Sun xVM VirtualBox 1.6 - A Worthwhile Upgrade
Yesterday, I upgraded my desktop virtualization software, xVM VirtualBox, to the new version - 1.6 - on my Vista laptop. This is the first release of VirtualBox since being acquired by Sun Microsystems. I can report that the upgrade went smoothly - my old Guest OS virtual machines migrated without any problems; and the all-new OpenSolaris OS installed like a dream.
It’s a worthwhile upgrade, if for no other reason than the availability of guest additions for Solaris; and new guest additions for Linux. These enable the new seamless mode, where the windows and menus from host and guest OSes can exist side-by-side on the host OS desktop.
As of this version, VirtualBox now runs on Windows, Mac and Linux; and supports numerous guest OSes, including Solaris. I highly recommend it in terms of performance and stability (it’s not yet, perhaps, quite as feature-rich as some competing products). However, assuming the feature set meets your needs, it’s a no-brainer to use, given that it’s free and open source.
So, if you’re using an older version of the software, for sure this is a worthwhile upgrade. If you’ve never tried VirtualBox before, I’d say it’s probably now at the point where it’s worth giving it a go.
Tim Dilks wrote:
Sounds good - I might give it a try. One feature that I seriously value in my current virtualization software (VMWare Fusion) is the speed of the snapshot facility. I use it to test migration scripts - I can take a copy of the live database (this is simply an exp/imp in Oracle), take a snapshot in VMWare and then try out the migration script. If the script fails I can simply rollback to the snapshot and try again. In Fusion this is *very* quick - just a few seconds to take the snap and a few seconds to roll back - all on a live Oracle XE instance running under Linux. This blew me away when I first tried it… how does the VirtualBox snapshotting compare?
Posted 22 May 2008 at 4:55 pm ¶
simon wrote:
Tim,
I just did some quick timing tests on my laptop with Vista as the host OS with 2GB RAM, and a couple of different guest OSes: OpenSolaris with large(ish) 20GB virtual hard drive and 1GB RAM; and Ubuntu Linux with a small 8GB virtual hard drive and 750MB RAM. NB All timings are approximate.
1. Time to take a snapshot state of live, running VMs:
o OpenSolaris VM - 15 seconds
o Ubuntu Linux VM - 7 seconds
2. Time to roll-back to last snapshot from running VMs
o OpenSolaris VM - 12 seconds
–> comprising three steps - discard the current VM - 0 seconds; revert to snapshot - 8 seconds; start snapshotted VM - 4 seconds
o Ubuntu Linux VM - 7 seconds
–> comprising three steps -discard the current VM - 0 seconds; revert to snapshot - 4 seconds; start snapshotted VM - 3 seconds
So, your mileage may well vary according to your precise set-up: hardware (e.g. speed of hard drive, CPU speed); host OS (note that Mac support is very new in VirtualBox); and guest OS set-up (e.g. size of VM virtual hard drive).
What I can tell you is, the process of taking a snapshot is CPU-bound on my laptop…
Posted 22 May 2008 at 6:40 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
Have been trying out VirtualBox 1.6 on Leopard, OpenSolaris installs and works as it should, guest additions works once you install manually, and then give you seemless mode, auto-screen resolution selection, mouse focusing all work as expected. Saving a snapshot is fairly fast, but for some reason I can’t capture the live OpenSolaris VM, I have to either pause or save machine state first. I’m not sure if this is limited to OpenSolaris - trying Ubuntu 8.0.4, though have read that guest additions are not yet ready?
One comment about the snapshot feature, it is very much dependent on how much RAM you’ve given the VM, as snapshot takes a copy of RAM buffer as it is.
Also trying out the new VMWare 2 public beta for Mac OS X - lots of improvements here of an already out-standing product, though right now I have some problems installing the VMWare tools, after installing VM keeps hanging with a black screen after initial OpenSolaris boot selector, might be a halt bug, currently trying again.
One annoying thing with VirtualBox is that it won’t recognise or even attempt to import a VM from either Parallels or Fusion. The latter two can now import each others VMs without much problems, and would have assumed that VirtualBox should have been able to cope with VMWare images, but that’s not the case.
Although Parallels is a really great app with an excellent GUI, it’s mainly consumer focus means that it’s optimised for Windows, so although it can capture live OpenSolaris snapshots, which VirtualBox 1.6 can’t at the moment, there are no guest additions for OpenSolaris as guest OS. So no coherence mode (equivalent to VirtualBox seemless mode), auto-selection and live resizing of screen resolution, no mouse focusing. It is however useable.
Posted 23 May 2008 at 12:36 am ¶
simon wrote:
Asam, re: VMware compatibility. I found this in the VirtualBox support database… I’m not sure which “next version” they were talking about - might have been 1.6, but don’t know…
Partial support for VMWare VMs has been implemented for the next version (in particular, any VMWare VMs produced with Qemu’s qemu-img tool are supported). Full support is being actively worked on. Parallels VM support is not planned, but I believe that current versions of the qemu-img tool can convert them to VMWare VMs which will work with VirtualBox.
Posted 23 May 2008 at 8:48 am ¶
goonie wrote:
Hi,
Wondering if anyone put online benchmarks of Xp running on Virtualbox in Linux (Ubuntu for instance systems)
Vs running native on C2D systems???
Thanks
Posted 17 Jun 2008 at 8:22 am ¶
simon wrote:
Goonie, I haven’t seen the kind of benchmarks you’re asking for (but I haven’t looked for them).
One thing to be aware of is that any individual VirtualBox VM will utilize only a single core (although things like disk I/O and networking are multithreaded).
Posted 17 Jun 2008 at 8:56 am ¶
Andy Morris wrote:
I just installed Sun xVM (virtualbox 1.6.2) on Ubuntu 8.04 x86_64 (aka hardy Heron).
Damn, it was straight forward, works brilliantly and has a lovely GUI.
Goonie, you asked for benchmarks. Well thi sis my notebook (Lenovo R61 2.Ghz dual core with 2GB RAM). The Windows XP guest run’s almost like a native one. I can watch a youtube video on it, use an application like MSpaint without any mouse or drawing lag.
Doubtless there is some losses if you benchmark it hard enough. But the performance of this Win XP VM is faster than the raw performance of Vista directly on the hardware, and it’s more than acceptable.
Posted 29 Jun 2008 at 3:44 pm ¶
Suman wrote:
Hi Simon,
I have installed xVM 1.6.4 on Vista. I have installed Solaris 10 5/08. I am not able to connect to network in Solaris. Need help in configuring the same….
Thanks,
Suman
Posted 21 Aug 2008 at 12:43 pm ¶
simon wrote:
Suman,
Go here for help:
http://forums.virtualbox.org/
Posted 21 Aug 2008 at 1:21 pm ¶