News

May 18, 2010. The VirtualBox team today released a significant new version of Oracle VM VirtualBox(TM), its high performance, cross-platform virtualization software. VirtualBox 3.2, the first Oracle branded release since the acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Inc by Oracle Corp. earlier this year, contains many innovative new features which deliver further significant improvements in performance, power and supported guest operating system platforms.

Performance

• New Latest Intel hardware support – Harnessing the latest in chip-level support for virtualization, VirtualBox 3.2 supports new Intel Core i5 and i7 processor and Intel Xeon processor 5600 Series support for Unrestricted Guest Execution bringing faster boot times for everything from Windows to Solaris guests;
• New Large Page support – Reducing the size and overhead of key system resources, Large Page support delivers increased performance by enabling faster lookups and shorter table creation times.
• New In-hypervisor Networking – Significant optimization of the networking subsystem has reduced context switching between guests and host, increasing network throughput by up to 25%.
• New New Storage I/O subsystem – VirtualBox 3.2 offers a completely re-worked virtual disk subsystem which utilizes asynchronous I/O to achieve high-performance whilst maintaining high data integrity;
• New Remote Video Acceleration – The unique built-in VirtualBox Remote Display Protocol (VRDP), which is primarily used in virtual desktop infrastructure deployments, has been enhanced to deliver video acceleration. This delivers a rich user experience coupled with reduced computational expense, which is vital when servers are running hundreds of virtual machines;

Power

• New Page Fusion – Traditional Page Sharing techniques have suffered from long and expensive cache construction as pages are scrutinized as candidates for de-duplication. Taking a smarter approach, VirtualBox Page Fusion uses intelligence in the guest virtual machine to determine much more rapidly and accurately those pages which can be eliminated thereby increasing the capacity or vm density of the system;
• New Memory Ballooning – Ballooning provides another method to increase vm density by allowing the memory of one guest to be recouped and made available to others;
• New Multiple Virtual Monitors – VirtualBox 3.2 now supports multi-headed virtual machines with up to 8 virtual monitors attached to a guest. Each virtual monitor can be a host window, or be mapped to the hosts physical monitors;
• New Hot-plug CPU's – Modern operating systems such Windows Server 2008 x64 Data Center Edition or the latest Linux server platforms allow CPUs to be dynamically inserted into a system to provide incremental computing power while the system is running. Version 3.2 introduces support for Hot-plug vCPUs, allowing VirtualBox virtual machines to be given more power, with zero-downtime of the guest;
• New Virtual SAS Controller – VirtualBox 3.2 now offers a virtual Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) controller, enabling it to run the most demanding of high-end guests;
• New Online Snapshot Merging – Snapshots are powerful but can eat up disk space and need to be pruned from time to time. Historically, machines have needed to be turned off to delete or merge snapshots but with VirtualBox 3.2 this operation can be done whilst the machines are running. This allows sophisticated system management with minimal interruption of operations;
• New OVF Enhancements – VirtualBox has supported the OVF standard for virtual machine portability for some time. Now with 3.2, VirtualBox specific configuration data is also stored in the standard allowing richer virtual machine definitions without compromising portability;
• New Guest Automation – The Guest Automation APIs allow host-based logic to drive operations in the guest;

Platforms

• New USB Keyboard and Mouse – Support more guests that require USB input devices;
• New Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.5 – Support for the latest version of Oracle's flagship Linux platform;
• New Ubuntu 10.04 (“Lucid Lynx”) – Support for both the desktop and server version of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution;
• New Mac OS X Server – On Apple hardware only, support for creating virtual machines running Mac OS X Server.

A key component of Oracle's industry-leading desktop-to-datacenter virtualization portfolio, VirtualBox is open source software and hugely popular: surpassing 26 million downloads worldwide since October 2007, with in excess of 40,000 downloads a day. A relatively small download, VirtualBox software is incredibly compact and efficient and installs in just a few minutes.

Pricing and Availability
To download the freely available Oracle VM VirtualBox software, visit the VirtualBox Downloads page. VirtualBox software is free of charge for personal use. For wider deployments within an organization, enterprise licenses are also available, starting at $50 (USD) per user. For partners wishing to redistribute the VirtualBox technology as part of their own solution, Oracle offers a comprehensive OEM licensing program.

