Customer Reviews

VirtualBox 3.1: Beginner's Guide

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If you're just getting started with desktop virtualization and would like a step-by-step guide to get started, this book may be a great resource for you. It helps you learn by doing, with instructions and screenshots showing you how to do everything from creating your first virtual machine to reverting to a snapshot to remove unwanted changes. More advanced users may already know most of what this book covers, so again, the title is correct; this book is aimed at beginners. That said, if you've been using virtualization but would like to dig a little deeper, look around the "Look Inside" copy above to see if it covers stuff you'd like to learn.

Please note: I read the PDF ebook version of this book available directly from the publisher, but the contents are the same as this version. Unfortunately, there's not a Kindle version avilable, but you can always get this PDF version if you'd rather read the book on your computer or eReader device (and save a little money).

For more info, check out my full review at [...].

If you ever wonder what VirtualBox is or want to use VirtualBox as your virtualization solution, this book is recommended for you!

The book starts with a clear introduction and continues with hands-on, detailed step-by-step instructions on how to setup virtual machine running both Ubuntu Linux and Windows 7. The instructions are descriptive, easy to follow, and supported by a rich set of screen captures.

It continues with two important aspects of virtualization: data handling and networking. Both guides come with exemplary examples which you would typically encounter in the real world. While the next chapters on appliance and remote management are probably not something what a VirtualBox beginner would need very soon, they are very handy and provide nice stepping stones towards becoming an expert.

A very nice book!

Overview

The book takes you from download to being productive with Sun's/Oracle's VirtualBox. Each chapter builds on the previous and not only walks you through each topic area step by step but also takes a step back and talks about "what just happened." (i.e. it's not a ton of simple screenshots and "click, click, click" instructions but also works to "teach you to fish")

Likes

One of the things I liked about the book is used a number of techniques to engage the reader and to help get a chapter's point across. For example, an ongoing story/scenario was used to relate a chapter to something that might have, or will, happen to you "in the real world." This made the reading more engaging, applicable and much less dry. It also took you beyond what you might read online (via wiki's, VirtualBox doc's, etc).

That was one of my questions when first getting the book. What will this teach me that I couldn't just look up online? How is the price of the book versus the tons of free online information?

The problem is that the "tons of online information" is really "crud loads of data." It's up to the reader to turn it into "information" and then wisdom. This book jumpstarts your drive to VirtualBox wisdom, helping you better "know what you don't know."

It's a Beginner's Guide, so you'll not walk away a VirtualBox Zen Master, but you WILL be on the path towards becoming one... (especially if you were like me and hadn't ever installed or used VirtualBox)

Improvements

What did I think could be improved? Well I live in a mostly Microsoft world... So I wish there had been a little more coverage there. For example, Microsoft makes a number of it's trial products available as VM's. I would have liked to see some guidance/help/information on taking an existing Virtual PC 2007/Windows Virtual PC/Hyper-V VHD and converting it VirtualBox. Also I'd have liked to see why VirtualBox is better than the Windows Virtual PC that I already have. Something simple, a side-by-side chart would do. Just something to help me get over the concern of having two VM systems in place on the same machine (Windows 7 Virtual PC and VirtualBox).

What did I learn?

So did I actually apply anything I read in the book? You bet! Just yesterday, I used this book to help me resolve an issue my son and I were having with a legacy game what wouldn't run well on Win7 x64 (nor in Windows Virtual PC). After reading this book and finally having my eyes opened to the capabilities of VirtualBox, it seemed well worth the effort to try to resolve this long standing issue.

So I downloaded the latest version of VirtualBox and was able to very quickly, because I already had exposure to, and a basic understanding of from my reading, get a VM created, storage added, settings configured, tweaked and VM shared. In the end I was able to be a Tech Hero to my son because I was finally able to get the game he's wanted to play for months now working on his notebook. All because of this book (and VirtualBox)... I'll call that a win!

Final Thoughts

In the end, one thing to remember is the subtitle "Beginner's Guide"... It's not Level 400 material, but then again it's not supposed to be! It's a guide to take the VirtualBox uninitiated and get you working and productive with it with no fuss, muss or tears.

Would I recommend a friend or coworker buy this book if they wanted to learn about VirtualBox (even if they lived in a mostly Microsoft world)? Oh yeah, no question about it. Matter of fact I AM going to be recommending it to a number of coworkers whom I know are VirtualBox users... ;)

The first thing I have to say about this book is that it is very detail oriented. It truly is a beginners guide. I'm positive I could give this book to my father and he'd be able to install, configure and run VirtualBox on Windows or Linux. It outlines, in step-by-step detail, everything you'd like to know about VirtualBox. Even though I consider myself a Virtualbox veteran, I followed along with some of the tutorials and was impressed that no detail was left out.

One of the things that really stands out about this title is that it includes a huge number of screenshots. The number of screenshots in the book provide any beginner with the visual roadmap they need to complete the task at hand. It covers installing VirtualBox on both a Windows and Ubuntu host, as well as installing and configuring the reverse as guests. If you've never installed VirtualBox before, you'll have an installation up and running in just a few minutes.

Beyond installation and configuration, this book goes into detail regarding the command line options (I learned quite a bit from this chapter!) as well. VirtualBox provides a full set of command line tools for starting, stopping, configuring, cloning and creating virtual machines. This makes it a perfectly reasonable candidate for a headless server virtualization solution!

This book covers guest additions, disk and image creation and management, all networking options and how they differ, using and creating virtual appliances, using snapshots and even remote management. It really is a good resource for getting started with Virtualization. I'm glad to have a copy of this book in my collection.

The sections that were the most useful for me were the networking and command line chapters. I was not familiar with any of the command line tools, and the networking was a little blurry for me. Before getting a copy of this book I was unfamiliar with virtualized networking beyond NAT and Bridged. This book went into enough networking detail that I'm very comfortable with each of the networking options and in what situations each might apply. This will really boost my efficiency and productivity with VirtualBox.

For anyone wanting to learn more about virtualization or doing research into cost-effective virtual environment solutions, I would highly recommend VirtualBox 3.1 Beginner's Guide.