VirtualBox USB support

9 Comments

• 
  marcello November 13th, 2009 at 12:51

  need a development box? Use virtualbox..
  need a production enviroment? Use VMWare-Server

  Is it still true? Or things have changed (or changing)?

  Regards

  Reply
  • 
    Radu

    November 13th, 2009 at 13:00

    Marcello, it seems that Sun is pushing VirtualBox in its VDI infrastructure. It can also be controlled via command line and it also offers some APIs for better handling its functionalities. Also there is a Google Code project that offers a web administration console for it. Check it out.

    Reply
• 
  marcello November 13th, 2009 at 18:11

  well I already tried both of them.

  I’d like to know your opinion. As you seem quite qualified on the topic…

  Virtualbox was a breeze to install.
  VMWare was a lot more difficult.
  But I remember, in the past, experienced people used to dismiss any other solution but VMWare.
  Even Xen was regarded as inferior to VMWare. Maybe things have changed or are percieved differently in the last 2-3 years.

  Reply
  • 
    Radu

    November 13th, 2009 at 18:29

    It really depends on what you are after. If you need to virtualize a desktop environment VirtualBox seems to be the best solution at the moment. On the other hand, if you need to create multiple virtual servers, VMware Server is tailored for exactly this purpose and thus is more optimised regarding remote virtual machine administration. Graphics performance though are affected in VMware.

    Of course, the problems of stability involving VMware Server with the newer kernels is something to consider too. But if you use for example a LTS release then you shouldn’t experience any difficulties no matter what product you choose.

    It all comes down to the purpose you’re after. If I would need multiple servers running on a powerful physical server VMware would definitely win the chance to do the job. On the other hand, maybe I would try a type 1 hypervisor, like Xen or VMware’s ESXi for this particular layout.

    But when I need to test a desktop OS there’s no doubt that I would choose VirtualBox on top of everything else.

    Reply
• 
  marcello November 14th, 2009 at 10:43

  kudos man…exactly the answer I was looking for.
  Pretty amazing blog, too [bookmarked -:) ]

  Reply
• 
  dalaidakkar December 13th, 2009 at 19:05

  nice! thank your very much, worked perfect

  Reply
• 
  Florin January 21st, 2010 at 22:51

  How to convert your physical machine into a virtual machine using VMware Converter – can we expect a similar article for vbox anytime soon? I’d very much like to be able to run my windows 7 both as a VM inside the vbox running on kubuntu and boot it directly.

  I seem to recall that I’ve read something similar somewhere about this being possible, but I lost the URL.

  Reply
  • 
    Radu

    January 21st, 2010 at 22:54

    That would be awesome indeed. I promise I’ll look into this when I’ll have some free time available, although I’ve quit using Windows for other than browsing the web and editing pretty documents, therefore I am not interested anymore in migrating a physical Windows instance to a virtual one. But if the reader requests, the reader gets.

    Reply
• 
  John January 20th, 2011 at 20:53

  Hi Radu!

  Great Blog! Thanks so much for all the info. Your article and scripts “How to install VMware Server on 2.6.35 kernels” got me rolling on 10.10 in no time flat. No problems..

  Perusing your blog I came upon this article. I like VirtualBox very much myself. I’ve got a bunch of systems in my home office network, currently we’re at 4 Mac Desktops, a Mac laptop, an Ubuntu 10.10 netbook, 2 Windows machines (one being turned into an Ubuntu box) and one CentOS 5.5 box running Asterisk for our phone system.

  Not a windows fan at all, but we need at least one physical machine for testing/troubleshooting, as that is what most of our clients use.

  OK, enough blabbing… to the point.

  I’m trying to setup a NAS solution. Nothing super fancy. Just a good old NAS. Was planning on using FreeNas or OpenFiler as a VM. I got a smoking deal on a bunch of Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk 2TB Externals, which have USB 3.0. Popped a USB 3.0 PCI express card in the Windows machine and the drives are super fast. Loving the USB 3.0…

  Anyway, I have been banging my head trying to get this up and running. I’ve tried VMware/VirtualBox, on the Windows machine and no matter what I can not get the USB 3.0 support on any Linux VM… Running SMB shares through Windows is brutal in a mostly Mac environment.. Consistently having trouble writing to the drive. I’ve just recently gotten into using Ubuntu as my main OS and was excited about hearing there is USB 3.0 support. However, all my searches have come up empty..

  You seem to be very knowledgable about Ubuntu, VMware and VirtualBox. Any tips for me here? I suppose the ideal solution would be to turn one of the Windows boxes into an Ubuntu box, then use VMware or VirtualBox (or any other solution).. to run a VM with FreeNas or Openfiler that can see my USB 3.0 drives.. Hell, even just using Ubuntu with USB 3.0 and running shares off that would be fine. I have my routers running DD-WRT and SMB shares off them work fine. They cooperate quite nicely with the Macs, but lack of USB 3.0 on any of the routers has that solution down the drain.

  Any help, tips or a shove in the right direction would be TRULY appreciated.

  Thanks again.. and keep up the good work!

  Best,
  John

  Reply

    [language]
    code lines
    [/language]
	

    [bash]
    /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin
    [/bash]
	

    The <code>$USER</code> variable holds the current logged in username.