Overview
What is Oracle VM VirtualBox?
Open source, cross-platform, virtualization software that enables developers to deliver code faster by running multiple operating systems on a single device, used to deploy applications on-premises and to the cloud. Oracle VM VIrtualBox is Oracle's cross-platform virtualization offering, acquired with…
Oracle VM VirtualBox Review
VirtualBox the best for virtualization!
Oracle at it again with good and powerful products
VirtualBox by Oracle is the HyperVisor that can for small and large needs
Multiples Operating Systems
Flexibility and productivity made simple
Oracle VM VirtualBox Review
Pets, not cattle: VirtualBox still wins for quick and easy multi-platform work
Oracle VM VirtualBox is a great entry to virtualization
VirtualBox is great for testing
Extends life of software requiring legacy operating systems
Virtualization at its Best
VirtualBox Goes to School
A no-cost and really good virtualization software platform.
Awards
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Popular Features
- Live virtual machine backup (37)8.282%
- Virtual machine automated provisioning (36)7.878%
- Management console (44)7.272%
- Live virtual machine migration (32)6.969%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
Pricing
What is Oracle VM VirtualBox?
Open source, cross-platform, virtualization software that enables developers to deliver code faster by running multiple operating systems on a single device, used to deploy applications on-premises and to the cloud. Oracle VM VIrtualBox is Oracle's cross-platform virtualization offering, acquired…
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions is designed to make cloud adoption easier, allowing the user to optimize the value of existing on-premises infrastructure, while leveraging the same tools, technologies and skills in the cloud. Gain rapid scalability, deployment in 35+ global data centers and access…
Product Demos
Building a Demo Environment using Oracle VM VirtualBox Part 2
Export Any OS From Oracle VM VirtualBox
Oracle VirtualBox | Basic functionalities and live demo
Building a Demo Environment using Oracle VM VirtualBox
Demo - Building reliable Oracle Database 18c DevOps
VirtualBox Demo 1 - Work with Critical Applications Securely (For end users)
Features
Server Virtualization
Server virtualization allows multiple operating systems to be run completely independently on a single server
- 7.8Virtual machine automated provisioning(36) Ratings
Automation of virtual machine provisioning through use of vm templates
- 7.2Management console(44) Ratings
Management console for central administration of vm environment
- 8.2Live virtual machine backup(37) Ratings
Ability to backup vms without interrupting service
- 6.9Live virtual machine migration(32) Ratings
Downtime minimization by migrating live vms between hosts and across clusters
- 6.6Hypervisor-level security(28) Ratings
Hypervisor-level security including antivirus and anti-malware
Product Details
- About
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Oracle VM VirtualBox?
Oracle VM VirtualBox Videos
Oracle VM VirtualBox Competitors
Oracle VM VirtualBox Technical Details
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Frequently Asked Questions
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Reviews and Ratings
(152)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-12 of 12)Oracle at it again with good and powerful products
- Virtualization
- Testing of environments with any harm to production
- Compatibility with older OS
- User interface feels like I'm really using some 00's software
- VM configurations are clumsy and hard to follow if you don't have much experience
Oracle VM VirtualBox gives you the best of all virtual worlds
- 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.
VirtualBox is a gift!
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.
A very good choice for virtualization
- 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.
Great for free, but if you need anything enterprise, use vmWare
- 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.
My Oracle VM VirtualBox Review
- 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
- 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.
If you do not use multiple machines or maybe just using Windows the whole day for your job functions, then this software might not be useful for you.
Good product
- Can be run on Windows and Linux.
- Ease of use.
- Cloud-based.
- Development environment.
A review of Oracle VirtualBox by a simple software engineer
- It is open source, easy to install, and generally a very easy application to get started with.
- All the core functionality of what you expect from a VM manager is there. Save state, rollback, and partitions. All this is done without overly complicated menus or instructions.
- Very popular and well used. This is very nice when looking for help or documentation.
- Overall compared to the more expensive VM software, it can be a bit sluggish at times.
- Full-screen mode can be cumbersome. I have often had an issue with VirtualBox rendering my VMs correctly in full-screen mode.
VirtualBox is The Top Cross-Platform, Local Virtual Lab
- Can spin up multiple VMs on a host-only network that speak to each other and allow for interesting test environments spun up at will.
