Upload
gelubot
View
219
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
7/27/2019 What Disk Image Should I Use With VirtualBox
1/2
What disk image should I use with VirtualBox, VDI, VMDK,
VHD or HDD?
Latest versions of VirtualBox supports several formats for virtual disks, but they forgot toprovide a comparison between them.
VDI
VMDK
VHD
HDD
Now, I am interested about a recommendation or comparison that considers the following:
be able to use dynamic sizing
be able to have snapshots
be able to move my virtual machine to another OS or even another free virtualization
solution with minimal effort (probably something that would run fine on Ubuntu).
performance
VirtualBox hasfull support forVDI, VMDK, and VHD and support forParallels Version 2(HDD) (not newer versions).
Answering Your Considerations
be able to use dynamic sizing
VDI, VMDK, and VHD all support dynamically allocated sizing. VMDK has an additionalcapability of splitting the storage file into files less than 2 GB each, which is useful if your file
system has a small file size limit.
be able to have snapshots
All four formats support snapshots on VirtualBox.
be able to move my virtual machine to another OS or even another free
virtualization solution with minimal effort (probably something that would run
fine on Ubuntu).
VDI is the native format of VirtualBox. I didn't search for any other software that supports this
format.
http://superuser.com/questions/360517/what-disk-image-should-i-use-with-virtualbox-vdi-vmdk-vhd-or-hddhttp://superuser.com/questions/360517/what-disk-image-should-i-use-with-virtualbox-vdi-vmdk-vhd-or-hddhttp://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch05.html#vdidetailshttp://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch05.html#vdidetailshttp://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch05.html#vdidetailshttp://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch05.html#vdidetailshttp://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch05.html#vdidetailshttp://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch05.html#vdidetailshttp://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch05.html#vdidetailshttp://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch05.html#vdidetailshttp://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch05.html#vdidetailshttp://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch05.html#vdidetailshttp://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch05.html#vdidetailshttp://superuser.com/questions/360517/what-disk-image-should-i-use-with-virtualbox-vdi-vmdk-vhd-or-hddhttp://superuser.com/questions/360517/what-disk-image-should-i-use-with-virtualbox-vdi-vmdk-vhd-or-hddhttp://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch05.html#vdidetailshttp://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch05.html#vdidetails7/27/2019 What Disk Image Should I Use With VirtualBox
2/2
VMDK is developed by and for VMWare, but Sun xVM, QEMU, VirtualBox, SUSE Studio, and
.NET DiscUtils also support it. (This format might be the most apt for you because you want
virtualization software that would run fine on Ubuntu.)
VHD is the native format of Microsoft Virtual PC. This is a format that is popular withMicrosoft products.
I don't know anything about HDD. Judging from looking at this site, Parallels is a Mac OS X
product and probably isn't suitable for you, especially considering that VirtualBox only supports
an old version of the HDD format.
performance
The format should not affect performance, or at least, performance impacts are negligible.
The factors that influence performance are:
your physical device limitations (much more noticeable on a hard disk drive than a solid-
state drive... Why?)
expanding a dynamically allocated virtual disk drive (write operations are slower as the
virtual diskexpands, but once it's large enough, expanding should happen less)
virtualization technology (hardware vs. software; hardware virtualization helps
VirtualBox and improves the speed of virtual operating systems)
the fact that you are running a virtual operating system. Performance is always slower
than running an operating system on the host because of the virtualization process.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drivehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drivehttp://superuser.com/questions/318724/what-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-a-solid-state-drivehttp://www.parallels.com/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drivehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drivehttp://superuser.com/questions/318724/what-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-a-solid-state-drivehttp://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch10.html#hwvirt