Oracle VM VirtualBox Reviews

My primary use of the solution is for testing distributions and installations. 

While in the past I used the solution on Linux, which I no longer do, and FreeBSD, which is my daytime runner, I am not very happy with its use on the latter. For the past year or so, it slowed down upon its use. 

I am not a great fan of Oracle's products. I have not been happy with these since version 6. I find the solution to be incredibly unstable, constantly falling over and not working properly. 

I've been using Oracle VM VirtualBox on and off for five or six years.

I find the solution to be incredibly unstable, constantly falling over and not working properly.

I have very little to do with technical support. As I have been doing things for nearly 30 years, I solve any issues which may arise on my own. 

The installation is easy, although I could not say how long it took. 

The license I use is free. 

The solution is on-premises as part of the labs. 

As I am the one who tests the solution, I am the only one making use of it in my organization. 

I do not believe that I would recommend the solution to others. 

I rate Oracle VM VirtualBox as a six or seven out of ten.

My personal one is to create virtual machines to do different things within the house. I have a few servers in the house, and the servers themselves run lots of the services that we need, but sometimes you need to have a service that is run on a kind of a "dedicated machine." So, instead of having a physical machine to run those services, we just create a virtual one. It just spins off like a virtual machine, and everything works okay. Some of the machines that are for more home automation and other such things don't need very powerful processes or much memory. They are very suitable to be run on virtual machines. They can have their own IP addresses and can be reached from the outside of the home.

The good thing is that it is multi-platform. Once you create a virtual machine in one particular environment, you can switch over to see if you can run it in other environments. For example, if you are on Windows and you create this virtual machine, you can actually go ahead and change the operating system. You can switch it over to Linux or Mac OS and see if you can run the VirtualBox on those particular machines. It even runs on some of the commercial operating systems that are not mainstream, such as Solaris and BSD. These kinds of operating systems are also supported by VirtualBox.

The other thing that is good about VirtualBox is that it is open source. So, if you need to do any modifications for your own purposes, you can just download the source, modify it, and deploy it in your environment.

It is pretty good and very versatile. You can create and manipulate virtual machines from the command line, which is also very important. It's something that some other products on the desktop side do not have. VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop don't have a good command-line interface to create and manipulate virtual machines, whereas VirtualBox has it out of the box, which is pretty good.

It has some issues when you have some weird device drivers. For instance, when you have a weird sound driver working on your machine, and the VirtualBox needs to output the sound of the virtual machine into the sound driver of the physical machine, the bare metal, it doesn't work too well. If you tweak lots of drivers and play around with the different kinds of drivers and machines, you will probably break something.

I have not played with it too much and maybe it already supports it, but it would probably be good to have the ability to use a container from the virtual machine environment instead of spinning off a complete virtual machine. There are other tools for that. On Linux, you have a DXE, LXC framework, and you have Docker as well. Docker is good because it is multi-platform, and you can run Docker on pretty much anything, even different processors, but it would be good if we had a VirtualBox running on it while spinning off containers instead of full virtual machines. 

The other thing that will become important, and I'm pretty sure that they are thinking about it as well is that there's this new hardware platform that Apple is releasing, which is an ARM-based new chip. So, VirtualBox will probably have to work on ARM-based CPUs as well.

I have been using this solution for a long time. It was a standalone product before it became an Oracle product.

For my users, it is very stable. We do home automation on it, and it works really well. It has some advanced features like auto restart of the virtual machine. If your virtual machine crashes, or even when you have a power outage and the server comes back up on its own, it spins off the virtual machines automatically. You don't have to do anything about it. It is pretty good.

I don't have any impressions on the scalability because I only use it at home, and one of the machines that we have is not so powerful. The other one is a little powerful. So, we can run lots of virtual machines, but we don't run that many.

I needed support just once. It was mostly because I decided to do something that I should not have done. One of the machines that we have is a little older, so I decided to use a method to install a newer version of the operating system, which theoretically is not supported on the machine. There are lots of articles on the web where you can patch this and that to make it work. So, I did it, and unfortunately, it broke VirtualBox. I did not reach directly to customer support, but I posted a question in the community, and we agreed that what I did wasn't a good idea.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward, and anyone can do it as long as you know how to install a particular operating system. You just download the executables from the website and run them. They install VirtualBox, and then you just open it up and point it to the disk where you have your operating system, and it does it really fast.