May 10, 2010. VirtualBox 3.1.8 released! Oracle today released VirtualBox 3.1.8, a maintenance release of VirtualBox 3.1 which improves stability and fixes regressions. See the ChangeLog for details.

March 25, 2010. VirtualBox 3.1.6 released! Oracle today released VirtualBox 3.1.6, a maintenance release of VirtualBox 3.1 which improves stability and fixes regressions. See the ChangeLog for details.

Februar 12, 2010. VirtualBox 3.1.4 released! Oracle today released VirtualBox 3.1.4, a maintenance release of VirtualBox 3.1 which improves stability and fixes regressions. See the ChangeLog for details.

December 17, 2009. VirtualBox 3.1.2 released! Sun today released VirtualBox 3.1.2, a maintenance release of VirtualBox 3.1 which improves stability and fixes regressions. See the ChangeLog for details.

November 30, 2009. VirtualBox 3.1.0 released! Sun today release VirtualBox 3.1.0, a major update introducing teleportation, branched snapshots, 2D video acceleration for Windows guests, more flexible storage management and much more. See the ChangeLog for a list of all changes since VirtualBox 3.0.12.

November 17, 2009. VirtualBox 3.0.12 released! Sun today released VirtualBox 3.0.12, a maintenance release of VirtualBox 3.0 which improves stability and performance. See the ChangeLog for a list of changes since VirtualBox 3.0.10.

October 29, 2009. VirtualBox 3.0.10 released! Sun today released VirtualBox 3.0.10, a maintenance release of VirtualBox 3.0 which improves stability and performance. See the ChangeLog for a list of changes since VirtualBox 3.0.8.

October 6, 2009. VirtualBox 3.0.8 released! Sun today released VirtualBox 3.0.8, a maintenance release of VirtualBox 3.0 which improves stability and performance. See the ChangeLog for a list of changes since VirtualBox 3.0.6.

September 9, 2009. VirtualBox 3.0.6 released! Sun today released VirtualBox 3.0.6, a maintenance release of VirtualBox 3.0 which improves stability and performance. See the ChangeLog for a list of changes since VirtualBox 3.0.4.

August 4, 2009. VirtualBox 3.0.4 released! Sun today released VirtualBox 3.0.4, a maintenance release of VirtualBox 3.0 which improves stability and performance. See the ChangeLog for a list of changes since VirtualBox 3.0.2.

July 10, 2009. VirtualBox 3.0.2 released! Sun today released VirtualBox 3.0.2, a maintenance release of VirtualBox 3.0 which improves stability and performance. See the ChangeLog for a list of changes since VirtualBox 3.0.0.

June 30, 2009. Sun today released VirtualBox 3.0.0, a major update introducing Symmetrical Multiprocessing (SMP) in virtual machines as well as much improved 3D support. See the ChangeLog for details.

May 29, 2009. VirtualBox 2.2.4 released! Sun today released VirtualBox 2.2.4, a maintenance release of VirtualBox 2.2 which fixes several bugs. See the ChangeLog for a list of changes since VirtualBox 2.2.2.

April 28, 2009. VirtualBox 2.2.2 released! Sun today released VirtualBox 2.2.2, a maintenance release of VirtualBox 2.2 which improves stability and performance. See the ChangeLog for a list of changes since VirtualBox 2.2.0.

April 8, 2009. Sun today released VirtualBox 2.2.0 which marks another major milestone for the world's most popular free and open source hypervisor. Among the many improvements are support for OVF appliances, 3D acceleration for Linux/Solaris guests and support for up to 16GB of RAM per virtual machine. See the ChangeLog for a list of changes since VirtualBox 2.1.4.

March 3, 2009. ​VirtualBox forums updated! The VirtualBox user forum was updated to the latest phpBB3 forum software which greatly improves the usability of the forum. This high volume forum is now running as an appliance inside VirtualBox 2.1.4.

