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January 02, 2021
We use Oracle VM VirtualBox to run several virtual machines built with different operating systems. For example, we have legacy software that requires Windows XP to run. For this we have a Windows XP virtual machine that we run through Oracle VM VirtualBox.
- Interface to system ports (USB, ethernet, com)
- Ability to change storage dynamically
- Ability to set up a saved storage space to share files between virtual machine and host system
- Adding legacy ports such as LPT require a script that is run via a command prompt. It would be easier to have this enabled through main window interface.
It might be used across the organization, but the only use I'm familiar with is in my department. We use VirtualBox so that students can work on platforms other than the ones that their computers natively support.
- Easy to use virtualization.
- Nice tool for teaching.
- Easy updates.
- Wide range of client operating systems.
- Occasional slow performance (but not very often).
- There's always room for a more friendly user experience.
Yes - I'm a co-leader of the New York JavaSIG and the New Jersey ACGNJ Java User Group. Meeting with others to learn about technologies is essential. There's no better way to keep up with changes and new developments.
Oracle VM VirtualBox is being heavily used to recreate network designs on servers for both troubleshooting purposes as well as deployment scenarios. VMs are generally created to host applications or programs that act as the building blocks for network, which are then imported into GNS3 for laying out the foundation of the network topology. Using such a solution allows the company to save on resources and makes better use of the available resources on the Server stack.
- Optimal utilization of system resources, which in turn does not slow down your computer considerably.
- Immensely popular among developers and students since it is free.
- A well laid out user interface displaying all the VMs and giving details on each of them when selected.
- For first timers it can be challenging.
- Lacks in documentation because of it being open-source.
- Redundant configuration for new VMs could be reduced by providing a universal configuration tool.
February 26, 2020
It is being used more at the department level than across the whole organization. It is really up to individual departments to decide if they want to use VirtualBox for managing VM's. It addresses the business problem of having a VM management all-in-one-solution that can manage most platforms in use today (e.g. Windows, MacOS, Linux, etc.) Some solutions don't offer support for most all platforms, or some are more problematic when it comes to managing the wide array of platforms out there.
- One thing it does really well is the actual interface (home screen) of the management console. It is well laid out as far as showing you the VM's you have installed and giving information on each of those VM's (such as General information, System Information, etc.).
- Another good feature of VirtualBox is it generally doesn't use a whole lot of system resources for the most part, and generally won't slow down a computer too much while it is in use.
- One thing that could be worked on is improving how the program affects system resources when running multiple VM's at the same time. For the most part, running just 1 VM doesn't tax system resources too much, but if you run multiple VM's, you may experience system slowdowns or other performance issues.
- Another improvement can be made in how VirtualBox detects the host system to determine whether the host is 32-bit or 64-bit. My experience was that the application came back saying my system didn't have a 64-bit processor, but in fact it did, and it was running the 64-bit OS.
January 20, 2020
My department mostly uses Oracle VM VirtualBox for running virtual machines from the command line with Vagrant, and VirtualBox is free to use and available on several different platforms. We use virtual machines for all of our development because this enables us to more closely match the servers used in our production environment.
- Works well with Vagrant.
- Runs other operating systems as a virtual machine, like Windows or Linux.
- Not the best user interface.
- Not the best at running Windows in a VM.
October 04, 2019
A lot of people across the organization use it for various reasons but mostly for testing and development. It's a quick and cost-free way to test scripts, programs, and new techniques without fear of damaging other systems. Virtual machines can be created or destroyed at will and no one is impacted except the virtual machine owner. It's a great way to test and work locally on something even before taking the test scenario or code to a multi-user system.
- It runs a variety of operating systems and versions of operating systems.
- It has no fees, subscriptions, or other costs associated with it.
- One can quickly build, pause, or remove a virtual machine within minutes for testing.
- It allows you to access the Internet and other network equipment without fear of direct attacks by using NAT.
- I'd prefer an easier, background upgrade process without the nag dialog window.
- I'd like to be able to set global settings so that I don't have to configure them each time I install a new VM.
Not yet, but I'm interested in Oracle user groups - I'm interested in MySQL user groups. I'd like to know what others are using MySQL for and which tools they're using with it. Additionally, it would be nice to have others to bounce ideas off of, rather than just Googling to see if anyone else has done what I'm trying to do.
I use VirtualBox to spin up Linux VMs in my day job and recommend it to my students for building VMs on their various systems.
VirtualBox is what first allowed me to learn about VMs, and eventually Linux, without having to worry about having dedicated hardware or about quickly putting up and tearing down a whole computer's OS. I use VirtualBox today for build pipelines (software and game dev on Linux) as well as a testbed for software I'm getting ready to deploy on my company's servers, such as automation scripts or cron jobs. It also is great for working on local web dev tasks without having to be connecting to the internet and a real server.
