Virtualbox - VMWare alternative any good?

malcybood

Has anyone used this and is it any good?

http://virtualbox.org/

JDMurray

I've never used VirtualBox. There is a comparison article of VMs in the November issue of hackin9 Magazine featuring VMWare, Xen, Parallels, and VirtualBox. The reviewer uses VirtualBox on his own network and the price is certainly right (free). You can download a PDF of the article here.

cacharo

I have use it a bit, but I prefer VPC. VB works much better with Linux OSs than VPCs do.

malcybood

JDMurray wrote:

The reviewer uses VirtualBox on his own network and the price is certainly right (free).

This is what has attracteed me to it, that it's open source and FREE!! Don't want to shell out for VMWare or Virtual PC as it's for me to play about with on a home lab server and configure it for some MCP labs.

JDMurray wrote:

You can download a PDF of the article here.

Thanks for the info, I'll have a look

JDMurray

I'm gonna try it on one of Pentium III Linux boxes tonight.

malcybood

Nice one, let me know what you think after you've had a play

sthomas

I used Virtual box once on Linux and Windows and it seemed buggy to me. I would recommend sticking with VMWare server.

snadam

malcybood wrote:

JDMurray wrote:

The reviewer uses VirtualBox on his own network and the price is certainly right (free).

This is what has attracteed me to it, that it's open source and FREE!! Don't want to shell out for VMWare or Virtual PC as it's for me to play about with on a home lab server and configure it for some MCP labs.

JDMurray wrote:

You can download a PDF of the article here.

Thanks for the info, I'll have a look

virtual PC is free, unless there is another version of it...

Virtual PC 2007


I use it in my home lab. Cant complain. Easy to install and set up. Not as robust as most, but if youre looking for something to run multi-virtual machines on, id recommend that for MS stuff at least.

nel

This is what has attracteed me to it, that it's open source and FREE!! Don't want to shell out for VMWare or Virtual PC as it's for me to play about with on a home lab server and configure it for some MCP labs.

You can also get a free version of vmware server: http://www.vmware.com/download/server/

you have to register to get your free codes but its a good product.[/url]

JDMurray

I've been playing with VirtualBox on an Ubuntu 7.10 desktop system for a couple of days now. I loaded Windows XP Media Center SP2 into VB and it's running without any problems. VB's look, feel, and virtual disk image files are all very similar to VMWare and I have no problems figuring out using VB without having first reads the docs.

The only hitch I encountered was when performing a quick NTFS disk format during the XP setup. The format was taking a very long time and then VB threw an error. I restarted the setup, quick-formatted using FAT32, and it all went fine. Maybe it has something to do with formatting a dynamic versus a fixed-size virtual disk image.

Next I'll try to installing Windows 3.11 WFWG, Windows 9x, and some of the specialty releases of Linux (WHAX, Honeywall, etc.). I want to see how multiple VBs work as a virtual vulnerability assessment network lab. But I really should read the VB manual and release notes first.