Free software virtualization keeping everyone in sync
Updated October 01, 2019

Free software virtualization keeping everyone in sync

Jordan Squire | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Oracle VM VirtualBox

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.

Pros

  • 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.

Cons

  • 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.
  • Being able to get new developer environments up and running has been a huge time saver versus other teams that have their employees spend a day or two configuring their environment.
  • Keeping everyone updated and on identical software has saved operational time and money.
  • Recreating bugs is much easier on identical environments.
  • It's free!

Oracle VM VirtualBox Feature Ratings

Server Virtualization
7.5
Virtual machine automated provisioning
9
Management console
6

Using Oracle VM VirtualBox

Oracle VM VirtualBox is a great product and a fantastic tool in every developer's toolbox. The ability to imitate a specific OS in a virtual machine can be extremely useful for testing applications or testing deployments. I also find it useful to be able to utilize certain software that may not be compatible with my chosen machine OS.

Some problems that I have encountered using VirtualBox have been in relation to disk usage. It is very easy for a VMs disk space to balloon and hard to shrink the disk size. For CPU intensive processes I occasionally have ran into performance issues.
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Well integrated
Quick to learn
Feel confident using
Requires technical support
Lots to learn
  • Importing and Exporting existing VMs
  • Pausing and resuming a running VM
  • Running various OS VMs one a single machine
  • Snapshots of a current state of a VM and being able to restore it later
  • Native behavior of guest OS
  • Managing VM disk space usage and reclaiming disk space
  • Creating a new VM image can be a bit challeging
  • Features around integrating with the host OS don't work consistently

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