Sun Microsystems VIRTUALBOX 3.0.0 User Manual
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1 Introduction
•
Clean architecture; unprecedented modularity. VirtualBox has an extremely
modular design with well-defined internal programming interfaces and a clean
separation of client and server code. This makes it easy to control it from several
interfaces at once: for example, you can start a VM simply by clicking on a
button in the VirtualBox graphical user interface and then control that machine
from the command line, or even remotely. See chapter
, page
for details.
Due to its modular architecture, VirtualBox can also expose its full functionality
and configurability through a comprehensive software development kit (SDK),
which allows for integrating every aspect of VirtualBox with other software sys-
tems. Please see chapter
VirtualBox programming interfaces
, page
for
details.
•
No hardware virtualization required. As explained in the previous chapter, in
most cases, VirtualBox does not require the processor features built into newer
hardware like Intel VT-x or AMD-V. As opposed to many other virtualization
solutions, you can therefore use VirtualBox even on older hardware where these
features are not present.
•
Guest Additions: shared folders, seamless windows, 3D virtualization. The
VirtualBox Guest Additions are software packages which can be installed inside
of supported guest systems to improve their performance and to provide addi-
tional integration and communication with the host system. After installing the
Guest Additions, a virtual machine will support automatic adjustment of video
resolutions, seamless windows, accelerated 3D graphics and more. The Guest
Additions are described in detail in chapter
, page
In particular, Guest Additions provide for “shared folders”, which let you access
files from the host system from within a guest machine. Shared folders are
described in chapter
, page
•
Great hardware support. Among others, VirtualBox supports:
– Guest multiprocessing (SMP). Starting with version 3.0, VirtualBox can
present up to 32 virtual CPUs to a virtual machine.
– Hardware compatibility. VirtualBox virtualizes a vast array of virtual de-
vices, among them many devices that are typically provided by other virtu-
alization platforms – including an Input/Output Advanced Programmable
Interrupt Controller (I/O APIC) which is found in many modern PC sys-
tems. This eases cloning of PC images from real machines or 3rd party
virtual machines into VirtualBox.
– USB device support. VirtualBox implements a virtual USB controller and
allows you to connect arbitrary USB devices to your virtual machines with-
out having to install device-specific drivers on the host. USB support is not
limited to certain device categories. For details, see chapter
, page
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