VirtualBox 2.0 is Now Developer and Enterprise Ready

Today Sun announced the availability of VirtualBox 2.0. You can download the new version here.
While the product has proven a runaway success--with more than 6.5 million downloads and more than 15,000 downloads per day--there is a interesting transformation taking place the way Sun talks about the lightwieght hypervisor. When we first started to discuss VirtualBox, we tended to position it as a developer tool--that is, as a way for developers to build pre-configured virtual images of software stacks (for example, an application infrastructure built on OpenSolaris, MySQL and GlassFish) ready for deployment to a virtualized environment (perhaps one built around xVM Server). And to be certain, there are a number of new features in the 2.0 release that will appeal to developers, including:
  • support for 64-bit guest OSes (Microsoft Windows Vista and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5)
  • support for AMD RVI
  • support for Microsoft VHD virtual disk format
  • new interface for Apple Mac OS edition (native 10.5 Leopard GUI)
  • Python API (for Solaris and Linux hosts only)

But a funny thing happened on the way to the virtual lab. It turns out that enterprises are also keen on the little hypervisor that could. One of the more interesting aspects of today's release is the fact that Sun is now offering enterprise support subscriptions for VirtualBox 2.0. That's because, as the press release points out, organizations like the German government have installed VirtualBox on 12,000 PCs (a enterprise scale deployment if ever I heard one!) in order to preserve its investment in its client software. It turns out by installing a small hypervisor between the hardware and the OS, VirtualBox allows enterprises to future-proof their software purchases--and this brings enormous benefits in terms of flexibility and cost savings.

All of which is to say that VirtualBox 2.0 is now developer and enterprise ready!

Posted on: Sep 04, 2008

Posted by: Jesse Freund

Category: Personal

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Comments:

enterprise ready???

no usb serial support on solaris, or am I wrong??

Posted by someone on September 04, 2008 at 11:17 AM PDT #

Dear Someone,

How is lack of USB on Solaris related to Enterprise adoption?
Windows desktops are dominant in this space, with Mac and Linux a distant second.
Of the 250M'ish desktops sold last year for business, 95% ran Windows.
Get real.

An Enterprise IT Manager (and a VirtualBox fan)

Posted by A Fan on September 05, 2008 at 04:23 AM PDT #

Solaris 10 Update 5 on Ultra 20
Downloaded VirtualBox 2.0 (AMD64)
Followed instructions in Readme
JUST INSTALLED WINDOWS XP!!!!!!!!

How cool is this! Zero problems!
This rocks. Really, it rocks.

Posted by Paul Smart on September 11, 2008 at 03:43 AM PDT #

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