Oracle VM VirtualBox Reviews

I have mounted it with GlusterFS and I use it along with three on-prem physical nodes with Arch Linux's operating system and 12 VLANs to support around 50 VMs in different environments (TESTS, DEMOS, PRODUCTION).

The versatility, simplicity, and stability of the product are the most valuable features.

The solution lacks some open source remote administration tools. The reload of individual virtual machine definitions through the vboxweb service (via its API) without restarting it and the access to shared storage (to use teleport functions) need to be improved.

I have been using the Oracle VM VirtualBox since it was owned by Innotek - the original creator of VirtualBox, version 1.5.4, in February 2008.

The stability of the solution has improved over time. I rate it an eight out of ten. 

The solution is scalable but you have to put in a lot of effort to reach the goal. I rate the scalability a seven out of ten. 

There is no technical support from Oracle but there is a community that provides good support. I rate the support a ten out of ten. 

The initial setup is straightforward. I rate the setup a ten out of ten. 

We use the free version. 

I recommend that people look beyond the popular comment of the bit twelve box that it is only for deployments or to test at fault. It's a very powerful tool that needs to be configured properly. 

I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten. 

I use Oracle Virtualbox to create different virtual operating systems, including Ubuntu, Kali Linux, Windows, and Metasploit.

I like that Oracle VM VirtualBox has snapshots with which I can always go back to when my OS was functioning properly, and then I easily clone an OS without having to install it all from scratch.

Oracle VM VirtualBox doesn't work properly with an antivirus tool. I think Oracle has to come up with something that makes VM VirtualBox compatible with different antivirus applications. Though you can get Oracle VM VirtualBox running properly even without an antivirus tool, it keeps you vulnerable.

I have experience with Oracle VM VirtualBox.

Oracle VM VirtualBox has a platform where the support team responds to frequently asked questions by its users. Every time I have had issues with Oracle VM VirtualBox, I always get a solution from Oracle's online platform or GitHub. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

I have experience with KVM. I have used KVM since my company did software testing for four months. I also use other virtualization services.

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten.

I use Oracle VM VirtualBox to provide my clients with performance, security, and scalability enhancements.

I like that Oracle VM is safe and stable. It is also very easy to administer. For example, opening a VM or adding a host adapter is extremely easy.

The most attractive feature in Oracle VM is that it's free except for the extension pack.

Oracle VMs don't have a solid web interface of their own. This is an area where Oracle is lagging behind. Now, we use headless servers, install Oracle VMs, and manage them remotely. We could use phpVirtual Box, but it is a third-party solution. A lot of people contribute to it, and it's not authenticated by Oracle. As a result, I don't find it to be a good option. Therefore, I would like to see Oracle offer an extension pack or a licensed version that fixes this problem.

I've been using this solution for almost four years.

It's a stable solution, and I would rate stability at ten out of ten.

Oracle VM VirtualBox's scalability is good, but resizing of storage can be a bit challenging sometimes. I would give scalability a rating of eight out of ten.

I focus mostly on SMEs, particularly those who run their enterprise solutions on cloud-based services.

The initial deployment is quick and takes about 10 minutes.

I deploy it and maintain it myself, along with the help of an administrator.

Price wise, Oracle VM VirtualBox is a six on a scale from one to ten.

I would definitely recommend Oracle VM VirtualBox. It can work from your laptop, and even a a loop configuration laptop is more than sufficient for testing. Another advantage is that it has teleporting, and you can also directly port your virtual machine configuration into Oracle cloud.

Overall, I would rate Oracle VM VirtualBox at eight out of ten.

My main purpose in using this solution is to run Windows machines on top of my Linux servers. I am running a Windows server on top of a Linux machine and then another four machines just to create an environment for our clients so that people can log in. Because they don't find Linux easy to use, I give them windows on top which they find more familiar.

The thing is I like is the simplicity in Linux when I'm using the Oracle VirtualBox. In terms of networking, it doesn't need any special configuration, especially when working with Linux. The other thing I like about it is being able to share folders. It makes life very easy to transfer things from one person to another. I don't have to worry about mounting a USB device. You just create a folder and give privileges then I can share information very fast.

The product needs better support for multiple network cards. That is the major area that sometimes it can be a bit of a mess to configure multiple network cards to communicate well with each other. That's the major thing for me.

Another thing I've run into is that it would be nice on Oracle if you can use something like a Hyper-V environment. You can just install the environment and then start installing all your virtual machines on top of that. Rather than having to install Windows or Linux when you need them, you just install the VirtualBox. If it can just roll out on its own and had its own hyper vista software — that would be something I've been praying to see from Oracle VirtualBox.

