VM is a replica of a physical computer and also has an Operating system loaded on it which is called Guest OS. This article will cover, in detail, the comparison between the two most popular tools of Virtualization called VirtualBox and VMware.īoth Virtualbox and VMware work on the concept of a Virtual Machine (VM). There are a lot of virtualization tools available in the market. One virtual resource can be created from one or more hardware.

One hardware or physical resource can create many virtual resources.

To explain in simple words, Virtualization Let us try to understand the concept of virtualization from the following image.Īs we can see in the above image, the hypervisor software connects directly with the physical hardware, allowing you to split a single system into multiple Virtual Machines (VMs) and distribute the machine resources appropriately.

Virtualization War: VirtualBox Or VMware.

You also have several other possibilities, like QEMU, for instance - but those are less known/used so maybe not that useful if you want to use a VM for work and share it with co-workers.

Which is the best VM program for a programmer?.

You might also be interested by a couple of questions / asnwers about that subject, like, for instance :

One thing that was not so good with VirtualBox was that it didn't support VM with several CPU that's possible, now, with versions 3.x, if I remember correctly. If you want free software, VirtualBox OSE is the way to go.Įdit after comment, to clarify : by 'free', I mean 'libre' : both VMWare server/player and VirtualBox are free (as in 'cost not money'), but only VirtualBox OSE is free as in 'libre' - see Open Source VirtualBox and other editions If you are going to use it for some production system, maybe VMWare might be a safest bet, at least for support - and it's more widely used in the industry, I'd say.

Im using a bit of both (VMWare at work, as it's the software that's used the most in the company I work for and VirtualBox at Home), and, to develop, I don't see much of a difference : both do what I need, which is provide a Virtual Machine, independant of the host system.

Virtualbox vs vmware linux