Notes on VirtualBox

[Derek Atkins]

Jarod Wilson <jarod-ajLrJawYSntWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org> writes:

> On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 3:41 PM, Richard Pieri <richard.pieri-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> On Apr 18, 2010, at 2:26 PM, Rich Braun wrote:
> ...
>>> * Integration with the openSuSE host O/S is seamless out-of-the-box; with
>>> VMware server you have to download kernel modules which may or may not work
>>> with the latest/greatest version of the openSuSE distro, and which prevent you from doing upgrades of the host O/S as they become available.
>>
>> Last I knew, both VMware and VirtualBox use the same method: compile kernel extensions against the currently running kernel sources if an exact match set of modules is not found.
>
> That's still correct. However, the VirtualBox guys have been a LOT
> better about keeping their sources functioning against the latest
> upstream kernels. VMware doesn't really seem to care about anything
> but the enterprise linux distros and maybe the latest ubuntu, so you
> have to hunt down the vmware-any-any patches and hope they work...
> Also, with the VirtualBox OSE bits, several distros do the compiling
> for you and make the driver bits available as binary packages.

* Can one migrate a VM from VMware to VirtualBox?
* Can one remotely manage a VirtualBox server?
* What are the performance comparrisons between VMware and VB?
* Can one set the order in which VMs start at system boot time?
* To what granularity can one set up remote access to different VB VMs?
  For example, I have a server where I want to be able to do everything
  myself, but I want to give user X the rights to fully manage VM X (but
  no other), give user Y the rights to fully manage VM Y (but no other),
  and give user Z the rights to access the console of VMs X and Y but
  they cannot make other changes to the VM configuration.  I can do this
  with vmware-server, can I do it with VB?

-derek
-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
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