I think also that a challenge I've seen some people have after I convince them to use the product is when they are switching to various views. In some situations, the view switches to a seamless full screen and the menu bar disappears. When this happens they may not know how to switch it back. I don't know if Oracle can put a button on-screen so that when you are in a seamless view or scale view or something like that so those familiar things still fit where you can find them. In fullscreen, you still have the menu, but in some of these screen views that don't have the menu, they could put a visible button that can bring the menu back up. With that, you can easily get back familiar controls and eject your USB or whatever you need to do. If you don't know the shortcuts, it can be difficult to navigate or do even common tasks. They need something else instead of just using keyboard shortcuts.

Oracle with VirtualBox rarely crashes since about version four onwards. It rarely crashes and rarely hangs. Although — I think it is on version six — sometimes I may take a snapshot and try to revert or even when I try to save a snapshot using Windows XP, sometimes the whole virtual machine crashes. But I am not sure if it is a fault with the software or something else because it only happens with one particular machine.

When you take three or four snapshots and you accumulate snapshots, it is as if at some point the snapshots get a bit mixed up in the machine, especially if you do not shut down. I have been helping some of my friends because they're not ready to move from XP. So I've gotten them to use Oracle VirtualBox for some solutions. One guy's machine crashed because they had been taking snapshot after snapshot. When we tried to restore it, we could not restore the machine back. So it happens, but rarely. But all in all, from Windows 7 downwards, I have not seen any problems with the VirtualBox. I actually love it. It's really stable for me.

I noticed also that if you do not shut it down regularly and you are constantly hibernating or pausing, that can be a really big headache. Sometimes the computer may freeze and you have to go back to the machine's original state.

So far my needs have been really static. I've not really tried to invest in scalability because my needs are fixed currently, so I do not have too much to say about scalability. But it should not be an issue.

The installation of VirtualBox itself is easy.

All of the implementations I have I did myself.

Right now I am mainly using the free versions of the solutions. I'm not ready to spend a lot because I don't have too many machines. I do not qualify to be charged yet. So I've never worried too much about the pricing because most of my pricing is academic for the machines at school. But even being a school, I have a special agreement with Microsoft.

On a scale of one to ten where ten is the best, I would rate this product as a nine.

I recommend it, especially for people who are beginners because most things they will want to use will virtually be plug-and-play. It's click-and-use. I would recommend it to those people who are beginners. Because most other products, you really need to know a lot of networking and how to use them to maintain them. But with Oracle, it is simple. For most needs where you have to only have a really small network, this will be fine.

Having the flexibility to have VirtualBox run on a local machine, or over on the cloud.

The flexibility and the closed platform, so it allows you to run in multiple platforms, Windows, Linux, Macintosh.

One of the things that we need, because with LeVAULT we control the authentication layer, and we support multiple factors for authentication -  anywhere from four to 27 factors  - and we allow you to be able to raise your key's devices, as keys to authenticate, as one of the factors. We're working with them to be able to allow the local USB ports to be ported over to the remote desktop, running VirtualBox.

We didn't talk about the capability of improving playing video, and being able to download; and streaming.

I haven't scaled it to that level, but we're about to do that. I will have a client that is going to virtualize 5000 to 10,000 virtual machines initially. Towards the next year we'll take it up to about 200,000 to 250,000. We'll soon find out what we'll need to implement it.

We have a few issues so far, there's a few things that we're going to do to improve the speed, like when you play videos and things like that. Overall it's pretty good.

We had other costumers that had used other solutions, such as VMware and Microsoft hypervisor, but I've pushed them all over to VirtualBox because of its flexibility and potential. 

It's pretty straightforward. You know I've used VirtualBox for over five or six years. It's pretty clear, enough to be able to follow through and install.

The most important factor when selecting a vendor is probably the ability to have partnerships, to be able to work. Because any technology that we have, it works with Oracle's platforms. So it's important for us to be able to work with partnerships, and that's the reason we became an Oracle Gold Partner.

It gives me the simplicity to quickly create virtual machines and to deploy my applications, and it's free. These are the most valuable features for me.

I can quickly create a portable working environment with all the applications running in my VirtualBox VMs.

An example of an area of improvement that I can see from my use of it would be the VirtualBox network setting. From my experience with it, I can’t easily add network or enable network ports without powering down my virtual machine.

I have been using VirtualBox for a couple of years now.

I have had no issues with the deployment.

I have had no issues with the stability.

I do not have more than four virtual VMs running concurrently as these are all individual pods deployed for demo purposes etc.

I've had no experience with the customer service and technical support. I have been using the free edition of Oracle VirtualBox.

I have used VMware, Hyper-V, RHEV, OpenStack, and, now, VirtualBox. I have used all these hypervisors in my environments for demos and test purposes.

