Non-Proprietary Virtual Image Clients?

Question

Just to ask if there are any non-proprietary virtual image clients available, i.e. an application capable of running .vhd and/or .vmdk based virtual images? I have searched online, but have not been able to find any.

Note, I am actually looking to avoid using the bloated VMware Server 2.0, with its web interface and resource hungry service to run my VMware virtual images - if anyone has any ideas on this, I would appreciate it. Before anyone suggests it, I have tried several times in the past to convert .vmdk images to .vhd files, without success. This is not a possible solution for me.

Thanks, MagicAndi.

Answer 1

VirtualBox is a superb (and totally free) virtual machine that I have used in the past for running all sorts of setups (both Windows and Linux). It is capable of directly using VMDK and VHD images, as well as its own format.

Now, I'm not sure precisely what you mean by proprietary, but if you simply mean paid software, then VirtualBox should clearly be fine for you. If you want something open source, then I recommend VirtualBox OSE, which only lacks a few advanced features (see the details on the page). It's licensed under the GPL, so I believe this means that it is non-proprietary, though someone may need to clarify this...