Virtualization, Consolidation, Gre(en Re)volution VirtualOne

VirtualBox 2.1 was released a few days ago. One of the features that improved a lot has been Networking - setting and actual performance.

Previous to 2.1 release, simplest way to setup networking was to go with default setting of NAT. Though it worked, it had its own problems, For example Ping never worked, performance suffered since every packet had to be NATed. HostInterfacing was way complicated on all the plateforms except for Solaris.

The simplicity of setting Host Interface is now available on all the platforms (not just Solaris). Host interface uses the network connection of the HOST machine with out overheads.

To set it up, launch VirtualBox 2.1.

Click on "Settings" as shown below:

It pops up the following window where select "Network"

Select Adapter Type to be either PCnet Fast II or III if you do not know the one available on your machine.

Select Attached To Host Interface  ==> to make use of Host machines interface

And select an Host Interface from the list of Host Interfaces available.

That's it. You are done and you will have a very good network performance

Sun released xVM VirtualBox 2.1 today. I downloaded it from Virtualbox.org and installed it on my Laptop running Ubuntu 8.10 and my workstation running Solaris 10. It was one of the smoothest instalation I ever had with any software.

I am not surprised, VirtualBox is being downloaded over 8 million times. It has become a must have tool in a developer's toolbox. With its improved graphics and networking performance, VirtualBox is a tool no developer can avoid to have

Stay tuned for my own experience with the release.

Recently, I upgraded from Ubuntu 8.04 to 8.10 (Interpid). The process of upgrade was very simple and easy, though it took over an hour for me on fast DSL link.

During this upgrade process, one problem that I knew I would face is the scary looking "Spawning Session" problem.

But this time, I wasn't scared at all, as I knew that it is an expected problem with Ubuntu - everytime, Ubuntu is patched/upgraded, it is expected to run into this problem.

All, I had to do after the upgrade process was over was:

• Make sure I had no VirtualBox instances running

               killall VirtualBox

• Run the following command to automatically recompile and start the VirtualBox kernel module:
  sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

• You will see an output like the following, which tells the compilation is good.
  

 * Stopping VirtualBox kernel module                                             *  done.
 * Recompiling VirtualBox kernel module                                       *  done.
 * Starting VirtualBox kernel module                                              *  done.

That's it. I was ready start using VirtualBox on Interpid.