On 12/17/10 11:01 PM, Andy Ruhl wrote:
I've been using VirtualBox on OSX for a while now with both Windows XP and NetBSD/AMD64 as guest machines. There are a few things that annoy me but since it's free, I can't really complain. I've heard VMWare uses less memory and might be faster than VirtualBox, can anyone confirm this? Also, is there any NetBSD (guest) specific reason why I would want to spend money on VMWare Fusion instead of VirtualBox?
FWIW, I went from Fusion to VirtualBox about a year ago. I've used VMware's products since about 1999 and although I have a fistful of Fusion licenses, I no longer use them because VirtualBox meets my virtualization needs. (I still have Fusion installed on one machine, purely because I have some legacy VM's there which I've not bothered to move to VirtualBox.)
I've never categorically benchmarked one or the other... but nor have I found one to give the impression of a significant performance boost over the other. I run NetBSD 5.x in VM's daily, FreeBSD from time to time and Windows as needs must. I've not yet come across a situation which isn't workable. I also prefer VirtualBox's scripting tools and detached UI; but would really like to see the ability to group VM's somehome... my list is long and finding stuff != quick + easy. I'm pretty sure I've run "openssl speed" on each and found them to be reasonably close. (I'd like to say that VirtualBox was a touch faster, but I don't actually recall... it would have had to have been close though, or I'd not have stuck with it.)
IIRC Fusion has a downloadable evaluation... I'd suggest giving it a try and see how you get on. (FWIW, I recall trying Parallels some time ago and felt rather dirty afterwards... not my cup of tea.)
Not sure if that helps, but here's hoping! Mike.