It is pretty good for the price, which is free.

I would rate VirtualBox a nine out of ten. It is really good, and I like it very much. It is definitely not a ten because even though it has lots of support from Oracle itself, it is an open-source product. If you look at the user interface, it is very decent, but it is not the most polished user interface. 

We use VirtualBox for running our ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and a host of websites. The underlying operating system is Solaris, which we run on VirtualBox virtualized, and it is running exceptionally well. Then I run VirtualBox as a hypervisor and use Windows (when necessary) and Linux. I run a whole host of websites on Linux virtualized using VirtualBox and we also run our ERP — Xpert ERP — on VirtualBox.

It has contributed to the flexibility that we have running our network.

The most valuable feature for me is the ease-of-use. With the GUI, it is easy to set up things and configure new things intuitively. It is a very good interface. VirtualBox is not as feature-rich as VMware, but the GUI from VirtualBox more than makes up for the features that it is lacking.

We are currently on version 5.1.38 but we are definitely going to upgrade to version 6. Some of what I would like to see in the future may already be in that release.

For me, it would be great to have a function where I can teleport from one machine to another machine just using the GUI. At the moment, this capability is only available via the command line. Other products like VMware and Windows Hypervisor already have that functionality. I think it would be an excellent addition and improve the product if Oracle implemented this functionality directly in the GUI. 

The feature I would like in addition to teleporting is that I would like to see more reporting capabilities. For example, it would be good to be able to easily report on the status of the servers and virtual machines. It would be enough just to get a list that says how much CPU power each machine is using, the amount of memory it occupies, etcetera. Something like a snapshot of everything in graphical format. A dashboard that actually combines all the reporting about what is happening on your virtualization would be valuable. Getting all the information at a glance is what I would like to see.

I find the solution to be exceptionally stable. I've no reason to look for other solutions, honestly, because it is so stable. It just fits into your network and it just runs. No matter what you are doing, even if you do it wrong, nothing fails. The worst that can happen is that you allocate more resources than you actually have on the hardware platform. If you misallocate your resources and require more memory for your virtual sessions than is physically available on the platform, then you run into a little trouble. It doesn't fail, it just becomes a bit slow. Or it could get very slow, I guess, if you are careless. But it has never failed for me.

We live in an exceptionally small country. We have probably the lowest number of people per square kilometer in the world. There is only a group of about 20 or 25 IT professionals that I know about in our country. All of them are using VirtualBox. They are using other solutions as well, like Windows Hypervisor and VMware. The only reason why they do not convert 100% to VirtualBox from Windows Hypervisor and VMware is that they have already invested the money it cost them to get those solutions in the first place.

So, while VirtualBox is absolutely free and they definitely use it in their companies, it cost money for their companies to invest in Windows Hypervisor and VMware. It will not go over well if they just move away from those solutions to VirtualBox because they have already purchased them.

I think it is a very scalable product and it stays stable while you scale it. For example, while it is active on a production server, you can expand the capabilities. You can stop and start or add virtual machines. The only thing that you have to know is not to allocate more resources on that hardware platform than is available in the hardware. The scalability of the hardware is separate from the product itself. You can't scale the product bigger than the resources on the box.

I have used Oracle technical support in the past for other products and I have been satisfied. But I never had to use technical support or any other resource to address problems I had using VirtualBox. There is not one situation where it was necessary.

Setup is so easy to do that I think anyone can do it. It's even easier than installing Windows on a laptop. You spend literally just half-an-hour if you sit and oversee the installation. After that half-an-hour, you are as well-versed in the product as a guy that worked with it for ten years. I don't think the initial setup could be easier.

I can do the implementations all by myself. It is very easy and it was really impossible to make a mistake. 

The product is absolutely free to use.

The VirtualBox solution is an absolute gem of a product. I definitely recommend this product to other people because it's super stable and easy to install and use. The only thing you need to ensure on your server is that you have sufficient hardware resources to accomplish what you want to do and that you supply the server with clean power. The server needs to be running all the time or you will have problems. If you put the box on a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply), you are all set.

