Virtualbox vs VMWare

Fackamato · 2007-05-19 01:36:43

I've tried out Virtalbox a bit, and I like it. Very light compared to vmware... Just thought that I'd post some performance numbers , and perhaps start a discussion about other virtualizers (could anyone perhaps compare qemu too?)

Acid7711 · 2007-05-19 04:24:37

I agree, personally, I've found that Virtualbox is a lot smoother when running emulated os's than Vmware is.

Ankka · 2007-05-19 05:55:05

Virtualbox also doesn't require the annoying registration stuff Vmware server does.

phrakture · 2007-05-20 06:04:23

qemu is superior to both, and it's also 100% open source, instead of some janky in-between thing.

barebones · 2007-05-20 15:25:26

How fast is qemu? When I had started looking into it, I gave up on it pretty quickly because I had read that it was allot slower than vmware because of the way it did emulation.

stonecrest · 2007-05-20 16:24:01

It's a shame that there's no easy way to use one image across different VMs. Apparently you can convert earlier versions of vmware images with qemu-img, but not versions 5 or 6.

Last edited by stonecrest (2007-05-20 16:24:59)

Fackamato · 2007-05-20 16:39:39

Using nbench, qemu places itself between vmware and vbox. I've not compared anything else though (hdd performance, network, graphics, audio).

Fatsobob · 2007-05-20 16:59:44

I still have not figured out how to get vmware to work properly. I have both qemu and vbox functioning properly, but I can't seem to configure vmware to work.

phrakture · 2007-05-21 06:23:05

barebones wrote:

How fast is qemu? When I had started looking into it, I gave up on it pretty quickly because I had read that it was allot slower than vmware because of the way it did emulation.

Well qemu sucks hard without kqemu loaded. Make sure that's up and working.

Ankka · 2007-05-21 10:11:12

phrakture wrote:

barebones wrote:
How fast is qemu? When I had started looking into it, I gave up on it pretty quickly because I had read that it was allot slower than vmware because of the way it did emulation.
Well qemu sucks hard without kqemu loaded. Make sure that's up and working.

Yeah sure qemu is open-source, it just sucks without the proprietary kqemu extension... That makes it a lot better open-source than virtualbox.

iphitus · 2007-05-21 10:46:36

Ankka wrote:

phrakture wrote:
barebones wrote:
How fast is qemu? When I had started looking into it, I gave up on it pretty quickly because I had read that it was allot slower than vmware because of the way it did emulation.
Well qemu sucks hard without kqemu loaded. Make sure that's up and working.
Yeah sure qemu is open-source, it just sucks without the proprietary kqemu extension... That makes it a lot better open-source than virtualbox.

except kqemu isnt proprietary, it's now GPL. So, qemu goes back ahead.

shinlun · 2007-05-21 15:09:24

Be sure that you can tell whether the timer in the virtual machine can sync to the timer of your host; otherwise you might get very misleading CPU-intensive benchmark results for the timer in the virtual machine goes slower than the real-life wall time. I know there is an option in vmware for you to achieve this.

el_ricardo · 2007-05-21 15:19:10

personally i found little difference in performance between vmware and virtualbox, i could never get qemu to work with the kqemu module for some reason. has anyone tried parallels for windows emulation? I'd like to give it a go if it had full suport for directx9, it would probably be a little more practical than using wine for gaming

Ankka · 2007-05-21 18:27:00

iphitus wrote:

Ankka wrote:
phrakture wrote:
Well qemu sucks hard without kqemu loaded. Make sure that's up and working.
Yeah sure qemu is open-source, it just sucks without the proprietary kqemu extension... That makes it a lot better open-source than virtualbox.
except kqemu isnt proprietary, it's now GPL. So, qemu goes back ahead.

Oh, my bad then, I didn't know that. Good to hear.

ataraxia · 2007-05-21 18:43:12

qemu has some weird bug that prevents Java from running in the guest. (Yeah, I know this probably sounds more like a feature to some of you, but it sure kills Solaris...)

patrick295767 · 2007-05-23 19:48:41

"personally i found little difference in performance between vmware and virtualbox, i could never get qemu to work with the kqemu module for some reason. has anyone tried parallels for windows emulation? I'd like to give it a go if it had full suport for directx9, it would probably be a little more practical than using wine for gaming "
would be too slow, na ?

"except kqemu isnt proprietary, it's now GPL. So, qemu goes back ahead"
Can qemu supports the VDI vmware standard drives as Virtualbox ?
For that; virtualbox ROCKS !!

Freduardo · 2007-06-02 15:19:37

I use both, since I already had a virtual Windows machine with VMWare before trying VirtualBox. Can't really say anything about speed differences, as I haven't compared the same os in both. I do like VirtualBox though.

patrick295767 wrote:

Can qemu supports the VDI vmware standard drives as Virtualbox ?
For that; virtualbox ROCKS !!

You can use Vmware machines on VirtualBox?

I've tried to add my Windows XP machine (created with VMware) to my VirtualBox machines, but I've had no luck so far.

stonecrest · 2007-06-02 16:08:58

Freduardo wrote:

You can use Vmware machines on VirtualBox?
I've tried to add my Windows XP machine (created with VMware) to my VirtualBox machines, but I've had no luck so far.

