# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
¿Qué es Virtual Machine o Máquina Virtual?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
VirtualBox Extension Pack

VirtualBox 7.1.4 Extension Pack

This VirtualBox Extension Pack Personal Use and Educational License governs your access to and use of the VirtualBox Extension Pack. It does not apply to the VirtualBox base package and/or its source code, which are licensed under version 3 of the GNU General Public License "GPL").

See our FAQ for answers to common questions.

VirtualBox Extension Pack Personal Use and Educational License (PUEL)
License version 12, 22 July 2024

PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING ORACLE VIRTUALBOX EXTENSION PACK PERSONAL USE AND EDUCATIONAL LICENSE CAREFULLY BEFORE DOWNLOADING OR USING THE ORACLE SOFTWARE. THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS CONSTITUTE A LEGAL AGREEMENT BETWEEN YOU AND ORACLE.

ORACLE AMERICA, INC. ("ORACLE") IS WILLING TO LICENSE THE PRODUCT DEFINED IN SECTION 1 BELOW ONLY ON THE CONDITION THAT YOU ACCEPT ALL OF THE TERMS CONTAINED IN THIS VIRTUALBOX EXTENSION PACK PERSONAL USE AND EDUCATIONAL LICENSE AGREEMENT ("AGREEMENT").

IF YOU ARE AGREEING TO THIS LICENSE ON BEHALF OF AN ENTITY (RATHER THAN AS AN INDIVIDUAL HUMAN BEING), YOU REPRESENT THAT YOU HAVE THE APPROPRIATE AUTHORITY TO ACCEPT THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS ON BEHALF OF SUCH ENTITY.

§ 1 Subject of Agreement. This Agreement governs your use of the binary software package called "Oracle VirtualBox Extension Pack" (the "Product"), which contains a set of additional features for "Oracle VirtualBox" that enhance the operation of multiple virtual machines ("Guest Computers") on a single physical computer ("Host Computer"). The Product consists of executable files in machine code, script files, data files, and all documentation and updates provided to You by Oracle.

§ 2 Grant of license. Oracle grants you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, limited license without fees to reproduce, install, execute, and use internally the Product on Host Computers for your Personal Use, or Educational Use. "Personal Use" is noncommercial use solely by the person downloading the Product from Oracle on a single Host Computer, provided that no more than one client or remote computer is connected to that Host Computer and that client or remote computer is used solely to remotely view the Guest Computer(s). "Educational Use" is any use by teachers or students in an academic institution (schools, colleges and universities) as part of the institution's educational curriculum. Personal Use and/or Educational Use expressly exclude any use of the Product for commercial purposes or to operate, run, or act on behalf of or for the benefit of a business, organization, governmental organization, or educational institution.

Oracle reserves all rights not expressly granted in this license.

§ 3 Restrictions and Reservation of Rights.

(1) The Product and copies thereof provided to you under this Agreement are copyrighted and licensed, not sold, to you by Oracle.

(2) You may not do any of the following: (a) modify any part of the Product, except to the extent allowed in the documentation accompanying the Product; (b) rent, lease, lend, re-distribute, or encumber the Product; (c) remove or alter any proprietary legends or notices contained in the Product; or (d) decompile, or reverse engineer the Product (except to the extent permitted by applicable law).

(3) The Product is not designed, licensed or intended for use in the design, construction, operation or maintenance of any nuclear facility and Oracle and its licensors disclaim any express or implied warranty of fitness for such uses.

(4) No right, title or interest in or to any trademark, service mark, logo or trade name of Oracle or its licensors is granted under this Agreement.

§ 4 Termination. The Agreement is effective on the date you receive the Product and remains effective until terminated. Your rights under this Agreement will terminate immediately without notice from Oracle if you materially breach it or take any action in derogation of Oracle's and/or its licensors' rights to the Product. Oracle may terminate this Agreement immediately should any part of the Product become or in Oracle's reasonable opinion likely to become the subject of a claim of intellectual property infringement or trade secret misappropriation. Upon termination, you will cease use of and destroy all copies of the Product under your control and confirm compliance in writing to Oracle. Neither termination of this Agreement nor any deletion or removal of the Product shall limit any obligations you may have to Oracle, or any rights and/or remedies that Oracle may have with respect to any past or future infringing use of the Product (including but not limited to any use of the Product outside the scope of the license provided in the Agreement). Sections 3-9, inclusive, will survive termination of the Agreement.

§ 5 Disclaimer of Warranty. TO THE EXTENT NOT PROHIBITED BY APPLICABLE LAW, ORACLE PROVIDES THE PRODUCT "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. WITHOUT LIMITING THE FOREGOING, ORACLE SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. The entire risk as to the quality and performance of the Product is with you. Should it prove defective, you assume the cost of all necessary servicing, repair, or correction.

§ 6 Limitation of Liability. TO THE EXTENT NOT PROHIBITED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL ORACLE OR ITS LICENSORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY LOST REVENUE, PROFIT, DATA, OR DATA USE, OR FOR SPECIAL, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, INCIDENTAL OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, HOWEVER CAUSED REGARDLESS OF THE THEORY OF LIABILITY, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE PRODUCT, EVEN IF ORACLE HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. In no event will Oracle's liability to you, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), or otherwise, exceed the amount paid by you for the Product under this Agreement.

§ 7 Separately Licensed Third Party Technology. The Product may contain or require the use of third party technology that is provided with the Product. Oracle may provide certain notices to you in the Product's documentation, readmes or notice files in connection with such third party technology. Third party technology will be licensed to you either under the terms of this Agreement or, if specified in the documentation, readmes or notice files, under Separate Terms. Your rights to use Separately Licensed Third Party Technology under Separate Terms are not restricted in any way by this Agreement. However, for clarity, notwithstanding the existence of a notice, third party technology that is not Separately Licensed Third Party Technology shall be deemed part of the Product and is licensed to You under the terms of this Agreement. "Separate Terms" refers to separate license terms that are specified in the Product's documentation, readmes or notice files and that apply to Separately Licensed Third Party Technology. "Separately Licensed Third Party Technology" refers to third party technology that is licensed under Separate Terms and not under the terms of this Agreement.

§ 8 Export. Export laws and regulations of the United States and any other relevant local export laws and regulations apply to the Product. You agree that such export laws govern your use of the Product (including technical data) provided under this Agreement, and you agree to comply with all such export laws and regulations (including "deemed export" and "deemed re-export" regulations). You agree that no data, information, and/or Product (or direct product thereof) will be exported, directly or indirectly, in violation of these laws, or will be used for any purpose prohibited by these laws including, without limitation, nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons proliferation, or development of missile technology.

§ 9 U.S. Government End Users. Oracle programs, including the Product, any operating system, integrated software, any programs installed on hardware, and/or documentation, delivered to U.S. Government end users are "commercial computer software" pursuant to the applicable Federal Acquisition Regulation and agency-specific supplemental regulations. As such, use, duplication, disclosure, modification, and adaptation of the programs, including any operating system, integrated software, any programs installed on the hardware, and/or documentation, shall be subject to license terms and license restrictions applicable to the programs. No other rights are granted to the U.S. Government.

§ 10 Miscellaneous. This Agreement is the entire agreement between you and Oracle relating to its subject matter. It supersedes all prior or contemporaneous oral or written communications, proposals, representations and warranties and prevails over any conflicting or additional terms of any quote, order, acknowledgment, or other communication between the parties relating to its subject matter during the term of this Agreement. No modification of this Agreement will be binding, unless in writing and signed by an authorized representative of each party. If any provision of this Agreement is held to be unenforceable, this Agreement will remain in effect with the provision omitted, unless omission would frustrate the intent of the parties, in which case this Agreement will immediately terminate. This Agreement is governed by the laws of the State of California, USA, and you and Oracle agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of, and venue in, the courts of San Francisco or Santa Clara counties in California in any dispute arising out of or relating to this Agreement. Upon 45 days written notice, Oracle may audit your use of the Product to confirm that you are in compliance with the terms of this Agreement. You agree to cooperate with Oracle's audit and provide reasonable assistance and access to information. Any such audit shall not unreasonably interfere with your normal business operations. You agree to pay within 30 days of written notification any fees applicable to your unlicensed use of the Product. You agree that Oracle shall not be responsible for any of your costs incurred in cooperating with the audit. If a legal action or proceeding is commenced by either party in connection with the enforcement of this Agreement, the prevailing party shall be entitled to its costs and attorneys' fees actually incurred in connection with such action or proceeding.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
VirtualBox Extension Pack VirtualBox 7.1.4 Extension Pack This VirtualBox Extension Pack Personal Use and Educational License governs your access to and use of the VirtualBox Extension Pack. It does not apply to the VirtualBox base package and/or its source code, which are licensed under version 3 of the GNU General Public License "GPL").

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Cómo instalar VirtualBox (con imágenes) - wikiHow

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
En este wikiHow, aprenderás a instalar y utilizar la aplicación VirtualBox ya sea en una computadora con Windows, Linux o en una Mac. VirtualBox es un programa que emula una segunda computadora, lo que te permitirá instalar y utilizar...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
▷ Cómo instalar y configurar VirtualBox en Ubuntu 20.04 - Soplos Linux

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
VirtualBox en Ubuntu, es muy sencillo de instalar y de configurar. A petición de ajcg hoy hago este tutorial para explicar cómo instalar

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
1.5. Installing Oracle VM VirtualBox and Extension Packs

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Así, como vemos en la web, encontramos un enlace directo para descargar el fichero, tanto para Windows como para Linux. Así, seleccionamos la plataforma que nos interesa en este caso para descargar el correspondiente fichero. Este se descarga como cualquier otro programa, por lo que no tendremos más que instalarlo en el equipo de manera habitual.

