Sun Microsystems VERSION 3.1.0_BETA2 user manual

1First steps

–Hardware compatibility. VirtualBox virtualizes a vast array of virtual de- vices, among them many devices that are typically provided by other virtu- alization platforms. That includes IDE, SCSI and SATA hard disk controllers, several virtual network cards and sound cards, virtual serial and parallel ports and an Input/Output Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (I/O APIC), which is found in many modern PC systems. This eases cloning of PC images from real machines and importing of third-party virtual ma- chines into VirtualBox.

–Full ACPI support. The Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) is fully supported by VirtualBox. This eases cloning of PC images from real machines or third-party virtual machines into VirtualBox. With its unique ACPI power status support, VirtualBox can even report to ACPI- aware guest operating systems the power status of the host. For mobile systems running on battery, the guest can thus enable energy saving and notify the user of the remaining power (e.g. in fullscreen modes).

–Multiscreen resolutions. VirtualBox virtual machines support screen res- olutions many times that of a physical screen, allowing them to be spread over a large number of screens attached to the host system.

–Built-in iSCSI support. This unique feature allows you to connect a vir- tual machine directly to an iSCSI storage server without going through the host system. The VM accesses the iSCSI target directly without the extra overhead that is required for virtualizing hard disks in container files. For details, see chapter 5.8, iSCSI servers, page 86.

–PXE Network boot. The integrated virtual network cards of VirtualBox fully support remote booting via the Preboot Execution Environment (PXE).

•Multigeneration branched snapshots. VirtualBox can save arbitrary snapshots of the state of the virtual machine. You can go back in time and revert the virtual machine to any such snapshot and start an alternative VM configuration from there, effectively creating a whole snapshot tree. For details, see chapter 1.8, Snapshots, page 25.

•Clean architecture; unprecedented modularity. VirtualBox has an extremely modular design with well-defined internal programming interfaces and a clean separation of client and server code. This makes it easy to control it from several interfaces at once: for example, you can start a VM simply by clicking on a button in the VirtualBox graphical user interface and then control that machine from the command line, or even remotely. See chapter 7, Alternative front-ends; remote virtual machines, page 96 for details.

Due to its modular architecture, VirtualBox can also expose its full functionality and configurability through a comprehensive software development kit (SDK), which allows for integrating every aspect of VirtualBox with other software sys- tems. Please see chapter 10, VirtualBox programming interfaces, page 154 for details.

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