February 16, 2009. VirtualBox 2.1.4 released! Sun today released VirtualBox 2.1.4, the second maintenance release of VirtualBox 2.1 which improves stability and performance. See the ChangeLog for a list of changes since VirtualBox 2.1.2.

February 4th, 2009. Today the first episode of the VirtualBox Live Show was broadcasted with a live audience of over 500 enthusiasts. If you were unable to watch the live show, you can find a recording on the ​web.

January 21, 2009. VirtualBox 2.1.2 released! Sun today released VirtualBox 2.1.2, a maintenance release which improves stability and performance. See the ChangeLog for a list of changes since VirtualBox 2.1.0.

December 17, 2008. VirtualBox 2.1.0 released! Sun today released VirtualBox 2.1.0, a major update with exciting new features: among them better 64-bit support, hardware virtualization on the Mac, 3D acceleration, easier networking on Windows and Linux plus full VMDK/VHD support including snapshots. See the ChangeLog for a detailed list of changes.

December 10, 2008. VirtualBox in ​OpenSolaris 2008.11! Sun today announced the release of ​OpenSolaris 2008.11, and VirtualBox is now available in the OpenSolaris Extras repository.

November 21, 2008. VirtualBox 2.0.6 released! Sun today released VirtualBox 2.0.6, a maintenance release. See the ChangeLog for a list of changes since VirtualBox 2.0.4.

October 24, 2008. VirtualBox 2.0.4 released! Sun today released VirtualBox 2.0.4, a maintenance release. See the ChangeLog for a list of changes since VirtualBox 2.0.2.

September 12, 2008. VirtualBox 2.0.2 released! Sun today released VirtualBox 2.0.2, a maintenance release. See the ChangeLog for a list of changes since VirtualBox 2.0.0.

September 4, 2008. VirtualBox 2.0 released! Today is a significant day in the history of VirtualBox. The brand new version 2.0 comes with major enhancements such as 64-bit VMs, stronger networking capabilities and a native Mac OS X interface. See the change log and check out the ​press release for the full story.

September 2, 2008. VirtualBox 1.6.6 released! Sun today released VirtualBox 1.6.6, a maintenance release. See the ChangeLog for a list of changes since VirtualBox 1.6.4.

July 30, 2008. VirtualBox 1.6.4 released! Sun today released VirtualBox 1.6.4, a maintenance release. See the ChangeLog for a list of changes since VirtualBox 1.6.2.

June 2, 2008. VirtualBox 1.6.2 released! Sun today released VirtualBox 1.6.2, a maintenance release. See the ChangeLog for a list of changes since VirtualBox 1.6.0.

May 2, 2008. VirtualBox 1.6 released! The first major release since being acquired by Sun Microsystems is now available. Version 1.6 has new Mac and Solaris host platform support, new high performance virtual devices, improved scalability and Web Services.

April 29, 2008. VirtualBox at CommunityOne! Come to CommunityOne, the free and open developer conference held by Sun on May 5, San Francisco, CA! See this page for details. The VirtualBox panel will be held at 1:30 pm.

February 19, 2008. innotek today released VirtualBox 1.5.6, a maintenance release. See the ChangeLog for a list of changes since VirtualBox 1.5.4.

February 11, 2008. innotek today released the first beta of VirtualBox for OpenSolaris.

February 6, 2008. innotek today released an updated beta of VirtualBox for OS X, marking yet another important milestone to the completion of the OS X version. The new version sports seamless guest support and live dock tiles as well as numerous improvements and bug fixes. It goes without saying that it runs on the most recent version of OS X (Leopard).

September 3, 2007. innotek today released VirtualBox 1.5.0 for Windows and Linux. Major new features and many small improvements make this update a very significant software release. Among the major features is the seamless windowing mode where the windows of a VM directly integrate with your Linux or Windows desktop -- making VirtualBox the first product to offer this support on the Windows and Linux platforms. Support for the 64-bit versions of Windows as host operating system has been added as well as official support for IBM OS/2 Warp as a guest operating system, including Guest Additions. Version 1.5.0 also adds support for serial ports and comes with a fully standard compliant Intel PXE network boot agent. For a detailed list of improvements, see the Changelog. VirtualBox 1.5.0 is available both as Open Source under the GPL as well as under a commercial license which, in most cases, allows you to use the product free of charge.

