3 features overview, Features overview – Sun Microsystems VIRTUALBOX VERSION 3.1.0_BETA2 User Manual
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1 First steps
1.3 Features overview
Here’s a brief outline of VirtualBox’s main features:
•
Portability. VirtualBox runs on a large number of 32-bit and 64-bit host oper-
ating systems (again, see chapter
Supported host operating systems
, page
for details).
To a very large degree, VirtualBox is functionally identical on all of the host
platforms, and the same file and image formats are used. This allows you to
run virtual machines created on one host on another host with a different host
operating system; for example, you can create a virtual machine on Windows
and then run it under Linux.
In addition, virtual machines can easily be imported and exported using the
Open Virtualization Format (OVF, see chapter
, page
), an industry standard created for this purpose. You can
even import OVFs that were created with a different virtualization software.
•
No hardware virtualization required. For many scenarios, 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. More
details can be found in chapter
“Acceleration” tab: hardware vs. software
, page
•
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). VirtualBox can present up to 32 virtual
CPUs to a virtual machine, irrespective of how many CPU cores are actually
present in your host.
– USB 2.0 device support. VirtualBox implements a virtual USB controller
and allows you to connect arbitrary USB devices to your virtual machines
without 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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