Sun VirtualBox 3.1

With 20 million total downloads and some 40,000 downloads per day, Sun VirtualBox has become a major, general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional-quality virtualization solution that is also Open Source Software.

A significant new release, VirtualBox 3.1, improves performance and adds significant new features, which Bob Netherton lists as:

Live Migration of a VM session from one host to another (Teleportation)

VM states can now be restored from arbitrary snapshots and new snapshots can be taken from any snapshots (Branched Snapshots)

2D video acceleration for Windows guests using the host video hardware for overlay stretching and color conversion

CD/DVD drives can be attached to arbitrary storage controllers

More than one CD/DVD drive per guest VM

The network attachment type can be changed while a VM is running

New experimental USB support for OpenSolaris hosts (OpenSolaris/Nevada build 124 and later)

Performance improvements for PAE and AMD64 guests when using non-nested paging (VT-x and AMD-V only)

Experimental support for EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface)

Support for paravirtualized network adapters (virtio-net)

"Today's enterprises expect to deliver a 24/7, always available, computing service. The ability to teleport running virtual machines from one computer to another allows system administrators to perform essential maintenance with zero downtime of their IT systems. As a cross-platform hypervisor, VirtualBox allows customers to easily evaluate and deploy virtualized systems, using their existing x86 hardware, operating systems and skillsets," said Jim McHugh, vice president Datacenter Software marketing at Sun. "The relentless progress of VirtualBox, in terms of product innovation, as well as adoption numbers and speed and frequency of releases, shows Sun's commitment and investment in pervasive virtualization from the desktop to the datacenter."

By adding Teleportation and significant performance increases to its already impressive SMP and large workload capabilities, VirtualBox 3.1 now exhibits a full complement of enterprise hypervisor features. Teleportation helps virtual machines achieve high availability. When physical hardware needs to be taken down, the virtual workload can simply be teleported to another physical host. VirtualBox 3.1 also improves execution speed, with optimized memory handling delivering performance increases of 30% over the previous VirtualBox release; network performance, delivering increased throughput, while reducing CPU cycles, through a new high-speed, paravirtualized network driver; and display performance via a new 2D Video Acceleration feature for Windows guests. In addition, VirtualBox 3.1 offers new more powerful snapshotting features that help administrators move a virtual machine back or forward in time to any arbitrary snapshot state.

"Our customers expect that service downtimes are as short as possible," said Andre Apelt, consultant at the German credativ GmbH. "Teleporting the virtual machines from one computer to another, steps in here as an outstanding helpful feature: it enables us to have zero downtime during essential maintenance."

At just 50 megabytes per download, VirtualBox is easy to download and test.

Key Features