[olug] VMWare Player vs VirtualBox

[Dan Linder]

I use the GUI on these virtual systems a lot (both Linux and Windows).  I
did play with the RDP display option with VirtualBox, but it just seemed
like a lot of extra overhead and didn't speed up the screen interaction at
all.

When I finally get my home server setup, I might play with vSphere/Xen/KVM.

Dan

On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 13:44, Jason N <dashrender at cox.net> wrote:

> If you have a spare box lieing around, why not try Vmware's Free vSphere
> Hypervisor (formerly ESXi) or Xen or Xenserver (Citrix)?
>
>
> ---- Dan Linder <dan at linder.org> wrote:
> I've been a long-time user of VMWare Workstation and Player, and have used
> VirtualBox a bit, but never really compared them back-to-back.  Since I was
> needing to setup some testing systems, I decided to give VirtualBox a try.
>  Just some background, my host system is a Ubuntu 10.04 system, 12GB RAM,
> and an AMD Phenom II X4 cpu.
>
> For the tests, I installed the latest version of both:
>  * VMware Player version 3.1.3 - http://www.vmware.com/vmplayer
>  * VirtualBox version 3.2.10 - http://www.virtualbox.org/
>
> <http://www.virtualbox.org/>Both installed easily, but both were a manual
> process.  The Ubuntu 10.04 repository only has VirtualBox 3.2.8 so I had to
> find notes on installing the latest 3.2.10 version.  VMware is a single
> download of a 99MB "bundle" file (actually a shell script), and running it
> as root got it up and running.
>
> Functionally both achieve the same thing and allow you to run multiple
> guest
> OS's in windows on your host system.  You can configure how much RAM,
> number
> of CPUs, etc each virtual machine see, then load the OS of choice onto them
> and start running.  I'll let you do the actual point-by-point comparison of
> the supported OS's and features - in short, most users will find that both
> achieve the same goal.
>
> Both are free to use for personal use.
>
> I have these comments:
>  * Under CentOS 5.5 x64, when I open a terminal window and hold down on a
> key too long it appears to be stuck down and nothing will get it un-stuck.
>  It's so locked up that the screen refresh seems to have monopolized the
> GUI
> enough I can't use the mouse to kill the terminal window.  And speaking of
> the GUI...
>  * Again, under CentOS 5.5 x64, things that involve moving/resizing windows
> seems sluggish.  As a test, I ran "glxgears -info" on both systems and the
> VirtualBox was anywhere from 600fps to 800fps, where the same test under
> the
> VMWare Player guest ran at a solid 2200fps.  This may be due to the fact
> that the 2D acceleration is only available on Windows systems in VirtualBox
> at the time.
>  * Using "top" to check the CPU usage of both virtual systems, VirtualBox
> always kept 100% CPU (core) in use, where VMWare would go down to around
> 25-35% when just sitting at the desktop.
>  * In VirtualBox's defense, there were times that it seemed a little bit
> snappier in some instances, but this was lost in the video issues mentioned
> above.  Maybe if you're running a CPU intensive tool in a text-only console
> system, VirtualBox may have an edge.
>  * A drawback to VMWare is that it's not easy to setup a "server" to
> automatically start a series of virtual machines, nor can you pause or shut
> one down from the command line.  (Please correct me if I'm wrong.)
>
> I know some people just hate the "VMWare corporate image" - if you're one
> of
> them, then VirtualBox is your choice...er, um, wait, VirtualBox is owned by
> Oracle now that they've bought Sun.  That's a "Rock & A Hard Place"
> decision
> for some...
>
> Conclusion?  I'm going to stick with VMWare Player for my personal
> workstation needs.
>
> Just my $0.02 cents.
>
> Dan
>
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-- 
***************** ************* *********** ******* ***** *** **
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"
    (Who can watch the watchmen?)
    -- from the Satires of Juvenal
"I do not fear computers, I fear the lack of them."
    -- Isaac Asimov (Author)
** *** ***** ******* *********** ************* *****************