Virtualbox – Easy Virtualization solution

Introduction – VirtualBox is open source virtualization solution by Innotek GmbH (which is recently acquire by Sun Microsystem) for x86 hardware. Virtualization is a technique for hiding the physical characteristics of computing resources from the way in which other systems, applications, or end users interact with those resources. There are two types of virtualization…

• Platform virtualization – is the combination of hardware and software. On a given hardware platform by host software (a control program), which creates a simulated computer environment, a virtual machine, for its guest software. The guest software, which is often itself a complete operating system, runs just as if it were installed on a stand-alone hardware platform.

• Resource virtualization– is the process of virtualization of specific system resources, such as storage volumes, name spaces, and network resources. for e.g. Grid compiting, RAID devices, storage network, SAN , VPN etc.

VirtualBox is full virtualization which allows unmodified operating system with all of its installed software to run in a special environment, on top of your existing operating system. This environment, called a virtual machine, is created by the virtualization software by intercepting access to certain hardware components and certain features. The physical computer is then usually called the host, while the virtual machine is often called a guest. Guest operating system on virtual host runs same on the virtual box as it’s running on real machine.

VirtualBox is also different from so-called ‘paravirtualization’ solutions such as Xen, which require that the guest operating system be modified. In paravirtualization the virtual machine provides special API that can only be used by modifying Guest Operating System.

Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), and OpenBSD. You can download VirtualBox from URL http://virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads…

Thank you,

Arun

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