VirtualBox is what first allowed me to learn about VMs, and eventually Linux, without having to worry about having dedicated hardware or about quickly putting up and tearing down a whole computer's OS. I use VirtualBox today for build pipelines (software and game dev on Linux) as well as a testbed for software I'm getting ready to deploy on my company's servers, such as automation scripts or cron jobs. It also is great for working on local web dev tasks without having to be connecting to the internet and a real server.
- Very simple and easy to understand. I'm able to pass this application on to my students and colleagues and they have no trouble getting their bearings and setting up VMs.
- Quick to launch VMs and the UI (both the app and the overlay when working in a VM) are simple and make it easy to get things done while also staying out of my way.
- It feels like a product that should cost a lot. It works well and is maintained. I've never had any problems with it.
- The downside to the simple design is that some people are turned off by this and assume it's not a good application.
October 03, 2019
We use Oracle VM VirtualBox as the base for virtualizing all Docker as well as Vagrant machines in the computers which are Windows-based. There are several computers, both dev, and test servers which take advantage of virtualization services in our company, thus Oracle VM Virtual Box comes to our aid in a very satisfactory way.
- Easy zero to hero configuration.
- Excellent backup (snapshot) functionality, which one can take advantage of at a few clicks in order to restore an old snapshot.
- Scripting functionalities, which we use in our dev and testing servers to bring different machines up, during services bootstrapping.
- Memory and processing segmentation. Differently from technologies such as Docker (in Linux), one must segment the overall RAM and Processor usage in order to spare it to the virtual machine being created.
- Faulty recovery when virtual machines improperly shutdown. As one needs to bring the faulted machine up again, there is a sequence of clean up that must take place before the given virtual machine can be brought back to life.
October 01, 2019
We use Oracle VM VirtualBox quite extensively at our company to virtualize software. The main use case that we have is for our software engineers. Our engineering team has a single approved developer virtual machine that all of us use. It makes developer support and the replication of problems much easier knowing we are all on identical environments. Also for new hires it makes getting their environments set up a quick and easy process. Other departments use it to run Windows or Linux applications on their Macs.
- Software virtualization.
- Environment replication.
- Environment portability.
- Multiple operating systems on one machine.
- Environment snapshots for easy recovery after or to revert changes.
- Detailed environment configuration with suggestions based on your host system's resources.
- It's free.
- VM errors typically crash the VM.
- If the host machine runs out of disk space the VM will become unreadable even after freeing space. Fortunately VirtualBox keeps a previous copy, but you have to manually restore it.
- Somewhat buggy, so you learn how to work around the bugs.
- Some host hardware is not supported.
We use the software in our NOC, as a laboratory, to conduct tests and train staff in new network technologies. This helps us to predict future problems and improve our infrastructure.
- Compatibility with various operating systems. I can create VMs with different systems.
- In our case, we work a lot of equipment operating systems like routers and switches, without any problem.
- The merge, we set up scenarios with different systems and we get connectivity, all talking to simulate different situations.
- The robustness of the system allows us to work with great scenarios.
- It is not about where to improve in the solution, it is robust and if the user does not have reasonable hardware, you will not be able to work much on it. So it's more about the user side, the VMs weight.
October 03, 2019
If we need a Linux environment, we create it in VirtualBox. We'll use the environment for running tools like penetration testing or checking items for malicious code.
- VM used by one person at a time on that user's PC
- running a VM server on a server
- Running Windows or Linux
- Using with BOINC so they can run virtual environments on your PC
- Last I used it, there wasn't a great wizard to convert a machine like VMware's Conversion wizard
- No way to move a running VM to another drive
- Not a great snapshot management system.
It is used for educational and evaluation processes. It can also be used for personal processes. It is being used in several departments.
- Can be run on Windows and Linux.
- Ease of use.
- Cloud-based.
- Development environment.
December 09, 2019
Virtual box is used by several teams across the organization. In my case, as I'm a cybersecurity specialist, I use it on a daily basis to create temporary VMs to test exploits and payloads. Some other teams also use temporary VMs for malware analysis.
- Easy to use
- Easy to customize the VMs
- Low resource consumption
- Better support for GPU intensive VMs
Virtual box helped me in the evaluation of guest operating systems such as Kali Linux and Backbox Linux before I chose to stay with Kali Linux. I had to choose these between this software for penetration testing of a certain product that we were rolling out into the market.
