Oracle VM VirtualBox Reviews

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.

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.

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)

This product is very user-friendly and easy to use.

It has a good user manual and it's easy to find information about it.

When I select the Ubuntu operating system from within the virtual machine, it sometimes hangs. There are times when I need to reboot the system to resolve the problem. I have 64 gig RAM in my machine, and an i7 processor, so there is no issue as far as memory is concerned.

I have been using Oracle VM VirtualBox for approximately six months.

There are not very many bugs in the application.

There are between 15 and 20 students using this product. This is going to be expanding in the future because we are doing several migrations in the environment.

I have not been in touch with technical support. Since it's open-source, I just downloaded it from the internet and we are using it fine.

This is an open-source product and it can be used free of charge.

This is a product that I suggest to people because it's free of cost, open-source, very user-friendly, and all of the information for the end-user is available in the manual.

In summary, this is a good product but there is always room for improvement.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for virtual machines for Oracle databases.

The solution's most valuable feature is its stability.

Oracle needs to improve its hot virtual machine migration. It didn't work as intended. It should allow us to migrate between virtual machines, without stopping the database.

The solution is stable.

I don't have enough information to gauge the solution's level of scalability. Our set up was in a controlled environment without scalability issues. We had an initial load, which was quite controlled, so we didn't test scalability with it. We just have our team, five people, using the solution.

We haven't needed to contact technical support. The consultant we used for the implementation answered any questions we had.

The initial setup has a moderate level of difficulty. Out of ten, I'd rate it at a five. It does depend on the project itself - whether it is simple or more complicated.

We used the services of an outside consultant to help us do the initial planning of the process as well as the installation and set up of the virtual machine.

We are using the on-premises deployment model.

I would recommend the solution for licensing purposes if you are using an Oracle database. Otherwise, I would recommend clients to consider different platforms. The Oracle VM has the advantage of being free, so you only pay for support. It's very cheap, but I don't think it's very good as VMware.

I'd rate the solution six out of ten.

I use it to test new technologies on my desktop. I also teach virtual machines, so I give demos or training programs. I can show people how servers work. So I use it for training purposes.

The features that VirtualBox offers me are the same as VMware or Hyper-V. They create a snapshot of virtual machines so you can create test environments. You can go back to the original machine and you don't have to reinstall and do all of the work again. It saves you a lot of time. 

It is great for creating test environments.

The user interface I find to be lacking. If you compare it with VMware or Hyper-V,  you have lots of room for improvement. I think that VirtualBox should be more user-friendly.

Sometimes it is not quite good. I have to research answers to re-stabilize the product I would give it a rating of eight out of ten in terms of stability.

It is very good. I think there is a lot of things you can do with it. But as I said, I've been using it for production only for desktops and test purposes and training purposes. I think if we hire more employees in the company, we will have them use it as well. It is free when you use it for desktop purposes and training purposes. As long as you're not using it for production, you don't have to pay for it. I think as long as we get new employees in our company they most likely will be using VirtualBox.

The tech support is very good. I would rate it nine out of ten. 

The user interface I find to be the, lacking something say.  If you compare it with VMware or Hyper-V, the Oracle VirtualBox you has lots room for improvement 

To install the VirtualBox it doesn't take much. In 10 minutes you
are done. But to create the virtual machines, you have to create the virtual
machine, create the upper tier storage, create all the installations of the
operating system and  applications you want to put on the virtual machine. That
takes some time. It also takes patience to work on each machine. You must determine which installations go first, and which are easiest to create. 

Pricing does not apply for us, we do not have to pay for the service.

I do use Hyper-V and VMware. But, if you are using VMware for your desktop, and you want a management consult, you have to pay for it and it's pricey. And, Hyper-V's management is not really that great. But, Oracle VirtualBox is a perfect fit for us. You don't pay for it, and it doesn't really ask too much from your computer. For instance, if I had installed Hyper-V on my computer and I want to use Oracle VirtualBox, I don't have to change the settings on the computer. If I start VirtualBox, I can use anything else without any problems. I find that VirtualBox gives me more advantages than the other products.

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.