Crear una máquina virtual con VirtualBox

Crear una máquina virtual en VirtualBox para instalar un sistema operativo, ya sea Windows o Linux, es un proceso muy rápido y sencillo realizando los pasos que os mostramos a continuación. El proceso para instalar macOS a través de VirtualBox es de todo menos sencillo, aunque se puede, hay que realizar un gran número de pasos previos y durante la instalación a través de comandos de terminal.

Primeros pasos en VirtualBox

Pues bien, una vez hayamos descargado e instalado el programa en nuestro equipo, ya podemos ponerlo en marcha. Así, una vez ejecutado en el sistema, nos encontramos con su interfaz principal.

Como podemos comprobar, aquí nos encontramos con una interfaz con muy buen aspecto, moderna y fácil de entender. En la parte izquierda de la misma nos encontramos con las entradas que se corresponden a las máquinas virtuales que con el tiempo iremos creando, así como el nombre asignado.

Por otro lado, en el momento en que seleccionemos alguna de ellas, en la parte derecha veremos un resumen con los datos internos de la misma, mientras que, en la parte superior, podremos ponerla en funcionamiento.

Disponer de la imagen ISO

Evidentemente si nos disponemos a crear una nueva máquina virtual en este potente programa especialmente desarrollado para ello, en la mayoría de las ocasiones lo que nos disponemos a hacer es visualizar un sistema operativo en lugar de instalarlo de forma convencional. Por tanto antes de poner en marcha VirtualBox y todas las funciones que nos ofrece, lo primero que debemos tener en nuestro poder es la imagen o archivo ISO que nos disponemos a utilizar para todo ello.

Un claro ejemplo todo esto que os contamos lo logramos si deseamos probar diferentes distribuciones de Linux en el sistema Windows que tenemos instalado en nuestro ordenador. Cabe la posibilidad de que deseemos migrar a un sistema operativo de código abierto o sencillamente crear una partición para disponer de arranque dual en nuestro equipo, uno con Windows y otro con Linux. Así, en lugar de andar instalando y desinstalando las diferentes distribuciones para echarlas un vistazo de primera mano, utilizamos la máquina virtual.

Por tanto, para empezar a trabajar con el programa en el que nos centramos en estas líneas, podemos descargar las correspondientes imágenes en formato ISO para posteriormente cargarlas en VirtualBox tal y como es mostraremos. Pero no solo eso, sino que lo mismo podemos hacer con las imágenes de otros sistemas operativos incluido el de Microsoft, ya que la propia empresa nos propone diferentes ISO correspondientes a las ediciones de su sistema y que podemos descargar desde la web oficial de la propia empresa.

Al contrario de lo que muchos podrían pensar en un principio, esto es algo totalmente legal y que nos permitirá, por ejemplo, realizar ciertas pruebas en Windows de manera virtual sin que esto afecte al sistema operativo que tenemos instalado en el equipo. Una vez tenemos la imagen en nuestro disco duro, pasemos a utilizarla en VirtualBox, como veremos.

Empieza a crear una nueva máquina

Pero como os podréis imaginar, aquí lo que nos interesa realmente es poder crear una nueva máquina virtual en VirtualBox, desde cero; veamos cómo hacerlo. Para todo ello, lo primero que tenemos que hacer es pinchar en el botón Nueva de la interfaz principal del programa que encontramos en la parte superior central.

Entonces aparecerá una ventana donde no tenemos más que especificar el nombre personal que deseamos asignar a la misma. Os recomendamos usar un nombre lo suficientemente representativo para que no nos confundamos en el futuro. Al mismo tiempo, aquí también tendremos la oportunidad de elegir el tipo de sistema que vamos a virtualizar en este caso. Con el fin de facilitarnos las cosas, el programa nos ofrece una lista desplegable donde marcar nuestra elección.

Otro aspecto a tener muy en cuenta aquí, es que podremos especificar la ruta de disco en la que deseamos almacenar la máquina virtual. Aquí podemos seleccionar alguna de las unidades internas del PC, o alguna externa, a nuestra elección. Si vamos a utilizar diferentes máquinas virtuales, debemos tener en cuenta que ocupan bastante espacio, en especial los emuladores de versiones de Windows, por lo que es aconsejable utilizar una unidad de almacenamiento externa o bien un disco duro que no sea donde tenemos instalado el sistema operativo.

Asigna la RAM virtual más adecuada

Pues bien, una vez especificados el nombre, tipo y ubicación de la nueva máquina, pasamos al siguiente paso, que no es otro que de asignación de memoria. Esto es muy importante para indicar al programa la cantidad de memoria RAM local deseamos asignar a esa máquina virtual que vamos a crear. Así, dependiendo de la RAM total disponible en el PC, tenemos que hacer un cálculo de cuánto permitiremos que use esta máquina cuando esté en funcionamiento.

Hay que tener en cuenta que debe ser suficiente para que el sistema virtual corra sin problemas, pero que al mismo tiempo no afecte al sistema principal. Por ejemplo, en un PC con 16 gigas, reservar cuatro para virtualizar Windows 10, es una buena elección. Basta con desplazar la barra que nos encontramos aquí hasta el valor asignado. Hay que tener en cuenta que la RAM dedicada a la máquina virtual no estará disponible para el sistema operativo donde se ejecuta, por lo que, si el equipo anda justo de memoria, el rendimiento que puede presentar tanto la máquina virtual como el sistema operativo anfitrión, pueden dejar mucho que desear.

Configurar el disco duro virtual en VirtualBox

Una vez pasamos a la siguiente ventana del asistente que estamos siguiendo en el programa, tras especificar la RAM a usar en la virtualización pasemos al disco. Aquí tendremos la oportunidad de crear el disco duro virtual como tal, por lo que os recomendamos que marquéis la opción de Crear un disco virtual ahora.

Entonces pasamos a la siguiente ventana de configuración del disco virtual propiamente dicho, donde podremos especificar el tipo de archivo que deseamos usar para disco virtual mencionado. En el caso de que este no lo vayamos a usar con otro software de virtualización alternativo a VirtualBox, como es el caso, dejamos la selección por defecto. Por tanto, de entre las tres que vemos en pantalla, dejamos marcado VDI o VirtualBox Disk Image.

El paso siguiente es muy importante, ya que se refiere al espacio de disco físico que vamos a dejar que el virtual utilice en esta máquina que estamos creando. Tenemos dos posibilidades aquí y la elección dependerá de cada caso. Por un lado, tenemos la posibilidad de dejar una reserva dinámica, por lo que la máquina virtual irá cogiendo espacio del disco a medida que lo necesite. Por otro lado, podemos dejarlo como fijo, con lo que especificamos los gigas de la unidad de disco que cedemos a esta máquina. En este caso, por ejemplo, lo vamos a dejar como dinámico, por lo que marcamos la opción correspondiente y pinchamos en Next. De esta forma, si la máquina virtual necesita más espacio para descargar e instalar aplicaciones o actualizaciones, no nos veremos obligados a modificar el espacio reservado para su funcionamiento.

Para que no haya confusiones, decir que el disco fijo tarda más tiempo en crearse en este instante, horas en algunos casos, pero a la hora de usarse en el futuro, es más rápido. Sin embargo, el dinámico se asigna más rápido, pero una vez tomado ese espacio, ya no lo vuelve a liberar.

Aunque dejemos el tamaño como dinámico, tenemos que asignar un máximo para que la máquina virtual no coja todo el disco si lo necesita. Esto es algo hacemos en la siguiente ventana, donde además damos un nombre y ruta al fichero de la máquina que se va a crear.

Por tanto, si este caso elegimos el dinámico, como os comentamos, ahora vamos a establecer el máximo que la máquina podrá tomar. Por ejemplo, en el caso que nos ocupa, vamos a ceder un total de 50 gigas. Para terminar, no tenemos más que pinchar en Crear y esperar hasta que se instale, un proceso que puede tardar más o menos tiempo dependiendo del tipo de almacenamiento (HDD o SSD) y de la potencia de nuestro equipo.

Preparar y configurar la máquina virtual

Esto nos dará paso a la interfaz inicial con la máquina creada, esta se sitúa en la parte izquierda de la misma. Claro, antes de nada, tenemos que cargar el sistema operativo en forma de imagen ISO en la máquina como tal. Para ello, la seleccionamos y pinchamos en el botón de Configuración que se sitúa en la parte superior.

En la ventana que aparece, nos situamos en el apartado de Almacenamiento de los que se sitúan en el panel izquierdo. Entonces aquí tendremos la oportunidad de elegir el medio desde el que vamos a instalar el sistema virtualizado en la máquina creada de VirtualBox.

Aquí pinchamos en el apartado que reza como Vacío del panel derecho, que es donde vamos a cargar la ISO del sistema que deseamos cargar. A continuación, pinchamos en el botón que se sitúa a la derecha del apartado Unidad óptica. Así podremos elegir la ubicación del correspondiente archivo de imagen que vamos a virtualizar.

