Oracle VM VirtualBox Reviews

• It's easy to implement.
• It supports USB 3.0.
• It provides for cloning of images from real machines or VMs.

Having a virtual operating system has many advantages. Using such an approach simplifies the installation procedure, system maintenance, and system backup. It allows you to be hardware independent.

It needs better support for 3D. This would allow us to virtualize operating systems used by designers or architects. The base virtual disk (VDI file), which contains the state before taking the snapshot, should be aware if it has some related snapshots. This would help to eliminate issues when moving or migrating virtual machines to new hardware, e.g. if you move the base virtual disk file but forget to move the snapshots.

For some Linux distributions, I had a high CPU utilization when running Oracle VM Virtualbox. Sometimes with Linux, there was a problem with freezing the host system.

There were some issues with the toolbar menu when using two monitors. In the end, I managed to get those issues resolved either with changing the virtual machine configuration or by updating to a newer version of Oracle VM Virtualbox.

We've had no issue scaling it to our needs.

I have only used community support and there are a lot of technical guides and discussions that can guide you to a solution.

For virtualizing desktop solutions, we did not use a previous solution. For server environments, we did. I have used Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware ESXi.

The initial setup was clean and straightforward. There might be some additional task to do, e.g. installing the DKMS module on some Linux distributions, but this is rather a distribution-related issue. It is possible to have to change settings in the BIOS, but the software gives enough good information when starting, e.g. if something is not enabled in the BIOS. With Windows, it is very easy to set up a host environment.

All implementations were done by me. I wrote some manuals and guides for my colleagues so they could do the roll-out afterwards.

Be sure to have enough hardware resources to run the virtual machines smoothly.

The biggest feature that we like and which is most valuable for us is the fact that Virtualbox is easy to set up, it's ready to go, and we can install Oracle PeopleSoft images on a Linux OS in a fairly quick and efficient time with minimal manual work.

Our ability to keep up with Oracle PeopleSoft images being installed on the Oracle VM has sped up our turnaround time and allowed us to save time for applying updates to a delivered environment to begin analysis\extraction of fixes and review of functionality.

There were some minor issues with the initial setup, such as if we forgot to reinitialize the MAC addresses of the network cards. Also, setting up the network adaptors was a bit tricky.

I've been using it for about six months.

We went with a physical box, and our biggest issue was being able to get right amount of configuration/memory/disk space and CPU to be able to deploy multiple images on the VM. Realistically the restriction was on our end and not the software itself.

We have had no issues with the stability.

We have had no issues scaling it for our needs.

The level of customer service and support has been very good to date. No complaints there.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward with some minor items that needed to be logged. The biggest issue we came across was if we forgot to reinitialize the MAC addresses of the network cards. If we forgot to do that, we had to go back and re-import the image to the Virtualbox. Setting up the network adaptors was a bit tricky, in the sense where we had to make sure we had enough adapters to do Bridged Adapters.

We implemented it in-house.

The ROI on it is obviously to our benefit as we are now able to deploy multiple PeopleSoft images to the Oracle VM and have everything (Web\App\DB\OSES) up and running normally in less than a day. That is a big time saver for us.

In our situation, the product came as part of our ERP license, therefore we cannot comment on that as its not a separate cost.

We did not evaluate any other solutions as the Oracle VM was part of our ERP deployment with the new release. It was a requirement and, as such, we implemented it accordingly.

I would say that in terms of implementing this product, it is definitely a powerful tool and what we are using it for is probably less than what it can be used for to maximize the return. Being able to run multiple images on this (Windows, OS X, Linux, Solaris, IBM OS\2 etc.) allows for deployments of multiple OS's and version for testing multiple products\scenarios.

From our use of it, the most valuable feature we've found is that it can quickly deploy new virtual machines.

We need to test our new features in virtual machines before deployment. With VM Virtualbox, we can try our software in virtual machines so that we can find errors, fix them, and then re-test, and we can do this over and over again. Because of this, the Snapshots feature is particularly useful and valuable for us.

If the system that you want to use for virtualization has no 64-bit support, you need to give it instructions on how to enable it through the Intel virtualization technology in BIOS.

I've used it for seven years.

We had no issues with the deployment.

We had no stability issues.

There have been no issues scaling it for our needs.

Technical support is very good. We can find everything we need to resolve our issues in the support pages online.

We used different products from different vendors, but we chose VirtualBox because it's easy to use and is very stable.

It was very simple to setup.

We implemented it with our in-house team.

We gained a lot of time in the testing phase of free software.

It's free.

I can't do everything I need for virtualization, for example like with vMotion or another solution. You will easily be able to use the software.

VirtualBox can import and export virtual machines in a usable format. It’s also very easy to change settings to fine tune the VM. Also, I can send a VM to a friend to test so they don’t have to install it or port it to my other computers.

