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  1. Stackups
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  4. Virtualization Platform
  5. VirtualBox vs libvirt

VirtualBox vs libvirt

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

VirtualBox
VirtualBox
Stacks31.1K
Followers25.6K
Votes1.1K
libvirt
libvirt
Stacks54
Followers70
Votes17

VirtualBox vs libvirt: What are the differences?

Introduction to VirtualBox and libvirt

VirtualBox and libvirt are both popular open-source virtualization technologies used in the IT industry. While they have some similarities, they also have key differences that make them suitable for different use cases. In this article, we will explore the main differences between VirtualBox and libvirt.

  1. Architecture and Hypervisors: VirtualBox is a Type-2 hypervisor that installs on top of an existing operating system, while libvirt is a framework that works with multiple hypervisors, including Type-1 hypervisors like KVM and Xen. This means that VirtualBox provides virtualization by running on top of an operating system, while libvirt works directly with the hardware for better performance.

  2. Operating System Support: VirtualBox is known for its wide range of operating system support, including Windows, macOS, Linux, and Solaris. On the other hand, libvirt primarily focuses on Linux-based operating systems, as it is built on top of the Linux Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) technology.

  3. Management Interface: VirtualBox provides a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI) that allows users to manage virtual machines easily. It also offers a command-line interface (CLI) for advanced users. In contrast, libvirt focuses on providing a command-line interface (CLI) and APIs, making it more suitable for automation and integration with other tools.

  4. Virtualization Features: VirtualBox offers a wide range of virtualization features, including support for hardware virtualization, snapshotting, remote desktop access, and USB device sharing. Libvirt, on the other hand, primarily focuses on providing a stable and reliable virtualization platform, with features such as live migration, security labeling, and support for multiple hypervisors.

  5. Community and Support: VirtualBox has a large and active community, with frequent updates and a wealth of online resources and tutorials available. It is backed by Oracle, which provides commercial support for VirtualBox. Libvirt also has a thriving community and is supported by Red Hat, which provides commercial support for libvirt.

  6. Integration and Ecosystem: Libvirt is designed to be a flexible and extensible framework, allowing users to integrate it with other management tools and automation frameworks easily. It also supports various virtualization technologies and management interfaces through its plugin architecture. VirtualBox, on the other hand, is a standalone virtualization solution and does not provide the same level of integration and extensibility as libvirt.

In summary, VirtualBox is a user-friendly standalone virtualization solution with extensive operating system support, while libvirt is a versatile framework designed for Linux-based operating systems, providing better performance and integration options. Both technologies have their strengths and weaknesses, making them suitable for different virtualization use cases.

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Detailed Comparison

VirtualBox
VirtualBox
libvirt
libvirt

VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2.

It is an open-source API, daemon and management tool for managing platform virtualization. It can be used to manage KVM, Xen, VMware ESXi, QEMU and other virtualization technologies.

Portability;No hardware virtualization required;Guest Additions: shared folders, seamless windows, 3D virtualization;Great hardware support;Multigeneration branched snapshots;VM groups;Clean architecture; unprecedented modularity;Remote machine display
Manage virtualization platforms; Accessible from C, Python, Perl, Java and more; Supports KVM, QEMU, Xen, Virtuozzo, VMWare ESX, LXC, BHyve and more
Statistics
Stacks
31.1K
Stacks
54
Followers
25.6K
Followers
70
Votes
1.1K
Votes
17
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 358
    Free
  • 231
    Easy
  • 169
    Default for vagrant
  • 110
    Fast
  • 73
    Starts quickly
Pros
  • 2
    Low overhead
  • 2
    Native hypervisor
  • 2
    Can fully manage via CLI or VirtManager
  • 2
    VirtIO direct hardware access
  • 2
    Native KVM and QEMU
Integrations
No integrations available
Java
Java
Python
Python
Qemu
Qemu
KVM
KVM

What are some alternatives to VirtualBox, libvirt?

Vagrant

Vagrant

Vagrant provides the framework and configuration format to create and manage complete portable development environments. These development environments can live on your computer or in the cloud, and are portable between Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

boot2docker

boot2docker

boot2docker is a lightweight Linux distribution based on Tiny Core Linux made specifically to run Docker containers. It runs completely from RAM, weighs ~27MB and boots in ~5s (YMMV).

Proxmox VE

Proxmox VE

It is a complete open-source platform for all-inclusive enterprise virtualization that tightly integrates KVM hypervisor and LXC containers, software-defined storage and networking functionality on a single platform, and easily manages high availability clusters and disaster recovery tools with the built-in web management interface.

VMware vSphere

VMware vSphere

vSphere is the world’s leading server virtualization platform. Run fewer servers and reduce capital and operating costs using VMware vSphere to build a cloud computing infrastructure.

Otto

Otto

Otto automatically builds development environments without any configuration; it can detect your project type and has built-in knowledge of industry-standard tools to setup a development environment that is ready to go. When you're ready to deploy, otto builds and manages an infrastructure, sets up servers, builds, and deploys the application.

KVM

KVM

KVM (for Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware containing virtualization extensions (Intel VT or AMD-V).

Qemu

Qemu

When used as a machine emulator, it can run OSes and programs made for one machine (e.g. an ARM board) on a different machine (e.g. your own PC). By using dynamic translation, it achieves very good performance. When used as a virtualizer, it achieves near native performance by executing the guest code directly on the host CPU. it supports virtualization when executing under the Xen hypervisor or using the KVM kernel module in Linux. When using KVM, it can virtualize x86, server and embedded PowerPC, 64-bit POWER, S390, 32-bit and 64-bit ARM, and MIPS guests.

Azk

Azk

azk lets developers easily and quickly install and configure development environments on their computers.

Parallels Desktop

Parallels Desktop

Parallels Desktop for Mac allows you to seamlessly run both Windows and MacOS applications side-by-side with speed, control and confidence.

Parallels

Parallels

It is an application and desktop virtualization software vendor that offers management and delivery platforms for Apple macOS and Microsoft Windows desktop deployments.

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