Una vez cargado el fichero, volvemos a la pantalla principal del programa, para que ya podamos seleccionar la máquina creada, y pulsemos en Iniciar. Esto dará paso a la instalación o ejecución del sistema virtual en la máquina que creamos antes, así de sencillo.

Ejecutar la máquina virtual por primera vez

Como vemos, la configuración de una máquina virtual en este programa en concreto no es en absoluto complicada para así visualizar todo tipo de sistemas operativos. Lo habitual en estos casos es que hagamos uso de las imágenes ISO que cargamos en la aplicación de alguna distribución de Linux o incluso de Windows. Ya hemos visto los pasos que hay que dar para así no tener que crear una partición en el disco duro del equipo si deseamos probar algún nuevo sistema.

Pero claro, una vez que ya tenemos configurada la imagen como tal que hemos cargado en el programa de virtualización, llega el momento de ponerla en funcionamiento. llegados a este punto debemos tener muy presente que la primera vez que ejecutamos una determinada ISO, el sistema operativo se tendrá que instalar en la máquina virtual como tal. Cabe mencionar que esto puede llevar un tiempo, tal y como sucede cuando instalamos un nuevo Windows o Linux en nuestro equipo de forma convencional. Básicamente lo que os queremos decir con esto es que la primera vez que ejecutemos esta máquina virtual, su instalación durará un tiempo. Asimismo tendremos que configurar el sistema operativo normalmente a través del asistente que muestra en pantalla.

Eso sí, esto tan solo sucederá la primera vez tras la carga y configuración de la imagen el sistema. las veces posteriores tan solo se tendrá que poner en funcionamiento para que podamos utilizarlo, tal y como sí arrancásemos nuestro ordenador de forma habitual.

Ajustes para mejorar el rendimiento de la máquina virtual

Por defecto, VirtualBox establece una configuración intermedia que nos garantiza un rendimiento aceptable del sistema virtual sin que experimentemos un impacto muy grande en el rendimiento del sistema principal. Sin embargo, si tenemos un PC de gama alta, con muchos recursos, podemos aprovecharnos para mejorar el rendimiento del sistema virtual y que este vaya mucho más fluido.

Algunos de los ajustes que podemos cambiar para mejorar el rendimiento son:

Configuración > Sistema > Placa base: ampliar la memoria RAM.

Configuración > Sistema > Procesador: aumentar el número de procesadores (cores).

Configuración > Pantalla > Pantalla: aumentar la memoria de vídeo.

Configuración > Pantalla > Pantalla: activar la aceleración 3D.

Estos valores podemos modificarlos en cualquier momento, tanto para aumentarlos como para reducirlos. Por tanto, no debemos tener miedo en probar hasta encontrar el equilibrio. Lo importante, sobre todo, es no dejar al sistema principal sin memoria o sin CPU, ya que entonces el PC iría excesivamente lento, y con él, la máquina virtual, ya que estamos compartiendo el hardware físico de nuestro PC con la máquina virtual que hemos creado par que ambas puedan funcionar de forma conjunta e independiente en el equipo. Si dedicamos la mitad de la RAM y la mitad de los procesadores de nuestro equipo a la máquina virtual, el rendimiento de Windows se verá afectado a peor sin embargo mejorará el de la máquina virtual. Siempre debemos encontrar el equilibrio perfecto entre ambos sistemas operativos para que merezca la pena utilizar una máquina virtual en lugar de utilizar particiones en el equipo.

Además, es importante acordarnos de instalar las Guest Addition, los "drivers" necesarios para que el sistema virtual pueda comunicarse con el sistema operativo anfitrión y poder obtener así mejorar rendimiento. Gracias a las Guest Addition, podemos trabajar con la máquina virtual de igual forma que lo hacemos con el sistema operativo anfitrión, por lo que vamos a poder copiar y pegar archivos como si lo hiciéramos en el explorador de archivos de Windows además de activar la función que nos permite mover archivos entre la máquina invitada y anfitriona con tan solo arrastrarlos de uno a otro lado. También vamos a poder pegar textos entre las aplicaciones de la máquina que hemos virtualizado y el sistema operativo al igual que podemos hacer en Windows, permitir el uso de los puertos USB del equipo y de las unidades ópticas de almacenamiento, crear carpetas compartidas para ambas máquinas y mucho más.

Para instalar las Guest Addition en VirtualBox, en la pantalla principal de VirtualBox, pulsamos en el menú Máquina y, seguidamente en Instalar Guest Additions en el sistema operativo que tenemos abierto. La instalación de las Guest Addition se debe realizar en cada uno de los sistemas operativos que emulemos, por lo que, si tenemos más de una máquina emulada, debemos realizar el proceso de forma independiente en cada una de ellas. En la aplicación VirtualBox de nuestro equipo, no tenemos que instalar ninguna aplicación adicional, únicamente en las máquinas virtuales que hayamos creado.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Cómo crear y configurar una máquina virtual con VirtualBox

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
VirtualBox es uno de los programas de referencia a la hora de probar otros sistema operativos a través de máquinas virtuales

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Chapter 4. Guest Additions

The previous chapter covered getting started with Oracle VM VirtualBox and installing operating systems in a virtual machine. For any serious and interactive use, the Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions will make your life much easier by providing closer integration between host and guest and improving the interactive performance of guest systems. This chapter describes the Guest Additions in detail.

As mentioned in Section 1.2, "Some Terminology", the Guest Additions are designed to be installed a virtual machine after the guest operating system has been installed. They consist of device drivers and system applications that optimize the guest operating system for better performance and usability. See Section 3.1, "Supported Guest Operating Systems" for details on what guest operating systems are fully supported with Guest Additions by Oracle VM VirtualBox.

The Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions for all supported guest operating systems are provided as a single CD-ROM image file which is called VBoxGuestAdditions.iso. This image file is located in the installation directory of Oracle VM VirtualBox. To install the Guest Additions for a particular VM, you mount this ISO file in your VM as a virtual CD-ROM and install from there.

The Guest Additions offer the following features:

Mouse pointer integration. To overcome the limitations for mouse support described in Section 1.9.2, "Capturing and Releasing Keyboard and Mouse", this feature provides you with seamless mouse support. You will only have one mouse pointer and pressing the Host key is no longer required to the mouse from being captured by the guest OS. To make this work, a special mouse driver is installed in the guest that communicates with the physical mouse driver on your host and moves the guest mouse pointer accordingly.

Shared folders. These provide an easy way to exchange files between the host and the guest. Much like ordinary Windows network shares, you can tell Oracle VM VirtualBox to treat a certain host directory as a shared folder, and Oracle VM VirtualBox will make it available to the guest operating system as a network share, irrespective of whether the guest actually has a network. See Section 4.3, "Shared Folders".

Better video support. While the virtual graphics card which Oracle VM VirtualBox emulates for any guest operating system provides all the basic features, the custom video drivers that are installed with the Guest Additions provide you with extra high and non-standard video modes, as well as accelerated video performance.

In addition, with Windows, Linux, and Oracle Solaris guests, you can resize the virtual machine's window if the Guest Additions are installed. The video resolution in the guest will be automatically adjusted, as if you had manually entered an arbitrary resolution in the guest's Display settings. See Section 1.9.5, "Resizing the Machine's Window".

If the Guest Additions are installed, 3D graphics and 2D video for guest applications can be accelerated. See Section 4.5, "Hardware-Accelerated Graphics".

Seamless windows. With this feature, the individual windows that are displayed on the desktop of the virtual machine can be mapped on the host's desktop, as if the underlying application was actually running on the host. See Section 4.6, "Seamless Windows".

Generic host/guest communication channels. The Guest Additions enable you to control and monitor guest execution. The guest properties provide a generic string-based mechanism to exchange data bits between a guest and a host, some of which have special meanings for controlling and monitoring the guest. See Section 4.7, "Guest Properties".

Additionally, applications can be started in a guest from the host. See Section 4.9, "Guest Control of Applications".

Time synchronization. With the Guest Additions installed, Oracle VM VirtualBox can ensure that the guest's system time is better synchronized with that of the host.

For various reasons, the time in the guest might run at a slightly different rate than the time on the host. The host could be receiving updates through NTP and its own time might not run linearly. A VM could also be paused, which stops the flow of time in the guest for a shorter or longer period of time. When the wall clock time between the guest and host only differs slightly, the time synchronization service attempts to gradually and smoothly adjust the guest time in small increments to either catch up or lose time. When the difference is too great, for example if a VM paused for hours or restored from saved state, the guest time is changed immediately, without a gradual adjustment.

The Guest Additions will resynchronize the time regularly. See Section 9.11.3, "Tuning the Guest Additions Time Synchronization Parameters" for how to configure the parameters of the time synchronization mechanism.

Shared clipboard. With the Guest Additions installed, the clipboard of the guest operating system can optionally be shared with your host operating system. See Section 3.4, "General Settings".

Automated logins. Also called credentials passing. See Section 9.1, "Automated Guest Logins".

Each version of Oracle VM VirtualBox, even minor releases, ship with their own version of the Guest Additions. While the interfaces through which the Oracle VM VirtualBox core communicates with the Guest Additions are kept stable so that Guest Additions already installed in a VM should continue to work when Oracle VM VirtualBox is upgraded on the host, for best results, it is recommended to keep the Guest Additions at the same version.

The Windows and Linux Guest Additions therefore check automatically whether they have to be updated. If the host is running a newer Oracle VM VirtualBox version than the Guest Additions, a notification with further instructions is displayed in the guest.

