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phpVirtualBox and RemoteBox compared
From a Distance
Not every admin may be aware that VirtualBox, which is popular for desktop virtualization, also meets all the requirements for server use, including a command-line interface. Two optional graphical user interfaces implemented in PHP and Perl/Gtk give convenient access to VirtualBox's server features, helping a virtualization solution based on phpVirtualBox [1] or RemoteBox [2] fill the gap left by the long gone VMware Server.
Inventory
When it comes to professional Linux virtualization solutions, VMware's competitors include Citrix XenServer and Red Hat's RHEV. Experienced Linux administrators can create individual solutions based on KVM or Xen and use the Libvirt-based Virt-manager as the interface on Linux machines.
From a purely functional point of view, solutions based on KVM/Virt-manager or advanced VirtualBox virtualization are minor-league approaches. The objective of these setups is to host, configure, and manage a large number of virtual machines on a central server. Although you can easily store container and ISO files on a file server for VirtualBox, the VirtualBox Virtual Machine Manager then has to run on each host on which virtual machines are to be used. Even if some admins in smaller environments (SMBs) are satisfied with this type of virtualization on the desktop, it is fairly obvious that the setup has nothing to do with desktop virtualization. Each image is explicitly assigned to a virtual machine, with no dynamic session brokering – that is, no dynamic assignment of users to desktops derived from a master image.
Remote VirtualBox
VirtualBox also supports a genuine server mode. The only downside compared with the Virtual Machine Manager in desktop use is that the screen content is displayed
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