Introduction
Greetings one and all. Today I want to discuss Oracles Virtual Box vs the other guy, specifically Vert-Manager. If one listens to the many talking heads out there, myself included, Virtual Box tends to get slammed quite a bit in comparison to vert-manager. And this generally concerns one parameter, speed
When it comes down to load times, I am not saying that the criticism is undeserved. What I am saying is that it is only one aspect of a hypervisor, the one that is easiest to understand, quantify, and everyone likes to looks at. However, speed is not the sole criteria one should be judging their hypervisor by, as I recently found out while working on another video. This may be a niche issue.
The Issue
Wifi and a bridge network adapter is the issue. Let me explain.
I was doing some testing for a video I had promised some viewers to do, basically an in depth part 2 to my minidlna video from about a year ago. The video was generally well received. So it just makes sense to do a squeal.
A year ago I was in the Philippines, happily working with my home lab. Today I am staying with friends and relatives here in the States, at least temporarily, so don’t have access to the home lab (for another couple of months anyway). I am, sort of, kind of, running a home lab on my laptop. And to do so I am running both Vert-Manager and Virtual Box. Why you might ask? Well there are certain things that Virtual Box just does better.
And today I want to look at one of them.
As I mentioned, when ever I see comparisons being made, one of the primary factors driving them is boot up time and speed.
Now I don’t want to down play the importance of speed. But for many of the things I do, it is not a critical consideration, other than when measured against my impatient.
One of the primary reasons for the speed difference is VirtualBox being a type 2 hypervisor, as opposed to Vert-Manager being a type 1 hypervisor (and yes I know that is not totally exactly 100% true, but it is still relative).
The main difference being that with Type 2 Hypervisors you have an entire operating system sitting in between the hardware and the Virtual Machine (VM). Whereas with type 1 Hypervisors the VM is much closer to the hardware.
While this imparts a speed penalty to the Type 2 hypervisors, it also has some advantages. Specifically in my case, setting up a bridge network while using Wifi. This just works better in VirtualBox.
The Example
As mentioned I was making a minidlna video, and to get minidlna to be visible on my local network, I need to bridge it to my laptops network adapter, specifically the WiFi adapter, as that tends to be my connection in my current circumstances.
A quick refresher, both Vert-Manager and Virtual Box use NAT by default. To put this as simply as possible, NAT is like a virtual router. And to be visible to the network one has to punch proverbial holes through it.
On the other hand a bridge is more like a switch. You get your IP address from your network dhcp server (usually your router), and everything is wide open.
Using vert-manger and a Wifi connection there is a certain level of juggling and finagling that goes on when trying to get it working. The reasons for this can get somewhat technical, and the subject deserves its own post. I am not saying it is not possible, just that it can be a bit obtuse and require certain hacks and adjustments.
However, when using Virtual Box, I set the network adapter for bridge, and guess what? It just works out of the box. Picked up my WiFi connection without a problem. No muss no fuss. Sometimes you just want something to work out of the box.
And in this case having it just work is a bit more important than speed to me.
Conclusion
So lets wrap things up here. And I will keep this simple. When choosing a Virtual machine manager, don’t let speed be your only guide. Yes speed is important, but don’t forget to look at interoperability with the various components you will be using. You might find yourself making a different decision in some cases.