To disable this update check for the Guest Additions of a given virtual machine, set the value of its /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/CheckHostVersion guest property to 0. See Section 4.7, "Guest Properties".

Guest Additions are available for virtual machines running Windows, Linux, Oracle Solaris, or OS/2. The following sections describe the specifics of each variant in detail.

The Oracle VM VirtualBox Windows Guest Additions are designed to be installed in a virtual machine running a Windows operating system. The following versions of Windows guests are supported:

Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 (any service pack)

Microsoft Windows 2000 (any service pack)

Microsoft Windows XP (any service pack)

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (any service pack)

Microsoft Windows Server 2008

Microsoft Windows Vista (all editions)

Microsoft Windows 7 (all editions)

Microsoft Windows 8 (all editions)

Microsoft Windows 10 RTM build 10240

Microsoft Windows Server 2012

In the Devices menu in the virtual machine's menu bar, Oracle VM VirtualBox has a menu item Insert Guest Additions CD Image, which mounts the Guest Additions ISO file inside your virtual machine. A Windows guest should then automatically start the Guest Additions installer, which installs the Guest Additions on your Windows guest.

For other guest operating systems, or if automatic start of software on a CD is disabled, you need to do a manual start of the installer.

Note

For the basic Direct3D acceleration to work in a Windows guest, you have to install the WDDM video driver available for Windows Vista or later.

For Windows 8 and later, only the WDDM Direct3D video driver is available. For basic Direct3D acceleration to work in Windows XP guests, you have to install the Guest Additions in Safe Mode. See Chapter 14, Known Limitations for details.

If you prefer to mount the Guest Additions manually, you can perform the following steps:

1. Start the virtual machine in which you have installed Windows.

2. Select Optical Drives from the Devices menu in the virtual machine's menu bar and then Choose/Create a Disk Image. This displays the Virtual Media Manager, described in Section 5.3, "The Virtual Media Manager".

3. In the Virtual Media Manager, click Add and browse your host file system for the VBoxGuestAdditions.iso file.

On a Windows host, this file is in the Oracle VM VirtualBox installation directory, usually in C:\Program files\Oracle\VirtualBox.

On macOS hosts, this file is in the application bundle of Oracle VM VirtualBox. Right-click on the Oracle VM VirtualBox icon in Finder and choose Show Package Contents. The file is located in the Contents/MacOS folder.

On a Linux host, this file is in the additions folder where you installed Oracle VM VirtualBox, usually/opt/VirtualBox/.

On Oracle Solaris hosts, this file is in the additions folder where you installed Oracle VM VirtualBox, usually/opt/VirtualBox.

4. In the Virtual Media Manager, select the ISO file and click the Add button. This mounts the ISO file and presents it to your Windows guest as a CD-ROM.

Unless you have the Autostart feature disabled in your Windows guest, Windows will now autostart the Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions installation program from the Additions ISO. If the Autostart feature has been turned off, choose VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe from the CD/DVD drive inside the guest to start the installer.

The installer will add several device drivers to the Windows driver database and then invoke the hardware detection wizard.

Depending on your configuration, it might display warnings that the drivers are not digitally signed. You must confirm these in order to continue the installation and properly install the Additions.

After installation, reboot your guest operating system to activate the Additions.

Windows Guest Additions can be updated by running the installation program again. This replaces the previous Additions drivers with updated versions.

Alternatively, you can also open the Windows Device Manager and select Update Driver... for the following devices:

For each, choose the option to provide your own driver, click Have Disk and navigate to the CD-ROM drive with the Guest Additions.

You can configure unattended installation of the Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions when you create a new VM using the Create Virtual Machine wizard. Select the Guest Additions check box on the Unattended Guest OS Install page of the wizard.

Guest Additions are installed automatically, following completion of the guest OS installation.

Installing Code Signing Certificates

To avoid popups when performing an unattended installation of the Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions, the code signing certificates used to sign the drivers needs to be installed in the correct certificate stores on the guest operating system. Failure to do this will cause a typical Windows installation to display multiple dialogs asking whether you want to install a particular driver.

Note

On some legacy Windows versions, such as Windows 2000 and Windows XP, the user intervention popups mentioned above are always displayed, even after importing the Oracle certificates.

Installing the code signing certificates on a Windows guest can be done automatically. Use the VBoxCertUtil.exe utility from the cert folder on the Guest Additions installation CD.

Use the following steps:

1. Log in as Administrator on the guest.

2. Mount the Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions .ISO.

3. Open a command line window on the guest and change to the cert folder on the Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions CD.

4. Run the following command:

VBoxCertUtil.exe add-trusted-publisher vbox*.cer --root vbox*.cer

This command installs the certificates to the certificate store. When installing the same certificate more than once, an appropriate error will be displayed.

To allow for completely unattended guest installations, you can specify a command line parameter to the install launcher:

VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe /S

This automatically installs the right files and drivers for the corresponding platform, either 32-bit or 64-bit.

Note

By default on an unattended installation on a Vista or Windows 7 guest, there will be the XPDM graphics driver installed. This graphics driver does not support Windows Aero / Direct3D on the guest. Instead, the WDDM graphics driver needs to be installed. To select this driver by default, add the command line parameter /with_wddm when invoking the Windows Guest Additions installer. This is only required for Vista and Windows 7.

Note

For Windows Aero to run correctly on a guest, the guest's VRAM size needs to be configured to at least 128 MB.

For more options regarding unattended guest installations, consult the command line help by using the command:

VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe /?

If you would like to install the files and drivers manually, you can extract the files from the Windows Guest Additions setup as follows:

VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe /extract

To explicitly extract the Windows Guest Additions for another platform than the current running one, such as 64-bit files on a 32-bit system, you must use the appropriate platform installer. Use VBoxWindowsAdditions-x86.exe or VBoxWindowsAdditions-amd64.exe with the/extract parameter.

Like the Windows Guest Additions, the Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions for Linux are a set of device drivers and system applications which may be installed in the guest operating system.

The following Linux distributions are officially supported:

Oracle Linux as of version 5, including UEK kernels

Fedora as of Fedora Core 4

Red Hat Enterprise Linux as of version 3

SUSE and openSUSE Linux as of version 9

Ubuntu as of version 5.10

Many other distributions are known to work with the Guest Additions.

The version of the Linux kernel supplied by default in SUSE and openSUSE 10.2, Ubuntu 6.10 (all versions) and Ubuntu 6.06 (server edition) contains a bug which can cause it to crash during startup when it is run in a virtual machine. The Guest Additions work in those distributions.

Note that some Linux distributions already come with all or part of the Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions. You may choose to keep the distribution's version of the Guest Additions but these are often not up to date and limited in functionality, so we recommend replacing them with the Guest Additions that come with Oracle VM VirtualBox. The Oracle VM VirtualBox Linux Guest Additions installer tries to detect an existing installation and replace them but depending on how the distribution integrates the Guest Additions, this may require some manual interaction. It is highly recommended to take a snapshot of the virtual machine before replacing preinstalled Guest Additions.

The Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions for Linux are provided on the same virtual CD-ROM file as the Guest Additions for Windows. See Section 4.2.1.1, "Installing the Windows Guest Additions". They also come with an installation program that guides you through the setup process. However, due to the significant differences between Linux distributions, installation may be slightly more complex when compared to Windows.

Installation generally involves the following steps:

1. Before installing the Guest Additions, you prepare your guest system for building external kernel modules. This works as described in Section 2.3.2, "The Oracle VM VirtualBox Kernel Modules", except that this step must be performed in your Linux instead of on a Linux host system.

If you suspect that something has gone wrong, check that your guest is set up correctly and run the following command as root:

rcvboxadd setup

2. Insert the VBoxGuestAdditions.iso CD file into your Linux guest's virtual CD-ROM drive, as described for a Windows guest in Section 4.2.1.1, "Installing the Windows Guest Additions".

3. Change to the directory where your CD-ROM drive is mounted and run the following command as root:

sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

You can configure unattended installation of the Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions when you create a new VM using the Create Virtual Machine wizard. Select the Guest Additions check box on the Unattended Guest OS Install page of the wizard.

Guest Additions are installed automatically, following completion of the guest OS installation.

In Linux and Oracle Solaris guests, Oracle VM VirtualBox graphics and mouse integration goes through the X Window System. Oracle VM VirtualBox can use the X.Org variant of the system, or XFree86 version 4.3 which is identical to the first X.Org release. During the installation process, the X.Org display server will be set up to use the graphics and mouse drivers which come with the Guest Additions.

After installing the Guest Additions into a fresh installation of a supported Linux distribution or Oracle Solaris system, many unsupported systems will work correctly too, the guest's graphics mode will change to fit the size of the Oracle VM VirtualBox window on the host when it is resized. You can also ask the guest system to switch to a particular resolution by sending a video mode hint using the VBoxManage tool.

Multiple guest monitors are supported in guests using the X.Org server version 1.3, which is part of release 7.3 of the X Window System version 11, or a later version. The layout of the guest screens can be adjusted as needed using the tools which come with the guest operating system.

If you want to understand more about the details of how the X.Org drivers are set up, in particular if you wish to use them in a setting which our installer does not handle correctly, see Section 9.3.2, "Guest Graphics and Mouse Driver Setup in Depth".

