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Gleb Reys December 17, 2009 Leave a Comment

VirtualBox 3.1

Just getting around to have a look at VirtualBox 3.1, which is yet another major update to the great free desktop virtualization from Sun Microsystems.

Top 3 things to try in VirtualBox 3.1

Here are the top 3 things I personally think VirtualBox 3.1 will be popular for:

Teleportation – a new term coined by VirtualBox team for live migration. This allows you to migrate a live VM environment from one host to another. Traditionally being a feature of only the most advanced server-grade virtualization solutions, live migration is surely a welcome feature in VirtualBox.  For those who haven't tried it yet, live VM means it's up and running and live migration implies your VM keeps functioning and is fully accessible throughout the migration – an obvious improvement from previous "shut down VM on host1, start it up on host2".

Improved management of VM states on the snapshot level – apparently, you can now restore your VM state from any snapshot and not just the latest one. Starting with VirtualBox 3.1, it is also possible to branch snapshots out – take snapshots of a any given snapshots.

Paravirtualized network adapters (virtio) support – this is a great feature which allows you to use the well-known virtio network adapter by KVM instead of a standard driver software emulating the hardware of a network card. In short, this allows your VMs to use a highly optimized software solution for virtual network cards.

See also:

  • VirtualBox on Desktop Virtualization pages
  • VirtualBox website
  • VirtualBox web console

Filed Under: Sun Microsystems Tagged With: kvm, virtualbox

Gleb Reys June 30, 2009 2 Comments

VirtualBox 3.0 Released!

Sun xVM VirtualBox

Sun xVM VirtualBox

Right on time, the next major VirtualBox version is released – VirtualBox 3.0.0!

Major changes in VirtualBox 3.0

The two major improvements in VirtualBox 3.0 can be summed up like this:

  • multi-processor VMs – guest SMP with up to 32 virtual CPUs (VT-x and AMD-V only)
  • graphics improvements: Direct3D 8/9 (Windows guests only) and OpenGL 2.0 (Windows, Linux and Solaris guests)

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Sun Microsystems Tagged With: Sun Microsystems, sun virtualbox, sun xvm, virtualbox, xvm virtualbox

Gleb Reys April 9, 2009 Leave a Comment

VirtualBox 2.2: OpenGL for Linux and Solaris guests

Sun xVM VirtualBox

Sun xVM VirtualBox

Another update for VirtualBox was released yesterday: VirtualBox 2.2.

OpenGL for Linux and Solaris guests

If you remember, 3D acceleration was introduced for Windows XP guests in VirtualBox 2.1, and now similar functionality had been ported for Linux and Solaris VMs. A quick experiment shows almost 4x performance improvement for 3D between VirtualBox 2.1.2 and VirtualBox 2.2 – I've simply booted Ubuntu live cd and used glxgears to get some idea about the efficiency of new 3D acceleration support. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Sun Microsystems, Virtualization News Tagged With: virtualbox

Gleb Reys December 19, 2008 Leave a Comment

VirtualBox 2.1.0

Sun xVM VirtualBox

Sun xVM VirtualBox

Another major release of Sun xVM VirtualBox, the 2.1.0 version, is now available for download.

From the list of major improvements, I'd like to highlight comment a few. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Sun Microsystems Tagged With: Sun Microsystems, virtualbox, xvm

Gleb Reys September 9, 2008 Leave a Comment

VirtualBox 2.0

Sun xVM VirtualBox

Sun xVM VirtualBox

Finally, I have the time to confirm one of the releases I've been waiting for: VirtualBox, a desktop virtualization by Sun Microsystems, turned 2.0 last week and you can download VirtualBox 2.0 right now!

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Sun Microsystems Tagged With: Sun Microsystems, virtualbox, xvm

Gleb Reys June 6, 2008 Leave a Comment

Just released: Sun xVM VirtualBox 1.6.2

Virtual Box

Sun Microsystems has just released the maintenance update to VirtualBox product, so xVM VirtualBox 1.6.2 is available for download.

Looks like version 1.6.2 is well worth the upgrade, at least for 64-bit PCs. I'm also happy to see many of Linux and Solaris host-related fixes, the stability of VirtualBox has really improved since version 1.5.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Sun Microsystems Tagged With: Sun Microsystems, virtualbox, xvm

Gleb Reys February 13, 2008 2 Comments

VirtualBox To Join the xVM family (Sun acquires innotek)

VirtualBox Innotek Logo

Sun Microsystems has just announced the agreement to acquire innotek, a Germany-based provider of an open source desktop virtualization software called VirtualBox.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Sun Microsystems Tagged With: desktop virtualization, innotek, Sun Microsystems, virtualbox, virtualization, xvm

Gleb Reys January 9, 2008 Leave a Comment

VMmark results page: virtual performance comparison

Seeing that Sun Microsystems just entered the official VMmark results page, I thought I would share the news here and explain what VMmark is.

VMmark is the first industry-standard virtualization benchmark – a free product from VMware which allows you to test the performance of your virtual environment by running various workload scenarios on your virtual appliances.

Just like in conventional TPC-based testing, there is a server which runs the workload scenario, and there clients which interact with it triggering different developments of such scenarios.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Sun Microsystems, VMware

Gleb Reys January 3, 2008 2 Comments

Windows XP running inside Solaris xVM

Windows XP running inside Solaris xVM

Finally, I've got a chance to try the in action. As an experiment, I've installed Windows XP inside a fully virtualized xVM domU on an OpenSolaris build 79 – please click the thumbnail to see a full screenshot.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Sun Microsystems Tagged With: solaris, Sun Microsystems, xvm

Gleb Reys December 21, 2007 Leave a Comment

Webiste update: Sun Virtualization section

I've just created the Sun Microsystems section on this website. A former employee of Sun and a big fan of its Solaris OS, I'm really excited to learn new virtualization solutions available and to share my findings with you.

Please visit the section: Sun Microsystems.

See also:

  • Solaris xVM
  • Desktop and Server Virtualization with Sun xVM

Filed Under: Sun Microsystems

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See Also

  • Unix Tutorial
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  • Unix Tutorial Digest
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Books you should read

  • Mastering VMware vSphere 4 (Computer/Tech)
  • vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide: Shortcuts down the path of Virtualization
  • Virtualizing Microsoft Tier 1 Applications with VMware vSphere 4

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Basic Unix Commands

Basic Unix Commands
  • ls command
  • mkdir command
  • man command in unix
  • cd command - change directory
  • uname command

Useful links

  • Solaris Blog
  • Unix Tutorial Unix Tutorials and System Administation Tips

Unix/Linux Reference

Unix Reference
  • check CentOS version
  • check Raspbian version
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Advanced Unix Commands

Advanced Unix Commands
  • ln command - symlinks
  • tune2fs unix command - filesystem parameters
  • du command - disk usage
  • lsb_release command
  • find unix command

Virtualization Glossary

  • VDI
  • Virtual Machine
  • Sun xVM suite

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