VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer for hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional quality virtualization solution that is also Open Source Software. VirtualBox is a powerful virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use.
VirtualBox provides are useful for several scenarios: Running multiple operating systems simultaneously. VirtualBox allows you to run more than one operating system at a time. This way, you can run software written for one operating system on another (for example, Windows software on Linux or a Mac) without having to reboot to use it.
Since you can configure what kinds of “virtual” hardware should be presented to each such operating system, you can install an old operating system such as DOS or OS/2 even if your real computer’s hardware is no longer supported by that operating system.
Software vendors can use virtual machines to ship entire software configurations. For example, installing a complete mail server solution on a real machine can be a tedious task. With VirtualBox, such a complex setup (then often called an “appliance”) can be packed into a virtual machine. Installing and running a mail server becomes as easy as importing such an appliance into VirtualBox.
Testing and disaster recovery.
Once installed, a virtual machine and its virtual hard disks can be considered a “container” that can be arbitrarily frozen, woken up, copied, backed up, and transported between hosts. On top of that, with the use of another VirtualBox feature called “snapshots”, one can save a particular state of a virtual machine and revert back to that state, if necessary. This way, one can freely experiment with a computing environment.
If something goes wrong (e.g. after installing misbehaving software or infecting the guest with a virus), one can easily switch back to a previous snapshot and avoid the need of frequent backups and restores. Any number of snapshots can be created, allowing you to travel back and forward in virtual machine time. You can delete snapshots while a VM is running to reclaim disk space.
Supported OS: Windows Server 2008, Server 2008 R2, Server 2012, Server 2012 R2, Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, Windows 10 (32-bit and 64-bit).
Mac OS X hosts (64-bits): 10.9 (Mavericks), 10.10 (Yosemite), 10.11 (El Capitan), 10.12 (Sierra).
Linux hosts (32-bit and 64-bit): Ubuntu 12.04 to 16.10, Debian GNU/Linux 7 (“Wheezy”) and 8 (“Jessie”), Oracle Enterprise Linux 5, Oracle Linux 6 and 7, Redhat Enterprise Linux 5, 6 and 7, Fedora Core / Fedora 6 to 25, Gentoo Linux, openSUSE 11.4 to 13.2.
Changes in VirtualBox 6.1.26 (2021-07-28):
- VMSVGA: fixed VM screen artifacts after restoring from saved state
- Storage: Fixed audio endianness for certain CUE sheet CD/DVD images.
- VBoxHeadless: Running VM will save its state on host shutdown
- VBoxManage: Fix OS detection for Ubuntu 20.10 ISO with unattended install
- Linux Additions: Fixed mouse pointer offsetting issue for VMSVGA graphics adapter in multi-monitor VM setup (6.1.24 regression)
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