Starting from Oracle VM VirtualBox 7, Linux guest screen resize functionality for guests running VMSVGA graphics configuration has been changed. Since then, this functionality consists of a standalone daemon called VBoxDRMClient and its Desktop Environment helper counterpart.

VBoxDRMClient runs as a root process and is a bridge between the host and the guest's vmwgfx driver. This means that VBoxDRMClient listens to screen resize hints from the host and forwards them to the vmwgfx driver. This enables guest screen resize functionality to be available before the user has performed a graphical login.

In order to perform Desktop Environment specific actions, such as setting the primary screen in a multimonitor setup, a Desktop Environment helper is used. Once the user has performed a graphical login operation, the helper daemon starts with user session scope and attempts to connect to VBoxDRMClient using an IPC connection. When VBoxDRMClient has received a corresponding command from the host, it is forwarded to the helper daemon over IPC and the action is then performed.

By default, VBoxDRMClient allows any process to connect to its IPC socket. This can be restricted by using the following steps:

1. The Guest Additions Linux installer creates a vboxdrmipc user group. A corresponding user needs to be added to this group.

2. You must set the DRMIpcRestricted guest property, as follows:

VBoxManage guestproperty set "VM name" /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/DRMIpcRestricted 1 \
--flags RDONLYGUEST

It is important to set only the RDONLYGUEST flag for the property, so that it cannot be changed from inside the guest.

Note

Both steps are required. If one of them is missing, all processes will have access to the IPC socket.

Restricted mode can be disabled by unsetting the guest property, as follows:

VBoxManage guestproperty unset "VM name" /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/DRMIpcRestricted

The Guest Additions can simply be updated by going through the installation procedure again with an updated CD-ROM image. This will replace the drivers with updated versions. You should reboot after updating the Guest Additions.

If you have a version of the Guest Additions installed on your virtual machine and wish to remove it without installing new ones, you can do so by inserting the Guest Additions CD image into the virtual CD-ROM drive as described above. Then run the installer for the current Guest Additions with the uninstall parameter from the path that the CD image is mounted on in the guest, as follows:

sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run uninstall

While this will normally work without issues, you may need to do some manual cleanup of the guest in some cases, especially of the XFree86Config or xorg.conf file. In particular, if the Additions version installed or the guest operating system were very old, or if you made your own changes to the Guest Additions setup after you installed them.

You can uninstall the Additions as follows:

/opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-/uninstall.sh

Replace /opt/VBoxGuestAdditions- with the correct Guest Additions installation directory.

Like the Windows Guest Additions, the Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions for Oracle Solaris take the form of a set of device drivers and system applications which may be installed in the guest operating system.

The following Oracle Solaris distributions are officially supported:

Other distributions may work if they are based on comparable software releases.

The Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions for Oracle Solaris are provided on the same ISO CD-ROM as the Additions for Windows and Linux. They come with an installation program that guides you through the setup process.

Installation involves the following steps:

1. Mount the VBoxGuestAdditions.iso file as your Oracle Solaris guest's virtual CD-ROM drive, exactly the same way as described for a Windows guest in Section 4.2.1.1, "Installing the Windows Guest Additions".

If the CD-ROM drive on the guest does not get mounted, as seen with some versions of Oracle Solaris 10, run the following command as root:

svcadm restart volfs

2. Change to the directory where your CD-ROM drive is mounted and run the following command as root:

pkgadd -G -d ./VBoxSolarisAdditions.pkg

3. Choose 1 and confirm installation of the Guest Additions package. After the installation is complete, log out and log in to X server on your guest, to activate the X11 Guest Additions.

You can configure unattended installation of the Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions when you create a new VM using the Create Virtual Machine wizard. Select the Guest Additions check box on the Unattended Guest OS Install page of the wizard.

Guest Additions are installed automatically, following completion of the guest OS installation.

The Oracle Solaris Guest Additions can be safely removed by removing the package from the guest. Open a root terminal session and run the following command:

pkgrm SUNWvboxguest

The Guest Additions should be updated by first uninstalling the existing Guest Additions and then installing the new ones. Attempting to install new Guest Additions without removing the existing ones is not possible.

Oracle VM VirtualBox also ships with a set of drivers that improve running OS/2 in a virtual machine. Due to restrictions of OS/2 itself, this variant of the Guest Additions has a limited feature set. See Chapter 14, Known Limitations for details.

The OS/2 Guest Additions are provided on the same ISO CD-ROM as those for the other platforms. Mount the ISO in OS/2 as described previously. The OS/2 Guest Additions are located in the directory \OS2.

We do not provide an automatic installer at this time. See the readme.txt file in the CD-ROM directory, which describes how to install the OS/2 Guest Additions manually.

With the shared folders feature of Oracle VM VirtualBox, you can access files of your host system from within the guest system. This is similar to how you would use network shares in Windows networks, except that shared folders do not require networking, only the Guest Additions. Shared folders are supported with Windows 2000 or later, Linux, and Oracle Solaris guests. Oracle VM VirtualBox includes experimental support for Mac OS X and OS/2 guests.

Shared folders physically reside on the and are then shared with the guest, which uses a special file system driver in the Guest Additions to talk to the host. For Windows guests, shared folders are implemented as a pseudo-network redirector. For Linux and Oracle Solaris guests, the Guest Additions provide a virtual file system.

To share a host folder with a virtual machine in Oracle VM VirtualBox, you must specify the path of the folder and choose a that the guest can use to access the shared folder. This happens on the host. In the guest you can then use the share name to connect to it and access files.

There are several ways in which shared folders can be set up for a virtual machine:

In the window of a running VM, you select Shared Folders from the Devices menu, or click on the folder icon on the status bar in the bottom right corner.

If a VM is not currently running, you can configure shared folders in the virtual machine's Settings window.

From the command line, you can create shared folders using VBoxManage, as follows:

VBoxManage sharedfolder add "VM name" --name "sharename" --hostpath "C:\test"

See Section 8.42, "VBoxManage sharedfolder".

There are two types of shares:

Permanent shares, that are saved with the VM settings.

Transient shares, that are added at runtime and disappear when the VM is powered off. These can be created using a check box in VirtualBox Manager, or by using the --transient option of the VBoxManage sharedfolder add command.

Shared folders can either be read-write or read-only. This means that the guest is either allowed to both read and write, or just read files on the host. By default, shared folders are read-write. Read-only folders can be created using a check box in the VirtualBox Manager, or with the --readonly option of the VBoxManage sharedfolder add command.

Oracle VM VirtualBox shared folders also support symbolic links, also called , under the following conditions:

The host operating system must support symlinks. For example, a macOS, Linux, or Oracle Solaris host is required.

Currently only Linux and Oracle Solaris Guest Additions support symlinks.

For security reasons the guest OS is not allowed to create symlinks by default. If you trust the guest OS to not abuse the functionality, you can enable creation of symlinks for a shared folder as follows:

VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" VBoxInternal2/SharedFoldersEnableSymlinksCreate/ 1

You can mount the shared folder from inside a VM, in the same way as you would mount an ordinary network share:

In a Windows guest, shared folders are browseable and therefore visible in Windows Explorer. To attach the host's shared folder to your Windows guest, open Windows Explorer and look for the folder in My Networking Places, Entire Network, Oracle VM VirtualBox Shared Folders. By right-clicking on a shared folder and selecting Map Network Drive from the menu that pops up, you can assign a drive letter to that shared folder.

Alternatively, on the Windows command line, use the following command:

net use x: \\vboxsvr\sharename

While vboxsvr is a fixed name, note that vboxsrv would also work, replace with the drive letter that you want to use for the share, and with the share name specified with VBoxManage.

In a Linux guest, use the following command:

mount -t vboxsf [-o OPTIONS] sharename mountpoint

To mount a shared folder during boot, add the following entry to /etc/fstab:

sharename   mountpoint   vboxsf   defaults  0   0

In a Oracle Solaris guest, use the following command:

mount -F vboxfs [-o OPTIONS] sharename mountpoint

Replace , use a lowercase string, with the share name specified with VBoxManage or VirtualBox Manager. Replacemountpoint with the path where you want the share to be mounted on the guest, such as/mnt/share. The usual mount rules apply. For example, create this directory first if it does not exist yet.

Here is an example of mounting the shared folder for the user jack on Oracle Solaris:

$ id
uid=5000(jack) gid=1(other)
$ mkdir /export/home/jack/mount
$ pfexec mount -F vboxfs -o uid=5000,gid=1 jackshare /export/home/jack/mount
$ cd ~/mount
$ ls
sharedfile1.mp3 sharedfile2.txt
$

Beyond the standard options supplied by the mount command, the following are available:

iocharset CHARSET

This option sets the character set used for I/O operations. Note that on Linux guests, if the iocharset option is not specified, then the Guest Additions driver will attempt to use the character set specified by the CONFIG_NLS_DEFAULT kernel option. If this option is not set either, then UTF-8 is used.

convertcp CHARSET

This option specifies the character set used for the shared folder name. This is UTF-8 by default.

The generic mount options, documented in the mount manual page, apply also. Especially useful are the options uid, gid and mode, as they can allow access by normal users in read/write mode, depending on the settings, even if root has mounted the filesystem.

In an OS/2 guest, use the VBoxControl command to manage shared folders. For example:

VBoxControl sharedfolder use D: MyShareName
VBoxControl sharedfolder unuse D:
VBoxControl sharedfolder list

As with Windows guests, shared folders can also be accessed via UNC using \\VBoxSF\,\\VBoxSvr\ or\\VBoxSrv\ as the server name and the shared folder name as .

