Notes on VirtualBox

[Jarod Wilson]

On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 5:38 PM, Derek Atkins <warlord-3s7WtUTddSA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 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?

Definitely.

> * Can one remotely manage a VirtualBox server?

Sort of. But its really more geared towards desktop use, more similar
to vmware workstation than vmware server. You can of course ssh to
your server and use some of the included cli tools for management, or
run the management gui over ssh x11 forwarding.

> * What are the performance comparrisons between VMware and VB?

I don't have any hard numbers, but they generally feel fairly
comparable to one another in my past use. (I actually use kvm just
about everywhere now, save on my mac, where I do still run virtualbox
for my fairly modest virtual machine needs there).

> * Can one set the order in which VMs start at system boot time?

Last I knew, you can't have virtualbox auto-start VMs at boot time at
all, without the aid of a 3rd-party initscript/config file, which
doesn't integrate w/the management gui at all.

> * 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?

Don't think so. For server use like this, VMware is definitely still superior.

-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod-ajLrJawYSntWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org