Delivering on Oracle's commitment to open source, Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.0 is now available, further enhancing the popular, open source, cross-platform virtualization software.
"Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.0
is the third major product release in just over a year, and adds to the
many new product releases across the Oracle Virtualization product line,
illustrating the investment and importance that Oracle places on
providing a comprehensive desktop to datacenter virtualization
solution," says Wim Coekaerts, senior vice president, Linux and
Virtualization Engineering, Oracle. "With an improved user interface
and added virtual hardware support, customers will find Oracle VM
VirtualBox 4.0 provides a richer user experience."
Part of Oracle's comprehensive portfolio of virtualization solutions,
Oracle VM VirtualBox enables desktop or laptop computers to run
multiple guest operating systems simultaneously, allowing users to get
the most flexibility and utilization out of their PCs, and supports a
variety of host operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X, most
popular flavors of Linux (including Oracle Linux), and Oracle Solaris.
Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.0
delivers increased capacity and throughput to handle greater workloads,
enhanced virtual appliance capabilities, and significant usability
improvements. Support for the latest in virtual hardware, including
chipsets supporting PCI Express, further extends the value delivered to
customers, partners, and developers.
Highlights of Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.0 include
New Open Architecture
- Oracle and community developers can now create extensions that
customize Oracle VM VirtualBox and add features not previously
available.Enhanced Usability
- A new scalable display mode enables users to view more virtual
displays on their existing monitors. Improvements to VM management,
including visual VM previews, an optional attributes display, and easy
launch shortcut creation enables administrators and power users to
customize the interface to make it as simple or as comprehensive as
required.Increased Capacity and Throughput
- A new asynchronous I/O model for networked (iSCSI) and local storage
delivers significant storage related performance improvements, while new
optimizations allow larger datacenter-class workloads, such as Oracle's
middeware, to be run on 32-bit Windows hosts for testing and demo
purposes. Powerful Virtual Appliance Sharing Capabilities
- Enhanced support for standards-compliant OVF appliances and added
support for OVA format descriptors. All information about a VM may be
stored in a single folder to facilitate easier direct sharing among VMs.
Support for Latest Virtual Hardware
- A new, modern virtual chipset supporting PCI Express and other
hardware enhancements including high-definition audio devices helps
ensure support for the most demanding virtual workloads.
