When we talk about Virtual Machines (VMs) we always talk about VMware VMs. VMware has been dominating the x86 virtualization market for years. There are still other vendors out there that also deliver x86 virtualization solutions. One of those is Oracle VirtualBox for example.
VirtualBox is a free and open-source hypervisor for x86 virtualization that was initially released by Innotek GmbH in 2007. Sun Microsystems acquired Innotek in 2008 and Oracle bought Sun in 2010. Since then, the product is known as Oracle VirtualBox.
VirtualBox is a so-called “Type 2 hypervisor”, which means it runs on top of an operating system such as Windows, Linux, or macOS. VMware Workstation for Windows/Linux and VMware Fusion for MacOS are type 2 hypervisors.
A “Type 1 hypervisor” runs directly on bare metal. KVM and VMware ESXi are examples of type 1 hypervisors.
Type 2 hypervisors are often used on workstations or laptops to spin up additional machines with isolated operating systems. For example, you can install Windows on a MacBook inside a type 2 hypervisor. Software developers also frequently use type 2 hypervisors because they can spin up isolated Dev/Test environments very easily.
Read this Blogpost to know how to migrate Virtual Machines from Oracle VirtualBox to VMware Fusion and to VMware ESXi.
