Oracle VirtualBox from a SysAdmin perspective
Updated November 18, 2016

Oracle VirtualBox from a SysAdmin perspective

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Oracle VM VirtualBox

Oracle VM VirtualBox is a virtualization tool that can handle different operating systems and applications using less hardware that it could take if running in dedicated servers. It lets you easily manage all your virtual machines and customize the resources with no effort. There is a lot of documentation out there so you can customize your solutions to your company.

Pros

  • Virtual Machine management. It is easy to manage the resources of a VM.
  • Online documentation. Oracle provides a place where you can find complete documentation.
  • The ability to run different operating systems. This let you use different a OS on a single computer/server.

Cons

  • It's very hard to keep it up to date. The update process is manual.
  • Sometimes you need to change BIOS settings to enable virtualization.
  • Not easy to find answers in the online documentation.
  • Positive impact: Easy to manage different VMs in one or more servers than to having different servers.
  • Easy to manage different users (from the Sys Admin point of view) and to deploy software.
  • Easy to scale resources to VM.
  • Automatization can be added using the API.
I have used Linux KVM and Oracle VirtualBox in order to virtualize and manage different VMs. Oracle's solution, in my opinion, it is better because of the GUI, documentation and API.
I have managed to write scripts to automate different procedures to help in my daily duties. I appreciate the API because it helps us to solve problems with scripts; the other way it will take more time to solve any problem using the GUI.
It instantly works when virtualization is enabled in the computer or server. It will not work if virtualization is disabled. When you manage to make it work, it will respond like a real computer and it is easy to deploy operating systems and to install software, devices or drivers. It is amazing how they created a solution for every scenario because you can add memory or shrink or expand the hard drive. Most of the configurations can be done using the GUI, but there are a ton of tools and commands that can be used through the CLI.

Oracle VM VirtualBox Feature Ratings

Server Virtualization
8.8
Virtual machine automated provisioning
9
Management console
10
Live virtual machine backup
9
Live virtual machine migration
8
Hypervisor-level security
8

Using Oracle VM VirtualBox

10 - These Virtual Machines are used to run different Operating Systems with internal web services in most of the cases. This functionality that let you run a different OS within another is a great way to deploy services to end users because it is very easy to configure and maintain from the IT Systems Support point of view. Once you have virtual hard drives configured and ready to use, everything else is very straightforward.
5 - Support to this tool is painless and very straightforward. VirtualBox works like a charm and is a one-time-setup tool because it never fails. Is as easy as configuring a regular computer and the solution can be deployed across the company because is only one file you need to handle. You don't even have to grab the screwdriver anymore!

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