Table of Contents
- Technology Overview
- Supported Platforms & Guest Operating Systems
- Hyper-V Integration Services vs VirtualBox Guest Additions
- Virtual Disk Formats
- Hyper-V Checkpoints vs VirtualBox Snapshots
- Seamless Mode
- Hyper-V Live Migration vs VirtualBox Teleporting
- Remote Management with GUI
- Conclusion
Virtual machines are often run on server platforms such as VMware ESXi or Windows Server Hyper-V. Two of the better solution to host virtual machines on a desktop PC, or even on laptops are Oracle’s VirtualBox and Microsoft’s Client Hyper-V (Hyper-V role enabled on Windows 10 and Windows 11).
Client Hyper-V is integrated into the Pro, Enterprise, and Education versions of Windows 10 and Windows 11 as an operating system feature (it was also included in 64-bit SKUs of Windows 8 Pro and Windows 8 Enterprise). If you have a supported version of Windows, then you already have Client Hyper-V, because Client Hyper-V is a part of the Windows operating system, it is officially supported by Microsoft.
Although VirtualBox is provided by Oracle, it did not actually create VirtualBox. Oracle acquired VirtualBox from Sun Microsystems. VirtualBox is available for free as an open source software, it has been released under the terms of GPL version 2 licensing. It is available for download at https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
There are a few similarities and differences between Client Hyper-V and VirtualBox. In this post, we will compare Client Hyper-V(Windows 10 & Windows 11) and VirtualBox in detail with their similarities and differences in detail.
Technology Overview
Hyper-V is a virtualization platform created by Microsoft that allows you to create and run virtual machines on your Windows computer. It is primarily used for Windows Server, but also works with Windows 10, 8, 7
VirtualBox is a virtualization software created by Oracle that allows users to run multiple operating systems on the same computer. It is primarily used for desktop and laptop computers, but can also be used for server virtualization. VirtualBox can run on Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems.
A hypervisor is a special software that allows you to run one or more virtual machines on a physical or host machine. There are two types of hypervisors – Type 1 and Type 2.
Hyper-V is an example of a Type 1 hypervisor or bare-metal hypervisor that runs directly on a computer’s hardware. While the VirtualBox is a Type 2 hypervisor or hosted hypervisor that runs on the operating system installed on a host.
Hyper-V is always on if the host is powered on, while the VirtualBox can be started and closed at any time by a user on demand.
One of the key differentiators between VirtualBox and Hyper-V is that VirtualBox supports both hardware-assisted and software virtualization. Hardware-assisted virtualization leverages Intel’s VT-x or AMD’s AMD-V hardware-level virtualization support. This allows virtual machines to perform nearly as well as they would if they were natively installed on the PC.
If a PC does not support hardware-assisted virtualization, then the VirtualBox can use software virtualization instead. Software virtualization is a type of emulation in which the guest operating system is tricked into running in Ring 1. The virtualization engine intercepts all of the guest operating system’s hardware calls and redirects them to the host operating system. Software virtualization lacks the performance of hardware-assisted virtualization, because of the overhead caused by the emulation layer. Furthermore, VirtualBox does not support running 64-bit guest operating systems using software virtualization.
In contrast, Client Hyper-V uses only hardware-assisted virtualization. At one time, Microsoft did support software virtualization through a product called Virtual PC. Virtual PC still exists today (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=3702), but only works with Windows 7 and no longer uses software virtualization.
Few other differentiators between VirtualBox and Client Hyper-V is:
Client Hyper-V is all-inclusive, Oracle offers an extension pack for VirtualBox. This extension pack adds support for USB devices, disk encryption, NVMe, RDP, and PXE boot (for Intel network cards). This extension pack is a non-open source product that is provided under a Personal Use and Evaluation License (https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch01.html#intro-installing)
Hyper-V supports live migrations of virtual machines, allowing you to move a running virtual machine from one physical server to another. This is not supported in Oracle VirtualBox.
Hyper-V supports the latest hardware technologies, such as SR-IOV. This enables improved performance capabilities. Oracle VirtualBox does not support it.
Hyper-V provides built-in replication of virtual machines, allowing you to replicate data between two sites with minimal effort. This feature is not available in Oracle VirtualBox.
Supported Platforms & Guest Operating Systems
Hyper-V can only run on Windows family operating systems and it is available as a built-in feature from Windows 8 onwards and as a server role from Windows Server 2008 to later versions – it can host VMs with Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD guest operating systems.
On the other hand, Virtual Box can run on most popular operating systems such as Linux, Windows, Solaris, and Mac OS. The Guest OS support of Hyper-V & Virtual Box is almost the same, both support running Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Mac OS, and others.
If you are in a Windows-only environment, Hyper-V is the only option. But if you are in a multiplatform environment, then you can take advantage of VirtualBox and run it on any operating systems of your choice.