- I did not have to install the operating systems to evaluate them
- I could run two or more instances of these operating systems concurrently
- Oracle made it simple to start and stop the virtual machines and also save the state so as to continue where I left off
- Oracle should find a way to put sound on these operating systems without having to download guest OS add-ons
- When putting a flash, Oracle should pick that the flash has been inserted to the new OS and not have to go back and add it to the filters
Not yet, but I'm interested in Oracle user groups
October 22, 2019
We used Oracle VM VirtualBox to support users across our whole organization. It was helpful to troubleshoot issues and assist users with technical issues and resolving any other problems before pushing it to development.
- Cross-platform functionality
- Utilize multiple VMs on a host-only network
- Very user-friendly
- When setting up an environment with different OSs for testing cross-OSs testing, this software was utilized.
- When multiple guests were utilizing it, it was easy to set up.
- everyone can run the same build scripts when an environment changes.
October 18, 2019
Oracle VM VirtualBox has been chosen as a default virtualization solution in our organization. Depending on the department that is using it the business use cases are very different. However, our customer support center is where the VirtualBox is most often used, mainly for running images received from different users to confirm the issues reported on production environments.
- Running OS images from multiple environments on a single system.
- Broad storage support with advanced storage emulation features.
- Ability to seamlessly run virtualized applications together with normal OS native applications.
- Shared clipboard could be working better for live CD images.
- Snapshots do not allow us to adjust network adapter settings.
October 11, 2019
Our testing and core engineering teams are collaboratively using Oracle VM VirtualBox to test the performance and quality of our various standalone applications on different operating systems. When creating applications that run on a consumer's system locally, there is a great deal of uncertainty on whether the given application will work under all types of environments such as type of OS, OS architecture, amount of hardware resources, etc. We are using Oracle VM VirtualBox to eliminate these uncertainties.
- Shared Clipboard between host and virtualized OS. Not only can you copy/paste text, but you can also drag-and-drop files between OS.
- Great Support for USB Devices. Unlike many other alternatives out there, none of them rival VirtualBox in the amount of supported USB Devices.
- Unlimited Number of Snapshots. From my own experience, VirtualBox is the only virtualization solution that supports an unlimited number of saved snapshots.
- High CPU and Memory Utilization. Even when running on more than capable hardware, Oracle VM VirtualBox uses and excessive amount of resources, slowing the host OS down.
- Poor 3D Graphics Support. The amount of settings and features related to enhancing graphics in general is fairly limited for VirtualBox.
- PCIe Passthrough functionality is quite buggy. Many other alternatives have fully implemented this, but VirtualBox has yet to do so.
We currently use VirtualBox for both production and non-production environments. In production, it supports an application that is rarely used. In non-production, we use to extensively test applications and new software. Historically, I have found VirtualBox invaluable for any testing I can think of for I.T. matters. It has provided a safe environment that was affordable for extensive testing.
- Cost
- Ease of use
- Ease of deployment
- Innovation
- Enterprise use in production environments
- Support
- Training
October 03, 2019
Virtualbox is being used by our company for infrastructure on demand. We also use it for testing and spinning up sandboxes. Vbox is really helpful because it gives us so much control over what we are trying to spin up and how we would like to spin it up. It is being used by many developers within our company as a default standard for virtualization.
- It is very easy for users to and navigate through the interface. The learning curve is not too high.
- VM Vbox also integrates very well with our DevOps tools such as Jenkins and Chef.
- Vbox also comes with great enterprise support from a very well dedicated company.
- The API documentation would be more detailed
- An increase in the speed it takes for a VM to spin up would help our pipeless hang less
- Having support for older versions of windows and AIX would be great
Yes - We are part of the Oracle user group. There is a lot of value we get when it comes to discussing with many other users and understand how they solution their products. This is a great opportunity for us to collaborate and gain feedback in amongst other professionals. We plan to join other user groups within the Bay area tech scene once things start moving forward.
October 02, 2019
We are testing an AI product in the company, and VirtualBox VM helps us in testing several OS, environments, and applications.
- Very easy to install.
- Numerous options available for customization.
- Open-source.
- Variety of disk images format available, allowing the user to run multiple OS simultaneously.
- Updated often.
- Great community support.
- Documentation could be made better.
- It could be a little confusing to use for the first time, as the interface is not the best.
- It could be slow at times.
September 19, 2019
VirtualBox is a very light-weight software which is available as a hypervisor. This software can be installed on any OS (Windows, Mac or any flavour of Linux) and be leveraged for virtualization. Within our organisation, VirtualBox is used by couple of departments. The departments which handle the internal and external development or testing of the applications highly rely on this piece of software. As per business problems, it is always better to have 10 machines in a single base machine rather than 10 different physical machines. So with VirtualBox these types of problems are solved and multiple systems/ servers are deployed in the base machine which help us to do multiple tasks and once and keep a number of servers live at a single point in time.