Oracle VM VirtualBox provides the option to mount shared folders automatically. When automatic mounting is enabled for a shared folder, the Guest Additions service will mount it for you automatically. For Windows or OS/2, a preferred drive letter can also be specified. For Linux or Oracle Solaris, a mount point directory can also be specified.

If a drive letter or mount point is not specified, or is in use already, an alternative location is found by the Guest Additions service. The service searches for an alternative location depending on the guest OS, as follows:

Windows and OS/2 guests. Search for a free drive letter, starting at Z:. If all drive letters are assigned, the folder is not mounted.

Linux and Oracle Solaris guests. Folders are mounted under the/media directory. The folder name is normalized (no spaces, slashes or colons) and is prefixed with sf_.

For example, if you have a shared folder called myfiles, it will appear as/media/sf_myfiles in the guest.

The guest properties /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/SharedFolders/MountDir and the more generic/VirtualBox/GuestAdd/SharedFolders/MountPrefix can be used to override the automatic mount directory and prefix. See Section 4.7, "Guest Properties".

Access to an automatically mounted shared folder is granted to everyone in a Windows guest, including the guest user. For Linux and Oracle Solaris guests, access is restricted to members of the group vboxsf and the root user.

Oracle VM VirtualBox enables you to drag and drop content from the host to the guest, and vice versa. For this to work the latest version of the Guest Additions must be installed on the guest.

Drag and drop transparently allows copying or opening files, directories, and even certain clipboard formats from one end to the other. For example, from the host to the guest or from the guest to the host. You then can perform drag and drop operations between the host and a VM, as it would be a native drag and drop operation on the host OS.

At the moment drag and drop is implemented for Windows-based and X-Windows-based systems, both on the host and guest side. As X-Windows supports many different drag and drop protocols only the most common one, XDND, is supported for now. Applications using other protocols, such as Motif or OffiX, will not be recognized by Oracle VM VirtualBox.

In the context of using drag and drop, the origin of the data is called the . That is, where the actual data comes from and is specified. The destination specifies where the data from the source should go to. Transferring data from the source to the destination can be done in various ways, such as copying, moving, or linking.

Note

At the moment only copying of data is supported. Moving or linking is not yet implemented.

When transferring data from the host to the guest OS, the host in this case is the source, whereas the guest OS is the destination. However, when transferring data from the guest OS to the host, the guest OS this time became the source and the host is the destination.

For security reasons drag and drop can be configured at runtime on a per-VM basis either using the Drag and Drop menu item in the Devices menu of the virtual machine, as shown below, or the VBoxManage command.
Figure 4.1. Drag and Drop Menu Options
The following drag and drop modes are available:

Disabled. Disables the drag and drop feature entirely. This is the default when creating a new VM.

Host To Guest. Enables drag and drop operations from the host to the guest only.

Guest To Host. Enables drag and drop operations from the guest to the host only.

Bidirectional. Enables drag and drop operations in both directions: from the host to the guest, and from the guest to the host.

Note

Drag and drop support depends on the frontend being used. At the moment, only the VirtualBox Manager frontend provides this functionality.

To use the VBoxManage command to control the current drag and drop mode, see Chapter 8, VBoxManage. The modifyvm and controlvm commands enable setting of a VM's current drag and drop mode from the command line.

As Oracle VM VirtualBox can run on a variety of host operating systems and also supports a wide range of guests, certain data formats must be translated after transfer. This is so that the destination operating system, which receives the data, is able to handle them in an appropriate manner.

Note

When dragging files no data conversion is done in any way. For example, when transferring a file from a Linux guest to a Windows host the Linux-specific line endings are not converted to Windows line endings.

The following formats are handled by the Oracle VM VirtualBox drag and drop service:

Plain text: From applications such as text editors, internet browsers and terminal windows.

Files: From file managers such as Windows Explorer, Nautilus, and Finder.

Directories: For directories, the same formats apply as for files.

The following limitations are known for drag and drop:

On Windows hosts, dragging and dropping content between UAC-elevated (User Account Control) programs and non-UAC-elevated programs is not allowed. If you start Oracle VM VirtualBox with Administrator privileges then drag and drop will not work with Windows Explorer, which runs with regular user privileges by default.

On Linux hosts and guests, programs can query for drag and drop data while the drag operation is still in progress. For example, on LXDE using the PCManFM file manager. This currently is not supported. As a workaround, a different file manager, such as Nautilus, can be used instead.

The Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions contain experimental hardware 3D support for Windows, Linux, and Oracle Solaris guests.

With this feature, if an application inside your virtual machine uses 3D features through the OpenGL or Direct3D 8/9 programming interfaces, instead of emulating them in software, which would be slow, Oracle VM VirtualBox will attempt to use your host's 3D hardware. This works for all supported host platforms, provided that your host operating system can make use of your accelerated 3D hardware in the first place.

The 3D acceleration feature currently has the following preconditions:

It is only available for certain Windows, Linux, and Oracle Solaris guests. In particular:

3D acceleration with Windows guests requires Windows 2000 or later. Apart from on Windows 2000 guests, both OpenGL and Direct3D 8/9 are supported on an experimental basis.

OpenGL on Linux requires kernel 2.6.27 or later, as well as X.org server version 1.5 or later. Ubuntu 10.10 and Fedora 14 have been tested and confirmed as working.

OpenGL on Oracle Solaris guests requires X.org server version 1.5 or later.

The Guest Additions must be installed.

Note

For the basic Direct3D acceleration to work in a Windows Guest, Oracle VM VirtualBox needs to replace Windows system files in the virtual machine. As a result, the Guest Additions installation program offers Direct3D acceleration as an option that must be explicitly enabled. Also, you must install the Guest Additions in Safe Mode. This does apply to the WDDM Direct3D video driver available for Windows Vista and later. See Chapter 14, Known Limitations for details.

Because 3D support is still experimental at this time, it is disabled by default and must be manually enabled in the VM settings. See Section 3.6, "Display Settings".

Note

Untrusted guest systems should not be allowed to use the 3D acceleration features of Oracle VM VirtualBox, just as untrusted host software should not be allowed to use 3D acceleration. Drivers for 3D hardware are generally too complex to be made properly secure and any software which is allowed to access them may be able to compromise the operating system running them. In addition, enabling 3D acceleration gives the guest direct access to a large body of additional program code in the Oracle VM VirtualBox host process which it might conceivably be able to use to crash the virtual machine.

To enable Aero theme support, the Oracle VM VirtualBox WDDM video driver must be installed, which is available with the Guest Additions installation. The WDDM driver is not installed by default for Vista and Windows 7 guests and must be manually selected in the Guest Additions installer by clicking No in the Would You Like to Install Basic Direct3D Support dialog displayed when the Direct3D feature is selected.

The Aero theme is not enabled by default on Windows. See your Windows platform documentation for details of how to enable the Aero theme.

Technically, Oracle VM VirtualBox implements 3D acceleration by installing an additional hardware 3D driver inside the guest when the Guest Additions are installed. This driver acts as a hardware 3D driver and reports to the guest operating system that the virtual hardware is capable of 3D hardware acceleration. When an application in the guest then requests hardware acceleration through the OpenGL or Direct3D programming interfaces, these are sent to the host through a special communication tunnel implemented by Oracle VM VirtualBox. The then performs the requested 3D operation using the host's programming interfaces.

The Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions contain experimental hardware 2D video acceleration support for Windows guests.

With this feature, if an application such as a video player inside your Windows VM uses 2D video overlays to play a movie clip, then Oracle VM VirtualBox will attempt to use your host's video acceleration hardware instead of performing overlay stretching and color conversion in software, which would be slow. This currently works for Windows, Linux and macOS host platforms, provided that your host operating system can make use of 2D video acceleration in the first place.

Hardware 2D video acceleration currently has the following preconditions:

Only available for Windows guests, running Windows XP or later.

Guest Additions must be installed.

Because 2D support is still experimental at this time, it is disabled by default and must be manually enabled in the VM settings. See Section 3.6, "Display Settings".

Technically, Oracle VM VirtualBox implements this by exposing video overlay DirectDraw capabilities in the Guest Additions video driver. The driver sends all overlay commands to the host through a special communication tunnel implemented by Oracle VM VirtualBox. On the host side, OpenGL is then used to implement color space transformation and scaling.

With the seamless windows feature of Oracle VM VirtualBox, you can have the windows that are displayed within a virtual machine appear side by side next to the windows of your host. This feature is supported for the following guest operating systems, provided that the Guest Additions are installed:

After seamless windows are enabled, Oracle VM VirtualBox suppresses the display of the desktop background of your guest, allowing you to run the windows of your guest operating system seamlessly next to the windows of your host.
Figure 4.2. Seamless Windows on a Host Desktop
To enable seamless mode, after starting the virtual machine, press the Host key + L. The Host key is normally the right control key. This will enlarge the size of the VM's display to the size of your host screen and mask out the guest operating system's background. To disable seamless windows and go back to the normal VM display, press the Host key + L again.

Oracle VM VirtualBox enables requests of some properties from a running guest, provided that the Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions are installed and the VM is running. This provides the following advantages:

A number of predefined VM characteristics are automatically maintained by Oracle VM VirtualBox and can be retrieved on the host. For example, to monitor VM performance and statistics.

