Xen vs virtualbox?

Solution 1:

The difference between Xen and Virtualbox is their usage or application. Virtualbox is meant to be used as a desktop virtualization layer. So Virtualbox expects you to have an OS (Windows, Mac, Linux) already installed. In other words, Virtualbox can add virtualization to a desktop host OS.

Xen is quite the opposite. It can be thought of as the host OS even though you wouldn't use it like a desktop environment. In terms of performance, Xen will probably edge out VirtualBox as it is a "bare-metal" hypervisor since the host OS is for Xen is tuned more for virtualization tasks rather than desktop duties.

Solution 2:

Unless I've misread the Xen web site that product is a "bare metal" virtualisation layer, whereas Virtualbox sits atop an OS. As such, Virtualbox could not be expected to perform as well as Xen.