2 First Steps
machine will support automatic adjustment of video resolutions, seamless windows, accel-
erated 3D graphics and more. See chapter 5, Guest Additions, page 88.
In particular, Guest Additions provide for shared folders, which let you access files on the
host system from within a guest machine. See chapter 5.3, Shared Folders, page 96.
• Comprehensive hardware support. Among other features, Oracle VM VirtualBox sup-
ports the following:
– Guest multiprocessing (SMP). Oracle VM VirtualBox can present up to 32 virtual
CPUs to each virtual machine, irrespective of how many CPU cores are physically
present on your host.
– USB device support. Oracle VM VirtualBox implements a virtual USB controller and
enables you to connect arbitrary USB devices to your virtual machines without having
to install device-specific drivers on the host. USB support is not limited to certain
device categories. See chapter 4.11.1, USB Settings, page 82.
– Hardware compatibility. Oracle VM VirtualBox virtualizes a vast array of virtual
devices, among them many devices that are typically provided by other virtualization
platforms. That includes IDE, SCSI, and SATA hard disk controllers, several virtual
network cards and sound cards, virtual serial and parallel ports and an Input/Output
Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (I/O APIC), which is found in many
computer systems. This enables easy cloning of disk images from real machines and
importing of third-party virtual machines into Oracle VM VirtualBox.
– Full ACPI support. The Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) is fully
supported by Oracle VM VirtualBox. This enables easy cloning of disk images from real
machines or third-party virtual machines into Oracle VM VirtualBox. With its unique
ACPI power status support, Oracle VM VirtualBox can even report to ACPI-aware guest
OSes the power status of the host. For mobile systems running on battery, the guest
can thus enable energy saving and notify the user of the remaining power, for example
in full screen modes.
– Multiscreen resolutions. Oracle VM VirtualBox virtual machines support screen res-
olutions many times that of a physical screen, allowing them to be spread over a large
number of screens attached to the host system.
– Built-in iSCSI support. This unique feature enables you to connect a virtual ma-
chine directly to an iSCSI storage server without going through the host system. The
VM accesses the iSCSI target directly without the extra overhead that is required for
virtualizing hard disks in container files. See chapter 6.10, iSCSI Servers, page 124.
– PXE Network boot. The integrated virtual network cards of Oracle VM VirtualBox
fully support remote booting using the Preboot Execution Environment (PXE).
• Multigeneration branched snapshots. Oracle VM VirtualBox can save arbitrary snapshots
of the state of the virtual machine. You can go back in time and revert the virtual machine
to any such snapshot and start an alternative VM configuration from there, effectively
creating a whole snapshot tree. See chapter 2.11, Snapshots, page 24. You can create and
delete snapshots while the virtual machine is running.
• VM groups. Oracle VM VirtualBox provides a groups feature that enables the user to
organize and control virtual machines collectively, as well as individually. In addition to
basic groups, it is also possible for any VM to be in more than one group, and for groups
to be nested in a hierarchy. This means you can have groups of groups. In general, the
operations that can be performed on groups are the same as those that can be applied to
individual VMs: Start, Pause, Reset, Close (Save state, Send Shutdown, Poweroff), Discard
Saved State, Show in File System, Sort.
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