[su_dropcap style=”flat”]T[/su_dropcap]oday, we have the ‘virtual reality’ almost everywhere.
From video games, for performing complicated surgeries, for military training purposes, and also to help the blind to ‘see’ virtually.
One such aspect or a sub-branch is the technology of the ‘virtual machine.’ This virtual machine has its virtual hardware device and can normally run on your Windows. This technology has given rise to multiple free virtual machine software.
So, how does a virtual machine software work?
This is a function that can allow you to ‘create’ more than one virtual machine on a single computer. This happens through the process of virtualizing network, CPU, memory, and disks.
Best Free Virtual Machine Software 2020
The 1st version of the Oracle VM virtual box was developed in 2007. And it is now one of the best free virtual machines for both enterprise and home use. It supports a variety of guest appertaining systems like-Windows from XP and onwards, NT, Server 2003, OS X, Solaris, Open Solaris, and Linux 2.4 or higher.
People even run Windows 3.x, DOS, IBM OS/2 smoothly in their most advanced computers. The Oracle VM Virtual Box can run to about 32 and 64bit Operating systems as a single VM. It also supports MAC.
This is a cool free virtual machine that is ideal for personal use. It can also be mounted and can be called a Windows virtual machine. This is known as one of the best virtual machine software despite not being able to create a new VM from an ISO. Also available is the VMware Player Plus version with enhanced features.
The fact that a Windows virtual machine can run on an Apple OS X, makes Parallels one of the robust free virtual machine software. Parallels is a full-featured virtual machine that is a wonderful source to run Windows application on Mac. Though it is illegal to run OS X on anything except Mac, there are quite a few ways in which this can still be achieved.
This free virtual machine software is mostly used for more advanced applications. This can be used for running multiple systems. It is a full-featured virtual machine.
VMWare workstation is great for developers who require database, web, and application servers at the same virtual space. This virtual machine can be used for Cloning and saving projects.
VMware Fusion provides a safe way to run Windows on Mac. This also has various attractive features such as Unity view, something that allows Macintosh OS desktop to function as a native application when allowing the virtualized application to appear.
The best part about this virtual machine is that it can work as a window virtual machine that can run more than 200 operating systems.
This virtual machine software has been a popular pick for quite some time now. It is usually used by hosting companies. And it is primarily used for providing Virtual Private Servers, also known as VPS.
This is an advanced virtual machine software that is better than the previously available Microsoft VirtualPC and Microsoft VirtualServer. Microsoft Hyper-V can perform the same functions as those performed by enterprise virtualization software.
Some of the main functions which can be achieved by this free virtual machine are Live migration, Templates, HA, importing VMs from VMware, and EC2 by utilizing SystemCenter VMM.
However, it is worth mentioning that this virtual machine is not very popular in the Linux community. This is mainly a Windows virtual machine and works the best with the Windows operating system. This virtual machine also powers Microsoft’s Azure cloud.
Earlier acquired by Citrix, XenServer is a potent name in the market of virtual machine software. This is used mainly by the enterprise environment to host servers. The XenServer is also used for desk operating systems.
The best part is that when in combination with XenCenter, these can perform all the more varied functions. Live Migration is one of the tasks that XenServer can perform well. Also, HA and exporting VMs to Cloud are some of the other functions that can be done.
This free virtual is compatible with Linux, and it is there in Linux Distros. The professionals also prefer it as it fits perfectly with OpenStack. This killer combination gives a performance that is on par with VMware vSphere.
Some of the limitations of this free virtual machine software are with hosting Windows VMs. But you can solve this, as OpenStack can support Hyper-V and ESXi.
VMware ESXi functions mainly for large enterprise virtual server deployments. This is compatible with Linux and Windows, making it a prime choice amongst developers. The added perk is that VMware is an ever-evolving free virtual machine software for a long time now.
The best part about this virtual machine is that it is utilized in maximum Private Clouds. As more public clouds allow the flexing of the private vSphere infrastructure into public vSphere infrastructure.
This is another popular free virtual machine software. There are various reasons which are responsible for that. To start with, Nutanix Hyperconverged Infrastructure is the convergence of 3 node ESXi along with VSAN and NSX altogether.
This implies that this virtual software machine brings together some great features like storage, network, and compute in one package, also called a Hyperconverged elastic cluster.
Another attractive feature of this virtual machine software is that open source hypervisor can run the virtual server. Also worth mentioning is the fact that this free virtual machine software has an enterprise software and well-supported hardware version. The open-source software-only version also comes with the same.
Conclusion
While one might assume that this is a sophisticated process that can burn your pockets, the reality is quite the opposite.
Now, you have the best free virtual machine software that is readily available and can be utilized accordingly. Simply put, other than VMware and Java, you have quite many free virtual machine software to choose from in the current times.
