Somewhere in 2006 I started using VirtualBox for desktop virtualization. There where a few reasons for that choice back then. Although the software wasn’t the perfect companion, it was actually the only freely available virtualization software available for my operating system of choice (at that moment in time Mandriva Linux). But it was also actually just what I needed. Not able to afford high-end hardware and expensive software the small footprint of VirtualBox was great.
Through the years I’ve seen some changes in VirtualBox, all making it more and more a ‘mature’ part of automation and more like the competition out there. In the beginning days of my Mac OS X experience (which is still going on) I started using WMware’s Fusion, but soon switched back to VirtualBox. The user interface has always been clear and simple, the way I like things and I could simply do enough with it.
For businesses, VirtualBox just might be the answer they where looking for. A simple and widely supported virtual machine that now offers a lot of functionality that you might expect from a modern virtualization system. All main host OS’s are supported, and a wide variety of guest systems are added in each version.
The new version of VirtualBox, 3.2 which is the first full Oracle labelled version, is developed with a main focus on three areas: performance, power and platforms. This means that the performance of the system will improve, there’s more added power to serve those heavy machines we want and there are more supported platforms available (including an experiment on hosting OS X machines).
Some of the important new features can be found in the new storage I/O, Remote Video Acceleration, Multiple Virtual Monitors, a Virtual SAS Controller, Online Snapshot Merging (!) and the hosted OS X environment.
I’m really looking forward to some of the business implementations of VirtualBox. Is it still in use mainly in customer environment, running desktop software? Or can you provide me with an example where real servers are being hosted using VirtualBox? And how can the new features help organizations in the VM world?
Update: on june 2nd Oracle released the maintanance version of VirtualBox 3.2: release 3.2.2 adresses some main bugs and adds more stability. Good to see how fast this is going.
Update 2: On june 7th another version was made: 3.2.4. Several minor bugs and regressions where fixed.
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VirtualBox is just a fantastic option for anyone on Linux