Oracle VM VirtualBox Reviews

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 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.

I can manage the VirtualBox images. It's a VirtualBox. We work with both VMware and VirtualBox. Linux-wise, I go with the VirtualBox. I don't go with the VMware, because of the simplicity. Especially when you're using Oracle Linux, you are matching the products together. The manageability of the virtual images is much better. That's what I like.

If I could maybe have cloud images, that would be awesome. It's going to be hard to manage cloud with a cloud, or image with an image, but hey, if it can be done, we can do that, too. Why not? You have mobility, so you can use something. You can have a server with all of the VirtualBoxes there and the images there. For example, if you are managing an application, you can use it from a touch of a screen. Why not?

I've been with this company since November 2015, and they've probably been using it for quite a longer time than I'm here. From my perspective, that's roughly a year.

It has been consistently stable over the past year. We didn't have any down time. All of the images were always perfectly done.

It's funny; sometimes one of the IT departments would say, "Well, why don't you convert your VirtualBox to VMware?" That means I have to redo the whole thing. So, I said, "Forget it. I'll stay with this one." Don't add more fire to a fire. Just leave it as it is. If it isn’t working, then maybe you try to put it out with water, but that doesn't work sometimes. Just stay where it is. It’s meant to be like that.

It is scalable. It does what we need to do with our images for our production, especially for the Linux images.

I don't really have any contact with support, because everything works fine. I haven’t had a chance to actually talk to them. Maybe not right now, but from previous engagements, I have some experience with Oracle support and also the community. I'm part of the OTN. I’ve been a partner of the OTN since before I joined my current company. Before that, for another engagement, they were using Oracle, and I decided I needed to know something. I logged in, I asked some questions, and people come on. That's how you learn. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

What are your needs? What is the most important for you? Then, we can show you what you can manage. The benefits: It's Oracle, so there you go. You have a VirtualBox. It's well-known. It's stable. I use it. If it works for me, it might as well work for you. Simple.

• 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.

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.

I use this for development tests only on my personal laptop.

I am able to perform small developing tests.

I like that it is free and runs on Linux/Ubuntu - I wouldn't use any other solution.

There are a few bugs that need to be updated.

I used this product very briefly on my Linux laptop.

I think that it is a stable solution. It is small, light, and can virtualize my development for testing.

I have not needed to use their support. I have been able to resolve issues myself and/or via Google search.

Initial setup was quite easy, took five minutes in total and I was able to do it by myself.

I would rate my ROI a four out of five.

No licensing is required as it is open-source.

I would recommend this solution for single users only - not for production servers or any other big servers.

We primarily use the solution to test our virtual infrastructure.

The solution works quickly.

We can install Oracle VM Manager and from this manager, we can create our VMs on the machine.

The solution needs to improve its flexibility. It's not as flexible as VMware.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We use the private cloud deployment model.

We're currently in the testing phase, but we're hoping to go into production soon.

We moved to using Oracle VM because we have a small license. We did not enough have licenses for all server cores. Oracle VM has an advanced feature for hard partitioning.

We're using the solution for the Oracle database but only on the Oracle application server.

I'd rate the solution six out of ten.