You can convert images that were created with vmware 4 and earlier currently. The next version of virtualbox is also going to be adding support for more recent versions of vmware (yay!).

I'm personally content with vmware, but I will certainly try virtualbox when the next version is released.

mic64 · 2007-06-06 09:31:03

a new version is out.
A lot of improvements
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog

eric · 2007-06-11 01:11:32

phrakture wrote:

Well qemu sucks hard without kqemu loaded. Make sure that's up and working.

Well, I don't feel any difference with or without kqemu... so does this mean it's not working on my computer? I've loaded the module with modprobe and run qemu with the -kernel-kqemu option... no error messages but also no speed improvement compared to using the -no-kqemu option and not loading the module.
Does kqemu have issues with the 2.6.21-ck* kernel?

stonecrest · 2007-06-12 00:57:43

Qemu with kqemu properly loaded is still ridiculously slow for me, I don't think it's you.

kth5 · 2007-06-12 01:04:55

kqemu does not work at all on x86_64. the module builds and is shipped but it doesn't affect qemu performance at all it seems. my guess is that kqemu can only work in 32bit host <-> 32bit guest scenarios.

anyway, for x86_64 i have added kvm support for qemu. with that qemu is speedy enough to outperfom vmware-player and is seemingly up to par with virtualbox. then again, setting up networking beyond the scope of defaults is best in vmware. personally i don't need it though but if i would need a bridged networt etc i don't want to fsck with it.

Last edited by kth5 (2007-06-12 01:05:59)

eric · 2007-06-12 11:52:40

kth5 wrote:

kqemu does not work at all on x86_64. the module builds and is shipped but it doesn't affect qemu performance at all it seems. my guess is that kqemu can only work in 32bit host <-> 32bit guest scenarios.

What about my situation: AMD64 with a 32bit host (Archlinux) running a 32bit guest (Windows XP)? I don't feel any performance differences with or without kqemu.

kth5 · 2007-06-12 16:25:47

eric wrote:

kth5 wrote:
kqemu does not work at all on x86_64. the module builds and is shipped but it doesn't affect qemu performance at all it seems. my guess is that kqemu can only work in 32bit host <-> 32bit guest scenarios.
What about my situation: AMD64 with a 32bit host (Archlinux) running a 32bit guest (Windows XP)? I don't feel any performance differences with or without kqemu.

Actually this should work as you drive your system in 32bit compatibility mode anyways. The speed difference is quite heavy even on fast machines, you should really see a great difference between kqemu and non-kqemu. So I guess it never worked for you at all eh? Sure you didn't compile something in the chain on your own? Like kernel or Qemu with different cflags? Modules probed?

eric · 2007-06-12 17:39:00

kth5 wrote:

Sure you didn't compile something in the chain on your own? Like kernel or Qemu with different cflags? Modules probed?

Qemu can not be compiled because I have the newest gcc.

Kqemu and other often-used libs and apps are compiled by myself with different flags and configs than the original PKGBUILDs in ABS. Usually it's not that difficult to replace some of my self-made packages with the ones in Archlinux' repositories and then find which package is bad... but it's not the same for my kernel. I've build and installed the kernel the "old" way, that is, without using mkinitcpio, klibc, initramfs and others... so I may have difficulties making "pacman -S kernel26ck" work... and besides, virtualbox is working quite fast here

Arch Linux

#1 2007-05-19 01:36:43

Virtualbox vs VMWare

#2 2007-05-19 04:24:37

Re: Virtualbox vs VMWare

#3 2007-05-19 05:55:05

Re: Virtualbox vs VMWare

#4 2007-05-20 06:04:23

Re: Virtualbox vs VMWare

#5 2007-05-20 15:25:26

Re: Virtualbox vs VMWare

#6 2007-05-20 16:24:01

Re: Virtualbox vs VMWare

#7 2007-05-20 16:39:39

Re: Virtualbox vs VMWare

#8 2007-05-20 16:59:44

Re: Virtualbox vs VMWare

#9 2007-05-21 06:23:05

Re: Virtualbox vs VMWare

#10 2007-05-21 10:11:12

Re: Virtualbox vs VMWare

#11 2007-05-21 10:46:36

Re: Virtualbox vs VMWare

#12 2007-05-21 15:09:24

Re: Virtualbox vs VMWare

#13 2007-05-21 15:19:10

Re: Virtualbox vs VMWare

#14 2007-05-21 18:27:00

Re: Virtualbox vs VMWare

#15 2007-05-21 18:43:12

Re: Virtualbox vs VMWare

#16 2007-05-23 19:48:41

Re: Virtualbox vs VMWare

#17 2007-06-02 15:19:37

Re: Virtualbox vs VMWare

#18 2007-06-02 16:08:58

Re: Virtualbox vs VMWare

#19 2007-06-06 09:31:03

Re: Virtualbox vs VMWare

#20 2007-06-11 01:11:32

Re: Virtualbox vs VMWare

#21 2007-06-12 00:57:43

Re: Virtualbox vs VMWare

#22 2007-06-12 01:04:55

Re: Virtualbox vs VMWare

#23 2007-06-12 11:52:40

Re: Virtualbox vs VMWare

#24 2007-06-12 16:25:47

Re: Virtualbox vs VMWare

#25 2007-06-12 17:39:00

Re: Virtualbox vs VMWare

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