Moving to VirtualBox

I've been working with VirtualBox for the past couple of months as a potential replacement for Parallels. It's not that I don't like Parallels, quite the opposite, but VirtualBox has a few features I'm interested in taking advantage of.

First and foremost, we finally have a VM implementation that is as capable on Solaris as it is on Windows, OS X and Linux. With a few servers running Solaris natively here, in addition to those running the other OS, I can make better use of the capacity in these machines. It's a minor thing, but a significant one in an increasingly heterogeneous environment.

It isn't the *only* VM solution for Solaris, we already have xVM (which uses Xen), Solaris Containers/Zones and LDOMs, but these all have a variety of limitations. Containers/Zones are really Solaris only (you can get a Linux compatible zone). LDOMs are similar. xVM can run anything you like and lets you be more restrictive on resources, but it can be more difficult to work with and set up. VirtualBox works just like any other application-based VM.

With VirtualBox I also like the fact that I can use RDP to connect to my VMs, and better, I can use USB over RDP to connect a USB key or similar to my VM as if I plugged it in locally. There are a couple of limitations, I can't run 64-bit hosts, or simulate multi-CPUs in the VM, all of which can be done by other solutions, but these are things I can live with for the moment.

The problem with making a change like this is that moving VMs from one VM environment to another is non-trivial. I have hundreds of Parallels VMs that I use for testing and development of different projects, but I can't transfer these over to VirtualBox. I guess the same would be true whatever VM I was moving too, but some provide solutions for migrating from one format to another. There is the Open Virtual Format, but we need better compatibility across the board for any VM environment if this is going to work.