I'm thinking of installing VirtualBox and wondered if anyone could offer opinions/advice on how easy it is to set up and use, what are the hardware requirements and how well would a guest OS such as Windows 7 perform?
I been using
Virtualbox since learning how to install it (it took a year after it was invented for FreeBSD). From that that I never had a issue with it. I even installed the official Windows 7- Upgrade DVD inside a empty
Virtualbox … it took as a full RELEASE of Windows-7
Windows inside of
Virtualbox don’t have no memory problems what-so-ever. So give it all you can and if the memory runs out memory, no big deal … a large
pagefile.sys works faster and better in
Virtualbox then on a regular install of Windows on its own partition. I use bridge-mode so that all Virtual-Machines will have its own. … never had a problem and this is a older FreeBSD
Virtualbox I think. Also FreeBSD-vm on FreeBSD-host is clean and mean; and it returns every drop of memory once that VM is shutdown.
Code:
virtualbox-ose-4.3.38_1
virtualbox-ose-kmod-4.3.38
Just in case you don't know, you install
Oracle VirtualBox Guest Additions in Windows.
Anyway, here are the only issues I know of. If you are copying big files, or using dd + gzip on large files, or moving large files on the host, Windows or any other VM will nearly freeze as you try to work in it. So wait until the host is finish with those type things. Using
dd along and using most other stuff on the host don’t suffer from this. For instances, The host can
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ada1 bs=64k my entire 500GB backup drive as I do anything inside of any vm with no noticeable slow-down what-so-ever. That's why I like
dd... making it clean as a whistle as I work. The best way would be to have 2 hdd's and you will never feel a thing, or nothing you can't handle as you work inside another VM.
Code:
dd if=/dev/ada0s14 of=/dev/ada1s14 bs=64k - backing up FBSD-2
Also, when you delete or do something in an opened folder it sometime may still be there, or something like that. If it happen, you have to close the folder then open it back up to see it. I thinks this happen when using shared-folders (virtual-drives). This might not be the case with newer versions of Virtualbox, but it don’t worry me. Sometimes, I simply re-open to check.
don't use
Host I/O cache
don't use
I/O APIC
. . . if you do, maybe it can solve one of those problems above but it may present another. I forgot why I don't use
Host I/O cache other then total separation. I fear it may expose the host. Whatever the case, I don't care. I believe its a documented fact that if one check
I/O APIC then you are stuck with it! Un-checking will do nothing for you after any version of Windows has been installed on
vBox. So do your own testing for each. It's worth it!
I think it might run well as a small/private productions server without GUI. Anyway, I dump Windows-7 and Windows-10. I only use my original XP-vm created on FreeBSD-8.2. Now that a
long-time-running and vBox have never let it down, and I see no differences in speed vs. non-virtual.
EDIT:
I best to correct my every drop statement . . . I simply look at the
top Free value on the host and if it's not 10G
in my case when I shutdown my FreeBSD vBox; I never hesitate to restore from backup, because I know I did something wrong or that a process could have broke/stuck-in the VM, such as running a super-intensive
rm,
mv, or
cp. But if a FreeBSD vBox ever crash, it’s toasted anyway. Whatever the case, get your most previous work out of there
if possible by way of USB, then restore immediately and go figure later. Never create a crappy backup?
It can't get better then this: on 16GB Memory
Code:
272-Active 236-Inactive 5892-Wired 404-Buf 9011M-Free FreeBSD vBox Running
12-Active 2-Inactive 16-Wired 0-Buf 10G-Free Memory retain after shutdown
I always have Windows-XP vm -- with everything needed open in it -- running first so that I can measure my most active FreeBSD vm from there.
.