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<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<!DOCTYPE topic PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Topic//EN" "topic.dtd">
<topic xml:lang="en-us" id="features-overview">
<title>Features Overview</title>
<body>
<p>
The following is a brief outline of Oracle VM VirtualBox's main
features:
</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><b outputclass="bold">Portability.</b> Oracle VM VirtualBox
runs on a large number of 64-bit host operating systems. See
<xref href="hostossupport.dita#hostossupport"/>.
</p>
<p>
Oracle VM VirtualBox is a so-called <i>hosted</i>
hypervisor, sometimes referred to as a <i>type
2</i> hypervisor. Whereas a
<i>bare-metal</i> or <i>type 1</i>
hypervisor runs directly on the hardware, Oracle VM VirtualBox
requires an existing OS to be installed. It can thus run
alongside existing applications on that host.
</p>
<p>
To a very large degree, Oracle VM VirtualBox is functionally
identical on all of the host platforms, and the same file and
image formats are used. This enables you to run virtual
machines created on one host on another host with a different
host OS. For example, you can create a virtual machine on
Windows and then run it on Linux.
</p>
<p>
In addition, virtual machines can easily be imported and
exported using the Open Virtualization Format (OVF), an
industry standard created for this purpose. You can even
import OVFs that were created with a different virtualization
software. See <xref href="ovf.dita#ovf"/>.
</p>
<p>
For users of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure the functionality extends to exporting and
importing virtual machines to and from the cloud. This
simplifies development of applications and deployment to the
production environment. See
<xref href="cloud-export-oci.dita#cloud-export-oci"/>.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><b outputclass="bold">Guest Additions: shared folders,
seamless windows, 3D virtualization.</b> The
Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions are software packages which can
be installed <i>inside</i> of supported guest
systems to improve their performance and to provide additional
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. See
<xref href="guestadditions.dita#guestadditions"/>.
</p>
<p>
In particular, Guest Additions provide for <i>shared
folders</i>, which let you access files on the host
system from within a guest machine. See
<xref href="sharedfolders.dita#sharedfolders"/>.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><b outputclass="bold">Comprehensive hardware
support.</b> Among other features, Oracle VM VirtualBox
supports the following:
</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><b outputclass="bold">Guest multiprocessing
(SMP).</b> Oracle VM VirtualBox can present up to 32
virtual CPUs to each virtual machine, irrespective of how
many CPU cores are physically present on your host.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><b outputclass="bold">USB device support.</b>
Oracle VM VirtualBox implements a virtual USB controller and
enables 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. See <xref href="settings-usb.dita#settings-usb"/>.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><b outputclass="bold">Hardware compatibility.</b>
Oracle VM VirtualBox virtualizes a vast array of virtual
devices, among them many devices that are typically
provided by other virtualization platforms. That includes
IDE, SCSI, and SATA hard disk controllers, several virtual
network cards and sound cards, virtual serial and parallel
ports and an Input/Output Advanced Programmable Interrupt
Controller (I/O APIC), which is found in many computer
systems. This enables easy cloning of disk images from
real machines and importing of third-party virtual
machines into Oracle VM VirtualBox.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><b outputclass="bold">Full ACPI support.</b> The
Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) is fully
supported by Oracle VM VirtualBox. This enables easy cloning of
disk images from real machines or third-party virtual
machines into Oracle VM VirtualBox. With its unique
<i>ACPI power status support</i>,
Oracle VM VirtualBox can even report to ACPI-aware guest OSes
the power status of the host. For mobile systems running
on battery, the guest can thus enable energy saving and
notify the user of the remaining power, for example in
full screen modes.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><b outputclass="bold">Multiscreen resolutions.</b>
Oracle VM VirtualBox virtual machines support screen resolutions
many times that of a physical screen, allowing them to be
spread over a large number of screens attached to the host
system.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><b outputclass="bold">Built-in iSCSI support.</b>
This unique feature enables you to connect a virtual
machine directly to an iSCSI storage server without going
through the host system. The VM accesses the iSCSI target
directly without the extra overhead that is required for
virtualizing hard disks in container files. See
<xref href="storage-iscsi.dita#storage-iscsi"/>.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><b outputclass="bold">PXE Network boot.</b> The
integrated virtual network cards of Oracle VM VirtualBox fully
support remote booting using the Preboot Execution
Environment (PXE).
</p>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p><b outputclass="bold">Multigeneration branched
snapshots.</b> Oracle VM VirtualBox can save arbitrary
snapshots of the state of the virtual machine. You can go back
in time and revert the virtual machine to any such snapshot
and start an alternative VM configuration from there,
effectively creating a whole snapshot tree. See
<xref href="snapshots.dita#snapshots"/>. You can create and delete
snapshots while the virtual machine is running.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><b outputclass="bold">VM groups.</b> Oracle VM VirtualBox
provides a groups feature that enables the user to organize
and control virtual machines collectively, as well as
individually. In addition to basic groups, it is also possible
for any VM to be in more than one group, and for groups to be
nested in a hierarchy. This means you can have groups of
groups. In general, the operations that can be performed on
groups are the same as those that can be applied to individual
VMs: Start, Pause, Reset, Close (Save state, Send Shutdown,
Poweroff), Discard Saved State, Show in File System, Sort.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><b outputclass="bold">Clean architecture and unprecedented
modularity.</b> Oracle VM 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
Oracle VM VirtualBox graphical user interface and then control that
machine from the command line, or even remotely. See
<xref href="frontends.dita#frontends"/>.
</p>
<p>
Due to its modular architecture, Oracle VM VirtualBox can also
expose its full functionality and configurability through a
comprehensive <b outputclass="bold">software development kit
(SDK),</b> which enables integration of Oracle VM VirtualBox
with other software systems. See
<xref href="VirtualBoxAPI.dita">Oracle VM VirtualBox Programming Interfaces</xref>.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><b outputclass="bold">Remote machine display.</b> The
VirtualBox Remote Desktop Extension (VRDE) enables
high-performance remote access to any running virtual machine.
This extension supports the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP)
originally built into Microsoft Windows, with special
additions for full client USB support.
</p>
<p>
The VRDE does not rely on the RDP server that is built into
Microsoft Windows. Instead, the VRDE is plugged directly into
the virtualization layer. As a result, it works with guest
OSes other than Windows, even in text mode, and does not
require application support in the virtual machine either. The
VRDE is described in detail in <xref href="vrde.dita">Remote Display (VRDP Support)</xref>.
</p>
<p>
On top of this special capacity, Oracle VM VirtualBox offers you
more unique features:
</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><b outputclass="bold">Extensible RDP
authentication.</b> Oracle VM VirtualBox already supports
Winlogon on Windows and PAM on Linux for RDP
authentication. In addition, it includes an easy-to-use
SDK which enables you to create arbitrary interfaces for
other methods of authentication. See
<xref href="vbox-auth.dita">RDP Authentication</xref>.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><b outputclass="bold">USB over RDP.</b> Using RDP
virtual channel support, Oracle VM VirtualBox also enables you
to connect arbitrary USB devices locally to a virtual
machine which is running remotely on an Oracle VM VirtualBox RDP
server. See <xref href="usb-over-rdp.dita">Remote USB</xref>.
</p>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</body>
</topic>
|