- Total size of the software: is one of the best part of this hypervisor. I have used tons in my career and this is the lightest among all of them so far. This is a great plus point because:
- It keeps you hard disk happy because whatever space the virtual instance will take is the only space being occupied since the space captured by the software is negligible.
- The performance of the CPU as well as the virtualisation engine boosts up to a very huge level.
- Supports up to 32 virtual machines: This software can hold the power of 32 virtual machines which might take up physical space of the entire small sized office. This can hold an entire company in one installation of VirtualBox.
- Support for all the OS: It can be installed either in Mac or Linux and of course the widely used Windows and all of them can be linked in a local network seamlessly. So there are no such boundaries regarding the Operating Systems.
- VirtualBox still have some features which I am still not able to understand even after having used the software from so long time. I have never found proper videos which provide full fledged training materials on this software. This is a big lag as there might be some option available that can help in our day to day life, but we are still not aware about that option.
- The design can be revamped and transformed to a fancy one. There are no animations and even the Mac version of the software contains comes pixels at times. This can decrease the overall liking of the people which can become a serious issue in the near future.
September 17, 2019
I used VirtualBox to test various operating system configurations, and occasionally to enable users to use Windows applications on Mac computers. I've used various virtualization suites such as Parallels VM but VirtualBox is easy to deploy and gets the job done without having to worry about costly upgrade fees. I especially have had better luck networking virtual machines than with other virtualization solutions.
- Networking
- Cross-platform compatibility
- Testing
- Speed of installation
- I've found it could use better and more detailed settings for optimizing the screen output for various displays.
July 03, 2019
- Virtualbox is a complete virtualization solution, works great on servers or home needs.
- The main advantage is the cost: zero. It offers all the virtualization technologies available in the market, compatibility with operating systems, through additional guests.
- Virtualization performance is easily compared to your paid competitors.
- The user interface is very easy to use, very intuitive.
- If you do not have much technical knowledge, just a few clicks and that's it, you have any operating system, according to your needs.
- Easy to find, easy to install and very easy to use.
- Intuitive interface. The creation of virtual machines is fast, and access to them is uncomplicated.
- All available virtualization technology. Compatibility with Intel and processors, and their technologies. Compatibility with all hardware.
- I did not find any difficulty in using Virtualbox, I can not define "cons".
- I can suggest creating a cloud, where the user can export their technical settings with other users, or even multiple computers.
VirtualBox is used in multiple different ways including test virtual machines, jumpboxes, and production machines.
- Simple and easy to use, setup took only a few minutes and was not too complicated.
- Free! I had tried other products that were not free, and they were not as good as this one.
- The ability to quickly spin up, or down, a dev and test environment, quickly and easily is very nice.
- Support. I've had a few issues, and would love a response from support or help with it, but none found.
- Stability. Sometimes restoring VMs fails.
December 21, 2018
I use Oracle VM VirtualBox to build isolated virtual workstations and for building development and test environments. Isolated virtual workstations allow me to access customer environments without the need to reconfigure my primary workstation to match the specific remote access requirements of each system. This dramatically speeds up access and prevents unintentional damage to my own system and access to my primary environment. I can also quickly spin up entire virtual environments to test specific design scenarios.
- It is simple to install - there is no advanced knowledge required to begin building virtual computers
- It is easy to use - adding new virtual machines is simple with wizard-based deployment
- It enables easy portability - moving virtual machines from one host to another is straight-forward and simple
- It is free
- You get what you pay for - yes, VirtualBox is free, but I've had occasional stability issues, just like any other computer I use
- Many host resources (like networking) are blindly simple to use, some (like folder sharing) can be a bit shaky at times or challenging to get working correctly
Oracle VM VirtualBox Scorecard Summary
Feature Scorecard Summary
What is Oracle VM VirtualBox?
Oracle VM VirtualBox is Oracle's cross-platform virtualization offering, acquired with Sun Microsystems in early 2010. The software was originally developed by Innotek GmbH.
For more information visit http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/virtualization/virtualbox/overview/index.html
For more information visit http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/virtualization/virtualbox/overview/index.html
Categories: Server Virtualization
Oracle VM VirtualBox Video
VirtualBox Demo
Oracle VM VirtualBox Competitors
Hyper-V, Parallels Desktop, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Oracle VM VirtualBox Technical Details
| Operating Systems: | Unspecified |
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| Mobile Application: | No |