Anything better than VirtualBox?

[Sysman]

Not sure what you mean by remote access but I connect to mine via ssh and port forwarding.

Do you mean ssh into the clients or the host?

The Extension Pack enables RDP to a headless system. The VirtualBox website is either down or very slow at the moment, maybe affected by Sandy, so I'll point to VirtualBox VBoxHeadless, the remote desktop server.

I use samba to connect to windows shares and network storage. All works on the free version.

You don't need the Extension Pack to create VirtualBox shares for a client, so you don't need Samba for shares provided by the host (though it will come in handy if you want shares on other hosts). I haven't looked at the performance of one VBox shares versus Samba ones. On this topic I came across a bit of the VMware documentation which warns against giving Windows clients write access to shares (malware and all that), which is obvious when you think about it.

There are some "Paravirtualized network drivers" available for Windows clients which are apparently more efficient.

This one for Windows 7 and 2008:
Windows 2008 paravirtualized (virtio) driver and I am told there are XP versions available too.

[Pondlife]

I understand that for remote access of the VBox GUI you need the Extensions Pack, and that is the commercial bit.

Not sure what you mean by remote access but I connect to mine via ssh and port forwarding.

I use samba to connect to windows shares and network storage. All works on the free version.

[Cliphead]

I think I could drag and drop files between Windows host and guest in VMWare, which I can't do in VB.

You can set up shared folders in VB which gives similar functionality. Moved 50Gb of files between host and guest last night.

[VectraMan]

It's been a couple of years, but I seem to remember VMWare Workstation had better management of snapshots than VB, and I think I could drag and drop files between Windows host and guest in VMWare, which I can't do in VB. And VB has a GUI but gives additional options and functionality on the command line, which is way too sandle-wearing open-sourcey for me.

I'd say VirtualBox is 99% as good, and 100% cheaper.

[Cliphead]

Another vote for VirtualBox.

I found it faster than VMware Workstation on my kit. I have been using it for a couple of years with both Linux and Windows hosts.

One problem I found with the VMware products was they they tried to be "too helpful" by filling in OS installation questions for you, and if you were installing a Linux flavour it didn't recognise it could supply the wrong answers. That bit is done by Perl scripts, but my Perl is somewhat weak so I didn't fancy doing customised stuff.

I understand that for remote access of the VBox GUI you need the Extensions Pack, and that is the commercial bit. The Personal Use, Education and Evaluation License (PUEL) on their web site is out of date so you need to read the one that's presented during installation. The Extensions Pack also gives direct USB 2.0 access and PXE boot.

But as far as I can tell you can do everything from the command line.

KVM and Xen virtual machine packages are also supported in CentOS, but I haven't tried either of those yet.

Appreciate the comments!

[Sysman]

Another vote for VirtualBox.

I found it faster than VMware Workstation on my kit. I have been using it for a couple of years with both Linux and Windows hosts.

One problem I found with the VMware products was they they tried to be "too helpful" by filling in OS installation questions for you, and if you were installing a Linux flavour it didn't recognise it could supply the wrong answers. That bit is done by Perl scripts, but my Perl is somewhat weak so I didn't fancy doing customised stuff.

I understand that for remote access of the VBox GUI you need the Extensions Pack, and that is the commercial bit. The Personal Use, Education and Evaluation License (PUEL) on their web site is out of date so you need to read the one that's presented during installation. The Extensions Pack also gives direct USB 2.0 access and PXE boot.

But as far as I can tell you can do everything from the command line.

KVM and Xen virtual machine packages are also supported in CentOS, but I haven't tried either of those yet.

[Cliphead]

I use VirtualBox and seems rock solid for a feebie, just as good as VMWare Fusion

WHS. No issues with it.

What's it missing CH?

Cheers.

Not really missing anything Pondy but early days and wondering if it lacked something others didn't.

So far so good, got CentOS working with all the trimmings but all I really need is to connect to it via a terminal. Haven't tried any MS OS's yet which may or may not be a challenge.

[Pondlife]

I use VirtualBox and seems rock solid for a feebie, just as good as VMWare Fusion

WHS. No issues with it.

What's it missing CH?

[SimonMac]

I use VirtualBox and seems rock solid for a feebie, just as good as VMWare Fusion

[Cliphead]

Trying it out and seems useable. Anything else out there paid for or otherwise that's better?

Mainly for Win and Linux server OS's.