Sun Microsystems' xVM VirtualBox, a no-cost virtualization tool that enables
virtual machines to run on a variety of standard operating systems, continues
to improve its position as a potential challenger to workstation products from
VMware and Parallels.
Sun released Version 3.0 of xVM VirtualBox on June 30 and added symmetric
multiprocessing (SMP) as the major new
feature.
I tested VirtualBox 3.0 on a Sun Fire x4170 server running Windows Server
2008 64-bit and equipped with 12GB of RAM
and two quad-core Intel Xeon x5570 "Nehalem" processors. On this
machine, I was able to create guests with up to 16 virtual CPUs by taking
advantage of hardware-enabled hyperthreading. I also tested it on a Lenovo
T400s laptop running Windows Vista and equipped with an Intel Centrino Core 2
Duo CPU and 2GB of RAM, and on a Mac mini
running OS X to run Windows XP.
In all cases, xVM VirtualBox installed and ran without problems. When I
tried to assign virtual processors to a guest on the Lenovo notebook I was
warned to enable I/O APICs (Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controllers) to
avoid IRQ sharing.
xVM VirtualBox did not prevent me from assigning more virtual processors
than were available on the physical host. In the case of the Sun Fire x4170 I
was able to assign 32 virtual cores to a guest even though that was twice the
number of available cores. And even that was "cheating" by using
hyperthreading to double my eight physical cores. The user documentation
clearly indicated that virtual cores should not exceed actual available
physical cores.
Aside from SMP, xVM VirtualBox consists
mostly of tweaks to existing features, including experimental support for
hardware 3-D acceleration by supporting DirectX 8/9 and OpenGL programming
interfaces. While "no cost" is the most compelling reason to look at
xVM VirtualBox, the addition of SMP support
along with the relatively quick tempo of product development—Version 2.2.4 was
released at the end of May—recommends the product as a serious platform of IT
pros.
Beyond the feature additions and improvements, there is a long list of bug
fixes that include patches for various guest performance problems and for
issues regarding the way VirtualBox handles the importing and exporting of OVF
(Open Virtualization Format) virtual appliances. For the full list of
VirtualBox 3.0 changes, see http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog.
In addition to Windows and OS X, VirtualBox supports Linux, Solaris and
OpenSolaris as host operating systems. VirtualBox is available for free
download at http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads.
Technical Director Cameron Sturdevant can be reached at csturdevant@eweek.com.
Virtualization Technology News & Reviews 
