As a consequence, a virtual machine or disk image created on one host can be loaded and run on any supported host. The modular design of VirtualBox provides a consistent set of features across a wide range of host platforms. If the system has Intel VT-x or AMD-V hardware virtualization extensions and they are enabled in the BIOS, VirtualBox can take advantage of these items and provide even better guest operational behavior. No special hardware is required to run VirtualBox, other than an Intel x86-compatible system and adequate memory to run the guests. There are no specific limitations on the guest operating system, but supported guests include all of the host operating systems plus FreeBSD, OS/2, and legacy Windows versions (NT, Windows 98, Windows 3.1, DOS). Linux distributions, including SuSE 9 and newer, Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and newer, and othersįigure 5.1 Platforms Supported by Oracle VM VirtualBox.Microsoft Windows (XP, Vista, 7) and Windows Server 20.Solaris 10 5/08 and newer, and OpenSolaris 2008.05 and newer.Binaries are available for these operating systems, most of them in 32-bit and 64-bit versions: VirtualBox includes a hypervisor for the host platform, an application programming interface (API) and software development kit (SDK) for managing guest virtual machines, a command-line tool for managing guests locally, a web service for remote management of guests, a wizard-style graphical tool to manage guests, a graphical console for displaying guest applications on the local host, and a built-in Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) server that provides complete access to a guest from a remote client.Īs shown in Figure 5.1, VirtualBox can run on a wide variety of host platforms. As a hosted hypervisor, it extends the existing operating system installed on the hardware rather than replacing it. Designed for use on Intel and AMD x86 systems, Oracle VM VirtualBox can be deployed on desktop or server hardware. Oracle VM VirtualBox ('VirtualBox') is a high-performance, cross-platform virtualization engine for use on computers running Microsoft Windows, the most popular Linux distributions, Oracle Solaris, or MacOS.

Oracle Solaris 10 System Virtualization Essentials

Oracle virtualization