VirtualBox in production? [closed]

In my experiences, virtualbox is more for running a virtualized desktop system, not a server. IT's great for things like running VMWare ESXi which needs to be managed from Windows, but I only had a Linux system, so I virtualized Windows to run the tools. Or it's great for testing things. But I wouldn't run a server from it for production because I really don't think it's meant to be used in that capacity. Plus if it's running on a workstation, you'll increase the chances of having the server go down due to reboots, crashes, other programs having issues, etc.

I would really consider using a product better geared towards running servers, like Xen, VMWare ESXi or VMWare Server, or Hyper-V. They have tools that are better geared towards running production servers, in with the free editions.

As already said by Bart VirtualBox is more oriented to a desktop kind of usage. There it has the bonus of being truly multi platform (you can get VB for Linux, OSX, Solaris, Win) and having a nice interface.

For simple server installations I'm more used to run VMware Server, I find it is more suitable. My host system of choice is an Ubuntu LTS, and I have a range of systems from old Ubuntu 6.06 + VMwareServer1 to Ubuntu 10.04 + VMwareServer2.

VMware Server already includes the infrastructure to autostart VMs at boot (VirtualBox does not), including options to start one at a time (to not overload the host).

Also, I found VMware Server more suitable to run exotic things (last week we succesfully ported a SCO OpenServer 5 system from metal to VMware Server 2 - while it did not even boot in VirtualBox during a quick test).

VMware Server 2 includes a nice WEB admin interface (useful if your server is headless), but it lacks a decent console (its own native one is a browser plugin for linux and windows, no Mac). Luckily you can just edit VM properties to add a VNC console and use that :)