VMware vs. VirtualBox

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Tuesday, 01 January 2008

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First test was installing Windows XP SP2 Professional. To even things up I enabled audio and USB 2.0 support on VirtualBox as by default these are disabled. I switched VMware network adapter to NAT mode from its default of bridged network mode. VirtualBox can accomplished bridge network mode but you must do so manually after the instillation.

There was very little difference in the install times of each. Enabling IO APIC and VT-x/AMD-V in VirtualBox, however, more than doubled the install time. I didn't include the time, because I got tired of waiting. I will look into this more in the future.

After installation I installed VMware tools on VMware and Guest Additions on VirtualBox. These tools enable enhanced support and control of the virtual machines. For instance after the installation of the tools, you can move the mouse in and out of the virtual machine without it "capturing" the mouse. To release a captured mouse you have to press the software host-key (ctrl-alt in VMware and Right Ctrl on VirtualBox) to release to mouse back to the main OS. The installation of VMware tools also allows you to drag-and-drop files between your main system and the virtual system.

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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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