if there's anyone who can compete there, it is him.
But still, it is not an enviable position to be in, and it makes me wonder how they are going to compete in the long term? Especially since, from a technology basis, the Open Source efforts are arguably better.
Anyone care to add some insightful comments on this? The only way that I can see VMWare winning is if everyone else screws up. While that's possible, there's a lot of money at stake in the Virtualization field, and I think the odds of that happening are low.
Re:I thought VMWare already did that (Score:5, Interesting)
Solaris Containers on Sparc and VirtualBox x86 (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll bet they still haven't fixed... (Score:2, Interesting)
...the glaring problem that I have with VirtualBox, VM management.
I love that they use XML for defining a system. I love that they have a virtual disk manager. But they do not have a process for bundling both together if I have a virtual machine with a disk image that I am dedicating to it.
The end result is migrating a VM or even upgrading an install with non-default settings is a huge hassle. And the default puts VM-client xml files in a different location than their virtual disk images.
In VMWare, I just move the entire directory and start a vm with the appropriate vmx file.
Re:"Giving VMWare a run for their money" (Score:2, Interesting)
VMWare jumped way ahead of the pack in terms of "basic" VM management early. That's why they're a big name now.
Now their "basic" package isn't doing much more than many of the Open Source projects and Microsoft offering (which is why some of their offerings like VMWare Server have become free). What VMWare has now is a large bundle of enterprise products for managing VMs and their data across the network and across your SAN.
If you want to delve into Virtualization for resume fodder, your best bet is to start looking at the enterprise tools they have to offer. Many have free trials.
At this point though, as a developer myself, if all you're going to do with it is generate multiple environments for testing and you haven't touched VMWare products, I would look at VirtualBox.
Re:Great, needed this as of last week.. (Score:4, Interesting)
You are still not correct. Running 64-bit OS requires 64-bit hardware with internal processor support. That means people, like me, with AMD Mobile Sempron (64 bit) are out of luck because processor doesn't support "AMD-v". On Intel machines, it is called "VT-x".
You might need to enable it via BIOS first.
Re:Good products (Score:3, Interesting)
VirtualBox can have the same kind of new kernel issues as VMWare. I went over tracking one of those down my blog [blogspot.com] (and this month went over working around the limitations in VirtualBox that prevent you from cloning a snapshot image [blogspot.com]).
I've found the stuff that VirtualBox has issues with straighforward to work around for the usual reason that makes open-source software easier to cope with: when I do run into a bug or limitation, it's sometimes possible to poke at the source code to figure out what's going on. In that snapshot cloning case, a quick read of CloneToImage [virtualbox.org] and its associated code gave me a decent idea what was going on. That's why I run it instead of VMWare player: given anything close to feature parity, I'll take a slightly buggy program I can see the source code to over one that's closed.
Re:.. and .. (Score:3, Interesting)
It's also on Linux guests but I hear it's still very slow on Linux. Hopefully they will improve it, as well as get DirectX support working soon (AFAIK this should speed up Vista dramatically in a VM, maybe even enough to enable Aero Glass support... I'm not a DirectX expert though so I'm not 100% sure).
Oh yeah, here's a benchmark [mzzt.net] I ran for the OpenGL support. Not bad at all... it would probably be closer if I had a faster proc (and/or more then one core) and hardware virtualization support.