The initial setup is very straightforward. Once you are familiar with virtualization, VirtualBox is very intuitive and simple to use.

This is an in-house implementation. Try it out, it is very easy. It fulfills most of my requirements in virtualizing my applications so that I can do demos and run tests.

I am using the free version of Oracle VirtualBox.

Give it a try, it is free.

What we have in this screenshot is 3 VMs powered on:

• A Linux DNS server
• A Windows JumpBox
• Two Cloudian Servers (with one powered off)

We use this solution to quickly set up and test our new software releases on different operating system versions.

We used this for onboarding applications running on smaller equipment, as we noticed that it uses less resouces compared to other hypervisor systems.

This helped our passengers to get better services while travelling, such as entertainment, movies, games, details about the trip, et cetera.

The images used can easily be shipped with the onboard hardware.

We can also port or convert other types of images too.

It is easy to use and does not require complex knowledge.

It uses less resouces, which is a requirement as it is used on onboard hardware with very litle resources available.

Our development using new operating system releases can quickly be made. In some cases, we can set up the client's environment and perform local investigations to give competitve and qualyfied results for the customers to help reinforce our general reputation.

We keep our build and package down, and only start them when performing nightly builds.

It is easy to set up and makes it easy to protect VM guests running on the systems by IBM Spectrum Protect.

We use SPFS to mount the Spectrum Protect storage as a local filesystem and store our VM backups on that drive-letter or filesystem which sends data to the IBM Spectrum Protect storage.

The backup retentions are centrally managed from the IBM Spectrum Protect backup server.

We can browse and decide which of the backups to restore directly from the Virtualbox system.

This makes data protection very easy to use without special knowledge from agents.

We are using the free version of Virtualbox, so we have not tested the commercial solution.

That said, having live migrations to move a running server to other hardware would be great.

The ability to emulate other types of CPU and hardware, such as PowerPC in both Little Endian and Big Endian, ARM CPU, s390x CPU architectures, and possibly older CPUs such as Motorola would be helpful. This would make the development of new software releases faster and easier.

In general, it is a good and stable product to use. We love it!  

I've used the solution for several years.

We've found the stability to be good.

The scalability is good.

We have never had a need to use technical support so far. 

Neutral

We previously used VMware and Proxmox KVM.

In terms of the initial setup, it's pretty easy to implement. 

We handled the initial setup in-house.

The ROI we've witnessed so far has been good.

We use the free solution; so we can't comment on the pricing at the moment.

We did also look at Proxmox KVM.

For simplicity, I'd advise users to use a backup method that is easy to use and to adapt to hypervisor solutions.

We use SPFS as it helps our clients to backup and restore in the way they understand.

I use this solution for experiments with virtualization in Linux, mostly.

We have an on-premises deployment.

The most valuable feature is the ability to copy bidirectionally between the desktop and the virtual machine.

The representation is very good. I have a problem with Hyper-V where you don't see the edges, especially the bottom and the top. With VirtualBox, I'm able to see that.

VirtualBox gives you granular control to very deep levels.

This solution is not resource-heavy on the system, and I'm able to run several virtuals at one time.

This solution is very user-friendly. 

I have to keep pressing the home key so that the mouse changes context, which is something that I don't like. It should have the functionality where if I move the mouse away from one screen, the context changes automatically.

This solution cannot run when Hyper-V is running, and it would be nice if these two solutions could co-exist.

I have never used this solution for production, but I wish there was a simpler way of deployment, and I wish there was an ecosystem around it. Some other solutions, such as Docker, have a whole surrounding ecosystem. You know where to get Docker files, you know what Docker works with, etc. It's a whole ecosystem instead of a single application. It comes with almost everything you need in one place, or in the community.

I am unsure as to how stable this solution would be in a production environment. I have always thought of it as an R&D solution, as opposed to a production solution. It isn't a problem related to VirtualBox, but rather, simply how I have chosen to use it.

If you wanted to scale this solution out, or up, an automation tool may make it easier and more user-friendly, or more straightforward.

I have never needed to speak with technical support.

I prefer this solution to Hyper-V.

The initial setup of this solution is very straightforward.

I upgraded to the most recent version a few weeks ago.

I performed the implementation myself. I started using this solution a really long time ago, and you don't need anyone to help with VirtualBox.

This is a great product and I use it a lot.

This is a good R&D solution, but I don't think it would be good in production. We look for different things in R&D, such as doing a proof of concept. In a production environment, having a whole ecosystem to support the solution, including for orchestration and automatic deployments, would be better. It would also need to have more talks, seminars, and conferences, calling people in that space and then posting them on YouTube. There is a lot more to it than the technical aspect.

Overall, I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.