I choose to run the product on-premises all the time for our deployment and also for deployments to my clients. I also prefer to run VirtualBox on Solaris and Linux. In testing and in production using VirtualBox on Solaris is the best way to go, in my opinion. I do not implement production servers on Windows-based machines because of the many vulnerabilities in Windows. I tend to stay away from Windows as far as possible except for testing purposes on a laptop or a PC that runs Windows. I will use VirtualBox for that.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate this product an absolute nine. It has a little bit of room for improvement even though it is an excellent product. It is super fast. It is very easy to use. It is rock-solid stable. With just a few more features and added functionality, it will easily reach a ten out of ten.

The primary use case is creation and management of virtual machines in small network environments.

The most valuable features of the solution are that there are fewer costs and it is suitable for a small environment. We only need to go to group sharing or Oracle's website and install the solution.

The solution is not flexible. Compared to other solutions which are easy to customize, Oracle VirtualBox is extremely difficult to customize compared to VMware. 

It is not suitable for an enterprise environment.

The user interface can be improved.

I would like to have AI included in a future release.

I have been using the solution for nine years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is not scalable.

The initial setup is simple and only requires a few clicks to deploy.

It is less expensive and pretty easy to set up.

I give the solution a seven out of ten.

I am using the solution for my personal use only and also in a few small network environments and labs.

Oracle VM VirtualBox has an online community that can help with any issues.

I recommend the solution, but it may not be the best option. Oracle VM VirtualBox isn't very flexible and can be frustrating at times, requiring restarting our virtual machine before it works properly.

We are using Oracle VM VirtualBox to virtualize servers.

The solution has high performance and is easy to use.

I have been using Oracle VM VirtualBox for a couple of years.

Oracle VM VirtualBox is stable.

The scalability of Oracle VM VirtualBox is good.

I am only using the solution myself.

We are satisfied with the technical support.

The installation is difficult and could be improved.

We have a technical team that supports the solution.

By using Oracle VM VirtualBox VM it has reduced the number of servers needed because they are virtualized, this has cut down our license charges.

The solution is free.

I rate Oracle VM VirtualBox a six out of ten.

We use Oracle VM VirtualBox for testing.

Oracle VM VirtualBox is like a virtual machine.

it helps to run multiple operating systems.

They have to improve the user interface and the installation.

Oracle VM VirtualBox is not flexible. It's not like VMware.

They could also improve the market position. Customers are more familiar with the VMware brand and prefer to use it.

Because they don't push the market a lot, the customers are not aware of Oracle VM VirtualBox, and its capabilities. 

I have been using Oracle VM VirtualBox for one month.

Technical support is good. We don't have any issues with the technical support.

It is easy to install Oracle VM VirtualBox and did not take a lot of time.

For one engineer who has two to three years of experience, it is simple to implement.

There are no licensing fees.

At this time, I cannot recommend this solution to others.

I would rate Oracle VM VirtualBox a five out of ten.

We use Oracle VM VirtualBox in combination with Oracle Database. We also run Tomcat inside VirtualBox.

Within our organization, there are five people using this solution. 

The snapshot feature is very powerful; it protects us from disaster. 

The AI and the UI could be improved. The user interface is a little outdated and the AI is not very attractive.

Currently, when pilot testing VMs, sometimes we have to test them on the cloud — this is complicated. In the next release, it would be nice if there was a convenient way to migrate the VM images from the local server to the cloud server.  

Oracle VM VirtualBox is stable. 

Although we haven't needed to scale out, I'd imagine it's quite scalable. 

The initial setup was quite straightforward. 

We also evaluated VMware.

I would recommend this solution to others. It's easy to use. Everything you need to know can be found with a simple Google search — the whole process. 

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight. 

I use it for experimenting with different operating systems in user environments. I also use it to have a backup to the Windows so that I can access Windows, and it is up and running. I don't have to worry about building a system from scratch.

The pause feature is valuable. I can pause, which is something that not all hypervisors allow. The snapshot feature is also valuable.

It would be good if we could use Hyper-V Windows subsystems with Linux and VirtualBox on the same instance. Currently, to be able to use VirtualBox, we have to restart the machine into an instance of Windows where Hyper-V is disabled, which is understandably very inconvenient.

I have been using this solution for more than five years.

It is stable. It is more stable than it used to be.

I don't have any experience with their technical support.

Its initial setup is straightforward. The duration depends on whether you're using it on Windows or Linux. It takes slightly longer on Windows than Linux.

I deployed it myself. Currently, I am the only user of this solution.

I plan to keep using this solution. I would rate Oracle VM VirtualBox a seven out of ten.