Arbitrary string data can be exchanged between guest and host. This works in both directions.

To accomplish this, Oracle VM VirtualBox establishes a private communication channel between the Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions and the host, and software on both sides can use this channel to exchange string data for arbitrary purposes. Guest properties are simply string keys to which a value is attached. They can be set, or written to, by either the host and the guest. They can also be read from both sides.

In addition to establishing the general mechanism of reading and writing values, a set of predefined guest properties is automatically maintained by the Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions to allow for retrieving interesting guest data such as the guest's exact operating system and service pack level, the installed version of the Guest Additions, users that are currently logged into the guest OS, network statistics and more. These predefined properties are all prefixed with /VirtualBox/ and organized into a hierarchical tree of keys.

Some of this runtime information is shown when you select Session Information Dialog from a virtual machine's Machine menu.

A more flexible way to use this channel is with the VBoxManage guestproperty command. See Section 8.43, "VBoxManage guestproperty". For example, to have the available guest properties for a given running VM listed with their respective values, use this command:

$ VBoxManage guestproperty enumerate "Windows Vista III"
VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Versionversion-number Copyright (C) 2005-2023 Oracle and/or its affiliates Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/Product, value: Windows Vista Business Edition, timestamp: 1229098278843087000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/Release, value: 6.0.6001, timestamp: 1229098278950553000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/ServicePack, value: 1, timestamp: 1229098279122627000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/InstallDir, value: C:/Program Files/Oracle/VirtualBox Guest Additions, timestamp: 1229098279269739000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Revision, value: 40720, timestamp: 1229098279345664000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Version, value:version-number, timestamp: 1229098279479515000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxControl.exe, value:version-numberr40720, timestamp: 1229098279651731000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxHook.dll, value:version-numberr40720, timestamp: 1229098279804835000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxDisp.dll, value:version-numberr40720, timestamp: 1229098279880611000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxMRXNP.dll, value:version-numberr40720, timestamp: 1229098279882618000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxService.exe, value:version-numberr40720, timestamp: 1229098279883195000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxTray.exe, value:version-numberr40720, timestamp: 1229098279885027000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxGuest.sys, value:version-numberr40720, timestamp: 1229098279886838000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxMouse.sys, value:version-numberr40720, timestamp: 1229098279890600000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxSF.sys, value:version-numberr40720, timestamp: 1229098279893056000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxVideo.sys, value:version-numberr40720, timestamp: 1229098279895767000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/LoggedInUsers, value: 1, timestamp: 1229099826317660000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/NoLoggedInUsers, value: false, timestamp: 1229098455580553000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/Count, value: 1, timestamp: 1229099826299785000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/HostInfo/GUI/LanguageID, value: C, timestamp: 1229098151272771000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/0/V4/IP, value: 192.168.2.102, timestamp: 1229099826300088000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/0/V4/Broadcast, value: 255.255.255.255, timestamp: 1229099826300220000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/0/V4/Netmask, value: 255.255.255.0, timestamp: 1229099826300350000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/0/Status, value: Up, timestamp: 1229099826300524000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/LoggedInUsersList, value: username, timestamp: 1229099826317386000, flags:

To query the value of a single property, use the get subcommand as follows:

$ VBoxManage guestproperty get "Windows Vista III" "/VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/Product"
VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Versionversion-number Copyright (C) 2005-2023 Oracle and/or its affiliates Value: Windows Vista Business Edition

To add or change guest properties from the guest, use the tool VBoxControl. This tool is included in the Guest Additions. When started from a Linux guest, this tool requires root privileges for security reasons.

$ sudo VBoxControl guestproperty enumerate
VirtualBox Guest Additions Command Line Management Interface Versionversion-number Copyright (C) 2005-2023 Oracle and/or its affiliates Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/Release, value: 2.6.28-18-generic, timestamp: 1265813265835667000, flags: <NULL> Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/Version, value: #59-Ubuntu SMP Thu Jan 28 01:23:03 UTC 2010, timestamp: 1265813265836305000, flags: <NULL> ...

For more complex needs, you can use the Oracle VM VirtualBox programming interfaces. See Chapter 11, Oracle VM VirtualBox Programming Interfaces.

The properties /VirtualBox/HostInfo/VBoxVer,/VirtualBox/HostInfo/VBoxVerExt or/VirtualBox/HostInfo/VBoxRev can be waited on to detect that the VM state was restored from saved state or snapshot:

$ VBoxControl guestproperty wait /VirtualBox/HostInfo/VBoxVer

Similarly the /VirtualBox/HostInfo/ResumeCounter can be used to detect that a VM was resumed from the paused state or saved state.

The Guest Control File Manager is a feature of the Guest Additions that enables easy copying and moving of files between a guest and the host system. Other file management operations provide support to create new folders and to rename or delete files.

This feature is useful when the VM window of a guest is not visible. For example, when the guest is running in headless mode.

Note

To use the Guest Control File Manager, the guest must be running. For powered-off guests, it is disabled automatically.
Figure 4.3. Guest Control File Manager
The Guest Control File Manager works by mounting the host file system. Guest users must authenticate and create a guest session before they can transfer files.

The following steps describe how to use the Guest Control File Manager.

1. Open the Guest Control File Manager. Do either of the following:

In VirtualBox Manager, click on the machine name. Click File Manager in the machine tools menu for the VM.

The left pane shows the files on the host system.

2. Create a guest session.

At the bottom of the Guest Control File Manager, enter authentication credentials for a user on the guest system.

The contents of the guest VM file system appears in the right pane of the Guest Control File Manager.

3. Transfer files between the guest and the host system by using the move and copy file transfer icons.

You can copy and move files from the guest to the host system or from the host system to the guest.

4. Close the Guest Control File Manager.

Click Close to end the guest session.

The Guest Additions enable starting of applications inside a guest VM from the host system. This feature can be used to automate deployment of software within the guest.

For this to work, the application needs to be installed on the guest. No additional software needs to be installed on the host. Additionally, text mode output to stdout and stderr can be shown on the host for further processing. There are options to specify user credentials and a timeout value, in milliseconds, to limit the time the application is able to run.

The Guest Additions for Windows allow for automatic updating. This applies for already installed Guest Additions versions. Also, copying files from host to the guest as well as remotely creating guest directories is available.

To use these features, use the Oracle VM VirtualBox command line. See Section 8.44, "VBoxManage guestcontrol".

In server environments with many VMs, the Guest Additions can be used to share physical host memory between several VMs. This reduces the total amount of memory in use by the VMs. If memory usage is the limiting factor and CPU resources are still available, this can help with running more VMs on each host.

The Guest Additions can change the amount of host memory that a VM uses, while the machine is running. Because of how this is implemented, this feature is called memory ballooning.

Note

Oracle VM VirtualBox supports memory ballooning only on 64-bit hosts. It is not supported on macOS hosts.

Memory ballooning does not work well with large pages enabled. To turn off large pages support for a VM, run VBoxManage modifyvm vmname --large-pages off

Normally, to change the amount of memory allocated to a virtual machine, you have to shut down the virtual machine entirely and modify its settings. With memory ballooning, memory that was allocated for a virtual machine can be given to another virtual machine without having to shut the machine down.

When memory ballooning is requested, the Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions, which run inside the guest, allocate physical memory from the guest operating system on the kernel level and lock this memory down in the guest. This ensures that the guest will not use that memory any longer. No guest applications can allocate it, and the guest kernel will not use it either. Oracle VM VirtualBox can then reuse this memory and give it to another virtual machine.

The memory made available through the ballooning mechanism is only available for reuse by Oracle VM VirtualBox. It is returned as free memory to the host. Requesting balloon memory from a running guest will therefore not increase the amount of free, unallocated memory on the host. Effectively, memory ballooning is therefore a memory overcommitment mechanism for multiple virtual machines while they are running. This can be useful to temporarily start another machine, or in more complicated environments, for sophisticated memory management of many virtual machines that may be running in parallel depending on how memory is used by the guests.

At this time, memory ballooning is only supported through VBoxManage. Use the following command to increase or decrease the size of the memory balloon within a running virtual machine that has Guest Additions installed:

VBoxManage controlvm "VM name" guestmemoryballoon n

where is the name or UUID of the virtual machine in question and is the amount of memory to allocate from the guest in megabytes. See Section 8.20, "VBoxManage controlvm".

You can also set a default balloon that will automatically be requested from the VM every time after it has started up with the following command:

VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --guest-memory-balloon n

By default, no balloon memory is allocated. This is a VM setting, like other modifyvm settings, and therefore can only be set while the machine is shut down. See Section 8.10, "VBoxManage modifyvm".

Whereas memory ballooning simply reduces the amount of RAM that is available to a VM, Page Fusion works differently. It avoids memory duplication between several similar running VMs.

In a server environment running several similar VMs on the same host, lots of memory pages are identical. For example, if the VMs are using identical operating systems. Oracle VM VirtualBox's Page Fusion technology can efficiently identify these identical memory pages and share them between multiple VMs.

Note

Oracle VM VirtualBox supports Page Fusion only on 64-bit hosts, and it is not supported on macOS hosts. Page Fusion currently works only with Windows 2000 and later guests.