In my personal lab, it helps me explore new Linux distributions or updates before actually installing them.

I’d like to see Oracle make it easy to drag and drop files between a VM and the host PC. That would help a lot in saving time transferring files.

I've used it for about six years.

I have had no issues deploying it.

I have had no issues with stability.

I've not had to scale it.

I haven't needed to use customer service.

I have not had to use tech support as there is plenty of information available online.

I used VirtualPC before, but VirtualBox is much better. It offers more configuration options in its settings, and we wanted an alternative to Microsoft products.

Getting used to working through the settings took some time to get the hang of, but after that, it flows smoothly usually.

As a home user, it’s free.

I would recommend that you use VirtualBox and experiment with different settings.

The most valuable feature for us is deployment of VMware (VMDK) as well as non-VMware (VDI) VMs because most of the test VMs run on ESXi. In our case, we can just switch back and forth by exporting the VM as a VMDK file, which can then be deployed on the ESXi/ VMware player.

Second valuable feature for us is the Virtual Media Manager where we can see all the disks attached to all the VMs and manage them at one place, which is not there in the commercial products as well.

A major improvement we've seen is in the testing of the applications before production deployment. Previously, we used to search for physical machines, install OS, and then install application. Now it runs as a VM where I have a OS exported and saved deployment is clean and easy.

I would like to see VirtualBox as an OS in itself. It boots first and then we get an option to load whichever OS we want on top of it. However, I am unsure if this already exists in some capacity.

I've been using it for close to six years, starting at college. I use it on both Windows and Linux and keep it updated.

There was no issues with the deployment.

Sometimes on the Windows version, the product hangs for reasons unknown, but the Linux version is very stable.

We have had no issues with the scaling.

I've never interacted with the customer service. All the information required was available in the documentation or in forums.

We we also use the VMware workstation, VMware Player.

It's very straightforward, I would say. Just click next couple of times and you are ready to go.

We did it in-house.

Go ahead and try all you can with this product, provided your hardware has enough juice as you can play around a lot with the product.

There are several features we've found valuable, the most valuable of which are --

• the simplicity of the solution;
• the fact that it's multi-platform; and
• it has easy-to-install applications.

It works, and there is active development of the product by Oracle so that it handles OVM templates.

An area of improvement would be the added ability to create the Oracle RAC clusters we now need to edit a properties file in order to make a VM disk sharable. It would be nice to be able to do that from the GUI.

I've been using it for personal use for self-education and training for Linux and Solaris administration, as well as for Oracle products like Database and WebLogic.

We've had no issues with deployment.

We've had no issues with stability.

We've had no issues with scalability.

As it's free, the price-per-performance ratio is a big plus.

The most valuable feature is the ability to spring up test environments quickly and in a reliable manner.

Oracle VirtualBox has enabled me to build testing and development environments which we could not have otherwise built.

From the host side, the Oracle VirtualBox could use more automation.

I have used Oracle VirtualBox for two years now.

We have not had any deployment issues so far.

There have been no issues with the stability.

It has been able to scale for our needs without issue.

The documentation for technical support is excellent.

I chose Oracle VirtualBox because it is easily available, free, and open source. It is also the industry standard for web development virtualization software.

Initially, the setup was straightforward with the exception of setting up the network. Documentation helped me to solve the problems though.

I implemented the solution using a vendor team. Make sure to reserve enough space for the virtual hard drive and make sure to set up the network settings correctly.

Our Return on Investment has been excellent.

Oracle VirtualBox is free.

If you are running multiple virtual machines at the same time, please make sure you have enough resources to do this.

The most valuable feature for us was the speed of setup. From zero to mere minutes, I can have something working.

It's nice that we can use it on Linux as we use it on Windows.

I'd like to see phpVirtualBox integration or something like that. VM Virtualbox lacks this feature and it would be nice to have web remote access on it.

I've used it for many years. I think I started with v2 or v3.

I think Linux had a little problem installing it, but nothing so important that I remember the specific problem.

There is an issue with stability only when I used it with phpVirtualBox.

We have had no issues scaling it for our needs.

I've never had to contact tech support, as the documentation was enough for me.

The initial setup was very simple.

We did it in-house.

As it's very simple and documentation is available, there are no problems with ROI in general.

There is the enterprise version, which I did not test because I did not need it. I remember that it was an interesting way to bulk sell about 50 or 100 licenses at one time. Of course, the price was way over what I had in mind to do with Virtualbox, so I just skipped. I think, also, that the open source version will cover all your needs until you need 50-100 licenses.

It's excellent for the speed of setup, to install/deploy/test things, but for serious work I prefer to work on Proxmox. I just loved it.