InnoTek becomes a new open source competitor for virtualization vendors

Quoting from the InnoTek official announcement:

InnoTek today made VirtualBox generally available — a new contender in the premier league of x86 full virtualization software, and the only one that is also Open Source. Marking an important milestone in the history of PC virtualization, VirtualBox is designed for server, desktop and embedded use – in enterprises and for home use.

After years of development as a special-purpose solution, VirtualBox is now generally available to companies of any size as well as home users and developers who have so far been unable to find a professional, yet flexible and open virtualizer.

In addition, on InnoTek’s brand-new community website www.virtualbox.org, VirtualBox is now available in two versions: You can download the full binary releases free of charge for personal and educational use as well as evaluation. In addition, InnoTek has unleashed the VirtualBox Open Source Edition (OSE), containing nearly all of the source code of VirtualBox. Everyone is invited to test the product, check out the source code, join the community and contribute to further development of the product…


VirtualBox, which reached version 1.3.3, is available for Windows and Linux host OSes and has some interesting features:

  • allows recursive virtualization (a VirtualBox instance can run a guest OS), never allowed before by other virtualization vendors
  • allows full control through command-line (including snapshots management)
  • allows alternative front-ends, including ones not showing virtual machine desktops locally (something VMware is introducing right now with new Workstation 6 beta)
  • allows automatic logon of Windows virtual machines
  • includes a Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) server (to see virtual machines through RPD without enabling it inside all of them) and allows remote USB mapping
  • includes an iSCSI initiator (to map remote iSCSI targers as local virtual disks)
  • includes full support for Intel VT and experimenta support for AMD SVM
  • exposes Microsoft COM and Mozilla XPCOM programmable interfaces (this part seems still under development)
  • has a work in progress version for Apple Mac OS X

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.

InnoTek has been included in the virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Radar.