Oracle VM VirtualBox Reviews

I use Oracle VM VirtualBox mainly for testing guest environments and to test beta machines before they go in production environment. I also simulate configuration before the production environment to test some optionality.

I have found that cost metric manager is an interesting implementation of the network environment and it enables me to reproduce production environments.

The technical support needs to improve.

I think VirtualBox has good stability because I use it in an environment with several resolutions. VirtualBox is able to use the full functionality and the powerfulness of the server I installed VirtualBox on this environment. So I, at the moment, I'm satisfied with the stability of the VirtualBox environment. I'm able to run several guest environments on one node.

The solution is scalable because I can run several guest environments on one node.

I very rarely need support in VirtualBox because I utilize the documentation provided by Oracle. In my experience, I have never opened a service request for VirtualBox functionality because I find myself to work around what I need to run my environment. This is also due to the fact that I use VirtualBox in a lab environment and not in a production environment. So, for me, the technical support is not critical. 

I will rate this solution an eight out of ten due to its environmental guide. For the next release I think the developer should work on reliability and security. But it is a good product. 

We have two primary use cases. We have one or two data bases. We were using it for our hospitality system and also for testing.

The most valuable aspects of the solution were the support and performance of the product and the flexibility it gives you to work.

The solution has to do a better job of promoting the product and its licensing capabilities.

In terms of stability, if we would have used it in the production, then I would have been able to comment on that. Since we used it only for the development environment and just for the testing it would be difficult to comment. We only used the solution for three months.

The solution is scalable. Nowadays all products are scalable. The scalability basically depends on the hardware and software. However, when you're talking about product, 90% of the products are scalable.

We didn't need to reach out to technical support during testing, so I do not have any experience with them.

The initial setup had a moderate amount of difficulty. We had to first study the product and then deploy it. The team didn't have hands-on experience on the product before. This was the first time we were trying it out.

We handled the implementation ourselves.

We use the on-premises deployment model.

Whether I would recommend the solution depends on the preference of the person who is going to handle the environment. If they're more comfortable with a product they have worked on, then they may go for VMware or Hyper-V. But if they are open to having a more license controlled environment, then definitely they will want to go with Oracle.

I'd rate the solution six out of ten.

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.

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.

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'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.

It allows me to run VMs on my laptop. I am able to develop and test my infrastructure automation scripts locally before running in production. Also, I do Java programming, so I can set up VM for my projects and scrap it once projects are finished -- with backup, of course.

We used to be making changes on servers, especially for infrastructure changes. It is difficult to maintain and roll back. Sometimes there are multiple possible solutions and we want to try all of them to find out the best one. Virtualbox gives us the peace of mind to try whatever crazy things that we want to. Just take a snapshot, try it, and restore. Easy and fast.

Networking options need improvement. Once I had an idea to move my development work into Ubuntu, however it is not possible to run VM within VM. The solution is to play around with the networking so that all VMs run within the same network and use one of them as a master node. But sometimes I need to test the scripts to run in a different network. I couldn't find an easy solution for that situation.

I've used it for two years at work, and if you consider exploratory work, close to three years.

We had no issues with the deployment.

Sometimes a VM doesn't start normally and I have to reinstall the product. It could be a combination of Windows' and Virtualbox's issues.

We haven't scaled it as I'm only using it on my laptop.

I've never had to use customer service.

I've not had to contact technical support, but the community support is good.

We previously used VMware. Virtualbox is easier to install when I already have a host OS. I don't need another client to connect to it.

The initial setup is straightforward. Just download the installer and install.

We implemented it in-house. For infrastructure-as-code, try to combine Virtualbox with other tools such as Chef and Vagrant.

I am not using the paid version so I can't comment.

Just go ahead and try it out. Again, combine it with Chef, Vagrant and Git, which will make your life much easier in the long run.

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.