This presentation enumerates some technical aspects of Virtualbox. And evalutate this solution for different scenarios.

1. Gestão Integrada de Redes e Sistemas
“A general-purpose full virtualizer
for x86 hardware, targeted at server,
desktop and embedded use”
Miguel Luís mluis@ua.pt / Bruno Faria bruno.faria@ua.pt /
Filipe Oliveira filipeferreira@ua.pt
Universidade de Aveiro

2. Summary
- About VirtualBox
- Tests
- Test Results
- Conclusion
Miguel Luís mluis@ua.pt / Bruno Faria bruno.faria@ua.pt /
Filipe Oliveira filipeferreira@ua.pt
Universidade de Aveiro

3. Characteristics
portabilidade (MacOSX, Linux, Solaris, Windows )32/64bits
X hardware de virtualização
Guest Additions: shared folders(host/guest), hardware-accelerated graphics, seamless
windows, guest properties (request properties from a running guest), guest control(start
applications inside a VM from the host system; automate software deployment within the
guest)
Memory overcommitment: Memory balooning, Page fusion
Great hardware support: guest multiprocessing(SMP) up to 32 CPUs per VM
irrespective of how many on the host, USB, hardware compatibility like IDE,SCSI and SATA
controllers, virtual network cards, I/O APIC
Miguel Luís mluis@ua.pt / Bruno Faria bruno.faria@ua.pt /
Filipe Oliveira filipeferreira@ua.pt
Universidade de Aveiro

4. Characteristics
Full ACPI support
Multiscreen resolutions
Built-in iSCSI support
PXE Network boot
Multigeneration branched snapshots
Clean architecture; unprecedented modularity: easy to control it from
several interfaces at once; GUI/command line control; virtualbox programming interface;
SDK
Remote machine display (RDP):plugged directly into the virtualization layer wich
means it works on guests other than Windows and do not require application support in the
VM
Miguel Luís mluis@ua.pt / Bruno Faria bruno.faria@ua.pt /
Filipe Oliveira filipeferreira@ua.pt
Universidade de Aveiro

5. Characteristics
Winlogon and PAM for RDP authentication
USB over RDP: connect arbitrary USB devices locally to a virtual machine which is
running remotely on a VirtualBox RDP server
VirtualBox can import and export virtual machines in the industry-standard Open
Virtualization Format (OVF)
Teleportation: move a running virtual machine or application between different
physical machines without disconnecting the client or application
Miguel Luís mluis@ua.pt / Bruno Faria bruno.faria@ua.pt /
Filipe Oliveira filipeferreira@ua.pt
Universidade de Aveiro

6. Power! Ease-of-Use xoxo*
Miguel Luís mluis@ua.pt / Bruno Faria bruno.faria@ua.pt /
Filipe Oliveira filipeferreira@ua.pt
Universidade de Aveiro

7. Scenario & Tests
Using Geekbench and two similar hosts , one with Windows and other
with Linux both running two VirtualBox VM, we runned several scenario
tests where we tryed to see the impact of the Virtualization in both host
and guests.
We also tested the impact of creating IO (using Bonnie++) in one
guest in both guestsand host performance.
Miguel Luís mluis@ua.pt / Bruno Faria bruno.faria@ua.pt /
Filipe Oliveira filipeferreira@ua.pt
Universidade de Aveiro

8. Test results
Running a VirtualMachine on a Windows or Linux host won't affect the
performance, the results were the same running in the host or in the VM.
Although using the stress mode on the benchmark we noticed the results
were a bit lower overall and a bit less running in the VM.
Miguel Luís mluis@ua.pt / Bruno Faria bruno.faria@ua.pt /
Filipe Oliveira filipeferreira@ua.pt
Universidade de Aveiro

9. Test results
When we ran two VM's on the same host we noticed a decrease of
performance specially if we were running some kind of stress or work on one
the machines.
When we used Bonnie to do some IO weight on the machines we did not
noticed a big change on the benchmark but the machine's CPU became
really slow.
Equal results were shown on both linux and windows hosts again.
Miguel Luís mluis@ua.pt / Bruno Faria bruno.faria@ua.pt /
Filipe Oliveira filipeferreira@ua.pt
Universidade de Aveiro

10. Conclusions
User friendly:
Good GUI interface:
it's easy to create and manage the Virtual Machines;
Good CLI interface:
gives us a more simple use of advanced features;
Portability;
Compatibility:
It's compatible with a lot of hardware, and software
○ It can create and manage virtual disks from other virtualization software.
(VMWare, VirtualPC and Parallels)
Miguel Luís mluis@ua.pt / Bruno Faria bruno.faria@ua.pt /
Filipe Oliveira filipeferreira@ua.pt
Universidade de Aveiro

11. Conclusions
It lacks of a solution to manage multiple VMs at the same time.
● There are some third-party applications that try to do it, some of them by creating
scripts and using the CLI interface of VirtualBox.
Very bad performances under I/O stress
Miguel Luís mluis@ua.pt / Bruno Faria bruno.faria@ua.pt /
Filipe Oliveira filipeferreira@ua.pt
Universidade de Aveiro

12. Final thoughts
It is a good virtualization solution, to use at home or a small company;
It has a lot of user friendly features, than enhance the user experience;
But it's not advisable for a Datacenter;
Miguel Luís mluis@ua.pt / Bruno Faria bruno.faria@ua.pt /
Filipe Oliveira filipeferreira@ua.pt
Universidade de Aveiro