Hyper-V Integration Services vs VirtualBox Guest Additions
Hyper-V Integration Services is a set of drivers and utilities that are installed in the guest OS to improve overall performance and also to improve the interactions between the host and guest operating systems. For Windows OS, Integration Services can be installed by attaching an ISO file to the VM or through Windows Update. And for Linux, you can manually download the full installation package of Hyper-V Integration Services from the Download Center.
VirtualBox Guest Additions is again a set of drivers and utilities similar to that of Hyper-V Integration Services, to optimize the performance and usability of the guest OS. Features such as Drag & Drop, clipboard, and seamless mode will be available only after installing Guest Additions. It can be installed by attaching ISO to the guest VM and executing it through GUI or CLI.
Virtual Disk Formats
Virtual Hard Drives are like container files that contain the File system, Operating System, Files, and Applications of the VMs, similar to the physical drive.
VHD & VHDX are the virtual disks for Hyper-V virtual machines. VHD is an older format of Hyper-V virtual disk, while VHDX is the advanced version of VHD that is available from Window server 2012. Both VHD & VHDX contain three types of disk allocation such as Fixed, Dynamic, and Differencing.
VDI is the native virtual disk format for VirtualBox, however, it also supports other virtual disk formats such as VMDK, VHD, and HDD, which are the virtual disk formats of VMware, Hyper-V & Parallels Desktop respectively. VirtualBox also supports Fixed and Dynamic disk allocation.
Hyper-V Checkpoints vs VirtualBox Snapshots
A Hyper-V checkpoint is the same idea as the popular Windows restore point that many Windows users have utilized before adding new applications or making other system changes to their machines.
Hyper-V checkpoints allow users to easily save the current state of a virtual machine before making any critical changes so that if a problem arises due to the changes, the VM can be reverted to its previous state.
The latest version of Hyper-V offers two types of checkpoints: Standard and Production Checkpoints. When a checkpoint is created, a differencing virtual disk (AVHD or AVHDX) is created for each VHD or VHDX. After creating the checkpoint, all the changes made are written to the differencing disks and those are stored along with parent virtual disks in the same directory.
VirtualBox snapshot is the equivalent of Hyper-V VirtualBox snapshot is the equivalent of Hyper-V that allows you to save and then revert back to the exact state of a virtual machine. At any point in time for any virtual machine, you can take a “snapshot”. Then, in the future, you can restore the virtual machine back to its exact state with all its files & Applications put back the exact way that they were. When a snapshot is created in VirtualBox, a new VDI file will be created as a differencing virtual disk.
Seamless Mode
One of VirtualBox’s most unique features is called Seamless Mode. Seamless Mode works similarly to VMware’s Unity or Windows 7’s Windows XP Mode. Suppose for a moment that you have created a virtual machine on your desktop for the purpose of running a specific application that will not run on the host OS. Once the application is running within the virtual machine, you can switch to Seamless Mode. This will cause the virtual machine to “disappear”, leaving the illusion that the application running within the VM is running natively on your desktop. In other words, a seamless mode can save you the hassle of switching between your desktop and your virtual machines. Client Hyper-V does not have an equivalent to Seamless Mode.
Hyper-V Live Migration vs VirtualBox Teleporting
Without significant downtime Hyper-V allows you to move running VMs from one Hyper-V host to another (if both the hosts have shared storage) through Live Migration. This is especially useful to quickly restore operations of critical VMs at the time of system crash or disaster or when they want to run a maintenance check/update for the VMs. It is also useful when you use a Failover Cluster as it helps you provide high availability for the VMs.
VirtualBox Teleporting is a feature similar to Hyper-V Live Migration that allows you to migrate the virtual machines from one host to another over a TCP/IP network. The VMs can be migrated at both On & Off state making sure that both the hosts have a shared storage. VirtualBox Migration is host independent, i.e you can also migrate the VMs from windows based VirtualBox host to Linux based VirtualBox host.
Remote Management with GUI
Hyper-V Manager is a windows based tool used to interact with Hyper-V. The primary functionalities of the Hyper-V manager include,
- Create, delete, and configure the Hyper-V VMs and its disks
- Configure Hyper-V feature settings, such as Live Migration, Failover Clustering, Hyper-V Replication
- Control of virtual machine such as stop, start and save
- Create, delete, apply, and revert checkpoints
phpVirtualBox is an open-source web-based front-end to VirtualBox that allows you to control your VirtualBox environment. Like all other PHP applications, it runs only under a PHP-capable web server. It manages your VirtualBox installation by communicating with VirtualBox’s API server (vboxwebsrv – distributed with VirtualBox) over a network connection. phpVirtualBox and VirtualBox do not have to reside on the same physical machine as the communication is performed over the network. phpVirtualBox can even control multiple VirtualBox installations running on multiple hosts.
Conclusion
We looked at the similarities and differences between Client Hyper-V and VirtualBox. Both are excellent hypervisors, with neither being clearly superior to the other.
Related Posts
Difference between VMware and Hyper-V: A Complete guide
KVM vs VMware – A Hypervisor Comparison
Follow our Twitter and Facebook feeds for new releases, updates, insightful posts and more.
