Originally developed by Sun, Oracle VirtualBox is an open source virtualization product for x86 and AMD64/Intel64 hardware. VirtualBox currently runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris host operating systems. Because it is free, open source and stable, VirtualBox is a viable choice for desktop development environments or low cost enterprise server implementations.
VMware is the current standard for server virtualization in the enterprise datacenter. The following instructions will guide you through creating a VMware-based virtual machine suitable for hosting Drupal on Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS.
Before You Begin
Creating a Linux virtual machine in VMware is fairly straight forward. Here are a few best practices to keep in mind: