VMware vs. VirtualBox

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Tuesday, 01 January 2008

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Windows 2000 as Guest OS on Vista VMmare and VirtualBox are both virtual machine software suites for x86 and x64 computers. They allow you to run a "virtual" or guest operating system (OS) inside your main (host) OS. For example you could run Debian Linux as your main OS while running a complete version of Vista in a separate window on your desktop. Additionally, the guest system can comprise of different hardware. You could create three virtual hard drives and two optical drives on your virtual computer. Currently, the top three offerings in the virtual machine market are VMware, Virtual PC, and VirtualBox. I used to use Virtual PC, but felt it went downhill fast after Microsoft acquired the technology in 2003. At that point, I switched to VMware 5 and haven't looked back until today.

For some, virtual machines allow them to use their OS of choice while still allowing them access to applications that wouldn't be available otherwise. For instance, a Debian user could run a Windows XP guest system and use Intuit's Quickbooks. There are endless possibilities. I mainly use virtual machines as a test bed. As a software developer it allows me to test applications on other operating systems. I might be developing an application on Vista x64, but would like to know that it runs smoothly on Windows 2000. Additionally it allows me to test suspicious files (i.e. virus) without worrying of any ill effects it may have on my primary (host) machine. I'm certain others have more elaborate uses for virtual computing, but you have an idea of how I use a virtual machine.

Today I thought I would test VMware Workstation 6.0.2 (Oct. 19, 2007) against VirtualBox 1.5.4 (Dec 29, 2007) to see if either presented an advantage over the other for my typical use. My test system was an ASUStek P5N32-SLI Deluxe with an Intel Q6600, 8GB DDR2 RAM, and Raptor 150 hard drives. VMware and VirtualBox were both installed on my C: drive and their respective images and virtual files located on D:.

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5 Comments


Runfer January 04, 2008	Very informative. Thanks.

StephenB January 04, 2008	Agreed, very informative. Thanks. I am really curious how MS Virtual PC now measures compared to the other two given the time since the last use. I've tried using VMware Player, which is supposed to be able to use Virtual PC vmc and vhc files, but this resulted in an error message. Perhaps because I'm comfortable with Virtual PC I've continued to use it. Stephen

Ravi March 02, 2008	What about CPU Utilization when both host and guest OSes are idle? That would help me make a choice. Thanks

Bryan May 02, 2008	This is pretty good comparison, but I think it would be more productive to compare apples to apples by putting the free VMware server up against VirtualBox. I am willing to bet that VMware has cut back on some of the performance stats on the free version to try to get people to buy the Workstation or ESX Server. Also, VirtualBox has some other "enhancements" over VMware since VMware has no seamless mode (at least not in the free version) which I find very useful when running Windows apps on my Ubuntu box. Good article though, I really liked the charts... pictures are always good...

Phil May 08, 2008	Under "file system" graph: why is lower transfer speed described as being better? Why no testing of both SCSI and ATA emulation?

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