- Cross-platform functionality allows me to run it on my Linux Desktop and know that tutorials I make with it could be approached by someone on a Windows or Mac OSX system. Hyper-V is limited to Windows, and VMware Workstation requires a license (VMware Player is free, but is not open-source and is more limited in comparison to VirtualBox).
- If you are testing tools like Vagrant and Test-Kitchen, VirtualBox often seems to have the highest amount of support and documentation when it comes to compatibility (though, many people do use Hyper-V or VMware Workstation without issues).
- I have had issues in the past when it has come to resizing VM disk storage. The issue is entirely detailed here: https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/9103 -- the problem was caused because of having existing snapshots (which error message output was not detailing). I haven't had to deal with the issue due to my dynamic disk sizes not being small from the start anymore (this is mostly an issue for my Windows VMs where the base disk may need significant size for the OS). It looks like, for a resize, that a merge of all snapshots has to occur first -- one user on that list details a workaround to maintain snapshots by cloning the VM. (Note: 5.2 was just released a few weeks ago, and looks like it should prevent the problem happening in the future by properly informing users that it isn't possible with snapshots).
- Certain scenarios, like resizing disks, required dropping into a terminal as there were no options to previously do so via the GUI. According to some recent posts, I've seen that v5.2 has added disk management stuff like that to the GUI (or will be adding it). I'm comfortable with dropping into the terminal, but in a teaching scenario or when evaluating the learnability of the tools, it complicates things.
- When playing around with automation and configuration management tools like Vagrant and Test-Kitchen, my experience with VirtualBox has been great.
- For testing out newer/different versions of operating systems locally, VirtualBox has become my virtualization tool of choice. I don't just use it for evaluation, either, as I run a licensed version of Windows 10 in VirtualBox for the times I'm testing something out in the Windows realm (my primary desktop OS is Ubuntu).
- For learning a local virtualization solution that is cross-platform, allowing one to be comfortable in virtualizing locally across whichever OS happens to be in use.
- In my experience, many open-source and automation toolsets related to DevOps-minded workflows are made, demoed with, and have tutorials for execution with VirtualBox.
- Working lean? Oracle VM VirtualBox is open-source and free to use.
- If evaluating VirtualBox in a business that is dependent on the VirtualBox Extension Pack, one would need to evaluate whether they are in need of an Enterprise license. I've never been in that situation. For more details on that: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Licensing_FAQ and https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/VirtualBox_PUEL
- I would not consider this a hypervisor for use in production, but only for local host/lab usage.
VirtualBox is 'virtually' the best free VM engine out there!
Additionally, we can create internal networks or similar environments which are not on the business network and then use them for training exercises and the like with no risk to the wider network.
And, of course IT'S FREE.
- Manages multiple VM's simultaneously. As a software used to create environments with several machines, this is a great strength.
- Allows a bridged network to be built with extreme ease.
- Central dashboard is concise and informative, without being cluttered.
- Seriously easy to pick up as a first time user. Never counter-intuitive.
- Can be run across a range of OS - not restricted to Windows !
- Full screen mode - it is not always the easiest job getting out of a machine when in full screen mode.
- Network settings - all new VM's use NAT by default, which whilst ok for most may be an annoyance if you want a Bridged network in place - you have to power down the machine to change the network settings each time.
- Lacks in system integration features that paid-for competitors do have, such as printing direct to host's printer. Minor annoyance for network building purposes however.
Allows a 'safe' environment for experimentation with new OS or software.
Practice exercises for systems assurance employees.
Oracle VM VirtualBox should be your first choice
- Hypervisor to run any versions of Windows and Linux without any issues.
- Ability to import and export VM images to reuse or share them.
- Very easy set of commands to control functionality as well as a simple UI if you are not a terminal guy.
- I use it with vagrant to set up a provisioning process on-the-go.
- Free of any fees or subscriptions and very cost effective to manage and handle.
- Good documentation and a lot of support and updates.
- The memory footprint is high, and requires above 8 GB of memory to run an Ubuntu VM smoothly (considering developing inside ubuntu OS inside a MacBook Pro).
- Some known issues with OVF/OVA images import/export. We had the issue of some sections in OVF being ignored (especially Startup and Install sections).
- Some intermittent issues when mounting external hard drives and trying to access them from within the running VM.