July 18, 2007. innotek today released an updated beta of VirtualBox for OS X, marking an important milestone to the completion of the OS X version. The new version now supports USB and as well as numerous improvements and bug fixes. VirtualBox 1.5.0 is the only professional virtualization solution that is available as Open Source as well as under a commercial license which, on most cases, allows for free use of the product.

June 5, 2007. innotek today released VirtualBox 1.4.0 for Windows and Linux. This new version brings hundreds of improvements, more than any update since the first official release in January 2007. Among the new features are full support for 64-bit Linux hosts, RDP session shadowing, clipboard synchronization, serial ports and easier Linux host interface networking. In the storage department, VirtualBox now supports VMware disk images (VMDK) natively and can give virtual machines access to physical disks and partitions ("raw disk support"). The graphical user interface has received more polish and has now been translated into 12 languages (German, Spanish, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Arabic, Russian, Japanese, Traditional Chinese and Chinese). Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL5) and Xandros Desktop 4.1 are now officially supported; support for FreeBSD and OpenBSD guests has been improved. For details, see the Changelog. As with its predecessors, VirtualBox 1.4.0 is available both as Open Source under the GPL as well as under a commercial license which, in most cases, allows you to use the product free of charge.

April 23, 2007. innotek today released a beta version VirtualBox for OS X, bringing its highly successful open source virtualization package to the Apple Macintosh platform. OS X is the third major platform that VirtualBox supports and Mac users can now benefit from the most powerful and best performing virtualization software on the market with the ease of use which Macintosh users have come to expect. VirtualBox for OS X is also the first professional virtualization product that is available free of charge, marking the start of a new era on the the Mac platform. VirtualBox for OS X is based on a beta of the upcoming VirtualBox 1.4 and is expected to be completed in the 2nd quarter of 2007.

March 14, 2007. innotek today announced that it has released a maintenance update to VirtualBox, bringing it to version 1.3.8. A large number of corrections and improvements have been made, addressing requests from both commercial customers and community members. The list of supported Linux systems has further increased with the addition of custom installation packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (RHEL4) and Mandriva 2007.1.

February 20, 2007. innotek today announced that it has released another update to its VirtualBox software, taking the product to version 1.3.6. This release further improves compatibility with heterogeneous customer systems and adds a custom installation package for the popular openSUSE 10.2 Linux platform. While this release mainly addresses issues discovered by innotek and its customers, work on the next major release continues and is expected to be complete for CeBIT 2007 on March 15th.

February 12, 2007. innotek today announced that it has released VirtualBox 1.3.4, an important update to its leading virtual machine product which is available both as Open Source and as a commercial application with professional support. Over 800 improvements have been integrated, largely based on feedback from the VirtualBox user community. At the same time, innotek also announces that it has agreed with Ubuntu to integrate VirtualBox into the upcoming Ubuntu Linux 7.04 ("Feisty Fawn"), making it even easier to enjoy professional virtualization in an user-friendly manner.

January 30, 2007. innotek today announced that it will exhibit at the world's largest IT trade show, CeBIT 2007 in Hannover, Germany, taking place from March 15th until March 21st. innotek has chosen to exhibit with its partner ​Univention as part of the Linux Park in Hall 5 (Booth G57/3). During the show, innotek representatives and members of the VirtualBox development team will demonstrate VirtualBox running on Linux, Windows and Mac OS, discuss VirtualBox development and provide technical support. Every user of VirtualBox is invited to stop by and have a chat!

January 15, 2007. innotek today released VirtualBox Open Source Edition (OSE), marking an important milestone in the development of PC virtualization software. VirtualBox OSE is the first professional PC virtualization solution released as open source under the GNU General Public License (GPL). With VirtualBox, customers get the most versatile virtualization product on the market, both for enterprise and individual use. VirtualBox' open source license allows everyone to contribute to the development of the product and customize it to suit individual needs. Backed by Europe's largest team of virtualization experts, VirtualBox continues to be developed and supported.