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Oracle VM VirtualBox

Oracle VM VirtualBox

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…

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Recent Reviews

Fantastic and Free

10 out of 10
May 10, 2023
Incentivized
We used Oracle VM VirtualBox as a quick and simple way to virtualize and consolidate multiple compute servers onto a single server. It is …
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Virtualization at its Best

9 out of 10
July 23, 2020
Oracle VM VirtualBox is being heavily used to recreate network designs on servers for both troubleshooting purposes as well as deployment …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 5 features
  • Live virtual machine backup (37)
    8.2
    82%
  • Virtual machine automated provisioning (36)
    7.8
    78%
  • Management console (44)
    7.2
    72%
  • Live virtual machine migration (32)
    6.9
    69%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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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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Product Demos

Building a Demo Environment using Oracle VM VirtualBox Part 2

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Export Any OS From Oracle VM VirtualBox

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Oracle VirtualBox | Basic functionalities and live demo

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Building a Demo Environment using Oracle VM VirtualBox

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Demo - Building reliable Oracle Database 18c DevOps

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VirtualBox Demo 1 - Work with Critical Applications Securely (For end users)

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Features

Server Virtualization

Server virtualization allows multiple operating systems to be run completely independently on a single server

7.3
Avg 8.3
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Product Details

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 Sun Microsystems in early 2010. The software was originally developed by Innotek GmbH.

Oracle VM VirtualBox Videos

VirtualBox Demo
To help you decide if VirtualBox is right for you, we've synthesized reviews from TrustRadius to see what the strengths, limitations, and best use cases of VirtualBox are.

Oracle VM VirtualBox Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

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 Sun Microsystems in early 2010. The software was originally developed by Innotek GmbH.

Hyper-V, Parallels Desktop, and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) are common alternatives for Oracle VM VirtualBox.

Reviewers rate Live virtual machine backup highest, with a score of 8.2.

The most common users of Oracle VM VirtualBox are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(152)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-12 of 12)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Gabriel Krahn | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used Oracle's solution to simulate environments and test future changes, updates, and patches on our software. We also used it for training sessions in order not to disturb production environments, while still simulating the real world with exact OS and SW versions.

VirtualBox made our testing way cheaper, easy, and less punitive because if anything went wrong we could simply revert to a past snapshot and document the results.
  • 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's VirtualBox is a good tool if you don't want to invest in a whole testing infrastructure (server racks and so on) for a small to medium environment where you don't need to have everything up and running every time you need to test the smallest things. The fact that you can easily switch between VMs (one at a time or even with more than one on online state) is a big plus.
Kenneth Hess | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
VirtualBox is well suited for test and development. It is handy because you can build VMs in a variety of formats and port them to other systems running VirtualBox and use them with other virtualization technologies. It is not suited for production business use but only as a workstation test solution.
October 03, 2019

VirtualBox is a gift!

Christopher Boyd | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
  • 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.
For anyone who needs to be able to quickly spin up VMs with little fanfare, VirtualBox is great. For people new to VMs, or wanting to try out a new OS, VirtualBox tries to adopt the most sensical default options when starting a VM. Unlike past versions where I'd have issues, as of writing the current version is excellent at getting my video card, audio, and internet setup so that it simply works with the VM and the OS I'm setting up.
Claudio Fernando Maciel | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
Oracle is advisable for both creating a constellation of different OS's inside the same machine, thus separating the varied configurations that may be necessary for each virtual machine. One can in this way avoid all the hassle of having way too many versions of systems, such as a Java Version Machine, for instance, of for solving any other conflicting dependencies that may arise when there are just too many versions and types of systems being used in the company.

If one is looking for something that may be easily copied, Oracle VM VirtualBox may not be the best choice. Docker is better for this (in case Windows is not the base OS), for it gives a scripted way of configuring one's virtual machine, and then pulling it from an online repository.
Justin Bongard | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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's suited for basic VM hosting. If you are needing a hypervisor, load balancer for running VMs, to replicate them across servers, etc, you'll definitely want to go for vmWare instead.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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
Overall it is a great tool, especially for users who want to spin up sandboxes locally, at a quick pace. This allowed for our team to reduce the need for cloud infrastructure, and have more control and customization over what we spun up. VMs were created, saved, copied, and destroy as we saw fit.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
Oracle VirtualBox is best suited if you work on multiple machines/ OS's at one time or even during different parts of the day. This will help you work from your single base machine and help you to achieve all the tasks very easily and efficiently. It is even helpful for students who want to learn new things and try new Operating Systems without actually migrating to one.
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.
September 18, 2019

Good product

Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
It is suitable for working on all applications.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We currently use VirtualBox to deploy our testing VMs. As our primary developer on our installer, we support over 5 operating systems. Each of those OSs can have different flavors and versions we support as well. We use VirtualBox to locally store multiple VMs that will be booted up to be tested on.
  • 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.
Virtual Box (VB) is perfect for someone who just needs to spin up a VM, do some testing, and then shut it off. I wouldn't recommend VB for a VM that would need to be stable over a long period of time.
Derek Ardolf | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I've worked in multiple environments where I, and co-workers, used Oracle VirtualBox for local sandbox environments. I have used it to test out PowerShell scripts against mock Active Directory environments that I have spun up, allowing me to test code for demonstrations. When I have presented at user groups or a conference, I was able to have an environment the way I wanted it and could properly show code executing against Windows systems. I have been able to also test out Vagrant, Test-Kitchen, Chef, and Desired State Configuration (DSC) with Oracle VirtualBox as the virtual environment targeted with those tools.
  • 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.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Used by a wide range of employees both individually and within teams to create and manage test networks for new software. Allows the end user to implement and explore new software, to test suitability for business needs, and even the compatibility of said software into the system already in place.
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.
Well suited for small network building - dependent on host RAM and how much RAM you allocate per machine, you can only run a finite number of machines simultaneously. I use a 16gb host with 6 machines, each with 2gb RAM, but a seventh is a struggle. This is a drawback.

Allows a 'safe' environment for experimentation with new OS or software.

Practice exercises for systems assurance employees.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I've been using Oracle VM VirtualBox during the last 3 years as a hypervisor for many virtual machines I use to develop and test software. Oracle VM VirtualBox provides a very easy interface with a clear step by step process to set up, run and export/import VMs. Oracle VM VirtualBox allows me to use a Windows OS inside my MacBook Pro without the need to purchase a separate Windows installed laptop. I've also used Oracle VM VirtualBox to run many Linux based virtual machines without any issues. On Oracle VM VirtualBox, I can save all my VM images and export it for future use, or to share it with my colleagues. It's free and very reliable.
  • 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.
Oracle VM VirtualBox is a very good choice for small to mid-sized teams seeking working with VMs without paying a lot of money and with the minimum amout of support. Oracle VM VirtualBox is well-documented and you can start from the website explaining most of the instructions you would need on average, and they're responsive when it comes to questions and providing answers to unique situations.
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