The more similar the VMs on a given host are, the more efficiently Page Fusion can reduce the amount of host memory that is in use. It therefore works best if all VMs on a host run identical operating systems. Instead of having a complete copy of each operating system in each VM, Page Fusion identifies the identical memory pages in use by these operating systems and eliminates the duplicates, sharing host memory between several machines. This is called deduplication. If a VM tries to modify a page that has been shared with other VMs, a new page is allocated again for that VM with a copy of the shared page. This is called copy on write. All this is fully transparent to the virtual machine.

You may be familiar with this kind of memory overcommitment from other hypervisor products, which call this feature page sharing or same page merging. However, Page Fusion differs significantly from those other solutions, whose approaches have several drawbacks:

Traditional hypervisors scan guest memory and compute checksums, also called hashes, for every single memory page. Then, they look for pages with identical hashes and compare the entire content of those pages. If two pages produce the same hash, it is very likely that the pages are identical in content. This process can take rather long, especially if the system is not idling. As a result, the additional memory only becomes available after a significant amount of time, such as hours or sometimes days. Even worse, this kind of page sharing algorithm generally consumes significant CPU resources and increases the virtualization overhead by 10 to 20%.

Page Fusion in Oracle VM VirtualBox uses logic in the Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions to quickly identify memory cells that are most likely identical across VMs. It can therefore achieve most of the possible savings of page sharing almost immediately and with almost no overhead.

Page Fusion is also much less likely to be confused by identical memory that it will eliminate, just to learn seconds later that the memory will now change and having to perform a highly expensive and often service-disrupting reallocation.

At this time, Page Fusion can only be controlled with VBoxManage, and only while a VM is shut down. To enable Page Fusion for a VM, use the following command:

VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --page-fusion on

You can observe Page Fusion operation using some metrics. RAM/VMM/Shared shows the total amount of fused pages, whereas the per-VM metric Guest/RAM/Usage/Shared will return the amount of fused memory for a given VM. See Section 8.46, "VBoxManage metrics" for information on how to query metrics.

The Guest Additions provide services for controlling the guest system's monitor topology. Monitor topology means the resolution of each virtual monitor and its state (disabled/enabled). The resolution of a virtual monitor can be modified from the host side either by resizing the window that hosts the virtual monitor, by using the View menu or the VBoxManage controlvm vmname setscreenlayout command. On guest operating systems with X11/Wayland desktops this is put into effect by either of the following two services:

        VBoxClient --vmsvga
        VBoxDRMClient

The following are some details about guest screen resolution control functionality:

On X11/Wayland desktops the resizing service is started during desktop session initialization, that is desktop login. On X11 desktops VBoxClient --vmsvga handles screen topology through the RandR extension. On Wayland clients VBoxDRMClient is used. The decision is made automatically at each desktop session start.

On 32-bit guest operating systems VBoxDRMClient is always used, in order to work around bugs.

Since the monitor topology control services are initialized during the desktop session start, it is impossible to control the monitor resolution of display managers such as GDM or LightDM. This default behavior can be changed by setting the guest property /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/DRMResize of the virtual machine to any value. See Section 4.7, "Guest Properties" for details of how to update guest properties. When this guest property is set then VBoxDRMClient is started during the guest OS boot and stays active all the time, for both the display manager login screen and the desktop session.

VBoxDRMClient is not able to handle arbitrary guest monitor topologies. Specifically, disabling a guest monitor that is not the last one invalidates the monitor topology due to limitations in the vmwgfx.ko Linux kernel module. For example, when the guest is configured to have four monitors it is not recommended to disable the second or third monitor.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The previous chapter covered getting started with Oracle VM VirtualBox and installing operating systems in a virtual machine. For any serious and interactive use, the Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions will make your life much easier by providing closer integration between host and guest and improving the interactive performance of guest systems. This chapter describes the Guest Additions in detail.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Tutorial Instalar Windows 7 en VirtualBox

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
VirtualBox. Configuración de la conexión de red. - Adictos al trabajo

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
En este tutorial vamos a ver cómo se configura VirtualBox para una máquina virtual ya instalada.

# data[].attributes.headline
Virtual Box. Instalación de Guest Additions

# data[].attributes.subject
Virtual Box. Instalación de Guest Additions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Instalar y configurar Guest Additions con Windows 7 | VirtualBox

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Agregar discos duros a maquinas virtuales | VirtualBox

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Agregar nuevo disco duro en una máquina virtual (VMWare)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Cree una representación basada en software (es decir, virtual) de aplicaciones, servidores, almacenamiento y redes para reducir los gastos de TI y aumentar la eficiencia y la agilidad.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
palabras clave de vmware: virtualización

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Virtualization Technology & Virtual Machine Software: What is Virtualization?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
La virtualización es la forma más eficaz de reducir los gastos de TI y, a la vez, aumentar la eficiencia y la agilidad para empresas de cualquier tamaño. Obtenga más información. | VMware ES

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Tanto los desarrolladores de software como los profesionales de TI o los aficionados a la tecnología a veces necesitan ejecutar varios sistemas operativos. Hyper-V le permite ejecutar varios sistemas operativos como máquinas virtuales en Windows.

Específicamente, Hyper-V proporciona virtualización de hardware. Eso significa que cada máquina virtual se ejecuta en hardware virtual. Hyper-V permite crear unidades de disco duro virtuales, conmutadores virtuales y otros dispositivos virtuales, y todos ellos pueden agregarse a máquinas virtuales.

Motivos para utilizar la virtualización

La virtualización permite:

Ejecutar software que requiere una versión anterior de Windows o de cualquier sistema operativo que no sea Windows.

Experimentar con otros sistemas operativos. Hyper-V facilita la creación y eliminación de distintos sistemas operativos.

Pruebe el software en varios sistemas operativos mediante varias máquinas virtuales. Con Hyper-V, se pueden ejecutar en un único equipo de escritorio o portátil. Estas máquinas virtuales se pueden exportar y después importar en cualquier otro sistema de Hyper-V, incluido Azure.

Requisitos del sistema

Hyper-V solo está disponible en las versiones de 64 bits de Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise y Education. No está disponible en la edición Home.

Puede actualizar la edición Windows 10 Home a Windows 10 Pro al abrir Configuración> Actualización y seguridad> Activación. Aquí puede visitar la tienda y comprar una actualización.

La mayoría de los equipos ejecutan Hyper-V; sin embargo, cada máquina virtual ejecuta un sistema operativo totalmente distinto. Por lo general, puedes ejecutar una o más máquinas virtuales en un equipo con 4 GB de RAM, pero necesitarás más recursos para otras máquinas virtuales o para instalar y ejecutar software que requiere muchos recursos, como juegos, programas de edición de vídeo o software de diseño de ingeniería.

Para obtener más información acerca de los requisitos del sistema de Hyper-V y sobre cómo comprobar que Hyper-V se ejecuta en un equipo, consulta la Referencia de requisitos de Hyper-V.

Sistemas operativos que puede ejecutar en una máquina virtual

Hyper-V en Windows admite muchos sistemas operativos diferentes en las máquinas virtuales, incluyendo diversas versiones de Linux, FreeBSD y Windows.

Como recordatorio, debe tener una licencia válida de los sistemas operativos que use en las máquinas virtuales.

Para obtener información sobre los sistemas operativos que se admiten como invitados en Hyper-V en Windows, consulta Sistemas operativos invitados de Windows admitidos y Supported Linux Guest Operating Systems (Sistemas operativos invitados de Linux admitidos).

Diferencias entre Hyper-V en Windows y Hyper-V en Windows Server

Existen algunas características que funcionan de forma diferente en Hyper-V en Windows con respecto a Hyper-V en Windows Server.

Funciones de Hyper-V disponibles solo en Windows Server:

Migración en vivo de máquinas virtuales de un host a otro

Réplica de Hyper-V

Canal de fibra virtual

Redes de SR-IOV

.VHDX compartido

Funciones de Hyper-V disponibles solo en Windows 10:

Creación rápida y galería de VM

Red predeterminada (conmutador NAT)

El modelo de administración de memoria es diferente para Hyper-V en Windows. En un servidor, la memoria de Hyper-V se administra presuponiendo que solo las máquinas virtuales se ejecutan en el servidor. En Hyper-V en Windows, la memoria se administra con las expectativas de que la mayoría de las máquinas clientes ejecuten software en el host, además de ejecutar máquinas virtuales.

Limitaciones

Los programas que dependan de un hardware concreto no funcionarán bien en una máquina virtual. Por ejemplo, es posible que los juegos o aplicaciones que requieran un procesamiento con GPU no funcionen bien. Además, las aplicaciones que dependen de los temporizadores por debajo de 10 ms, como las aplicaciones de mezcla de música en directo o tiempos de alta precisión, pueden tener problemas para ejecutarse en una máquina virtual.

Además, si ha habilitado Hyper-V, dichas aplicaciones de alta precisión sensibles a la latencia también podrían tener problemas para ejecutarse en el host. Esto se debe a que, con la virtualización habilitada, el sistema operativo host también se ejecuta sobre el nivel de virtualización de Hyper-V, al igual que los sistemas operativos invitados. Pero, a diferencia de los invitados, el sistema operativo host es especial, en el sentido de que tiene acceso directo a todo el hardware, lo que significa que las aplicaciones con requisitos de hardware especiales pueden continuar ejecutándose sin problemas en el sistema operativo host.

Paso siguiente
Instalar Hyper-V en Windows 10

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Introducción a Hyper-V, la virtualización y tecnologías relacionadas.