New Features for Release 7.1

Improvements for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Integration

The following improvements have been made for using Oracle VirtualBox with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Cloud virtual machine changes. A cloud virtual machine (cloud VM) is a type of VM that represents an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure instance.
- Cloning a cloud VM. Right-click the cloud VM and select Clone.
  
  When you clone a cloud VM, a copy of the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure instance for the cloud VM is created and associated with the new cloud VM.
- Resetting a cloud VM. Use the Reset option in the Machine menu.
  
  The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure instance is stopped, then restarted automatically.
- Cloud VM performance monitoring. Cloud VMs are now included in the VirtualBox Manager performance monitoring tools. This means that you can monitor an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure instance remotely using Oracle VirtualBox.
  
  The VBoxManage cloud command can be used to display performance metrics for a cloud VM instance. See VBoxManage Command Line Changes.
  
  Note:
  
  To monitor a cloud VM, the Compute Instance Monitoring plugin must be enabled and running on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure instance. See the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure documentation for more details.
Importing and exporting virtual machines. Multiple images can now be used when importing a VM from or exporting a VM to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

See Using Cloud Virtual Machines for more details.

VirtualBox Manager Changes

The following list shows the main improvements to the VirtualBox Manager user interface in this release:

Experience levels. A basic or expert user interface can be selected, depending on the user level. See Experience Levels for VirtualBox Manager.
Create Virtual Machine workflow. The Create Virtual Machine workflow includes the following changes:
- Subtype. A subtype field has been added to the Name and Operating System page. This enables you to specify the exact version used for the guest operating system.
  
  For example, if the Type is Linux, the Subtype might be Oracle Linux and the Version might be Oracle Linux 8.x (64-bit). See Creating a Virtual Machine.
Cloud VM performance monitoring. Cloud VMs are now included in the VirtualBox Manager performance monitoring tools. See Improvements for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Integration.
VISO Creator tool. When creating a new VISO, you can now import ISO files and also specific files from an existing ISO file.
Soft keyboard. New icons have been added, for some common keyboard tasks.
Virtual machine status bar. The Processor icon now uses a solid color bar to indicate CPU activity.
Shared Clipboard. Clipboard file transfers between the host and guest can be enabled or disabled using a check box on the Device, Shared Clipboard menu in the guest.
Tool Settings. Settings and preferences for tools such as VISO Creator, Log Viewer, and Guest Control File Manager are now displayed in a tab view.
Guest Control File Manager. File navigation is improved, with new toolbar icons and controls.

Experience Levels for VirtualBox Manager

In this release, you can select an experience level for the VirtualBox Manager user interface. The following experience levels are available:

Basic. A limited number of settings and tools are shown.

This level is suitable for a first time user of Oracle VirtualBox.
Expert. All available settings and tools are shown.

This level is suitable for an experienced user of Oracle VirtualBox, who needs more control of virtual machine settings.

The experience level can be configured in the following places in VirtualBox Manager:

The Welcome screen, for new installations with no existing VMs.
The Preferences window.
The Settings tabs for a VM.

See Experience Levels for VirtualBox Manager.

Arm Hosts

This release includes an installation package to run Oracle VirtualBox on an Arm host platform. Note the following:

Apple silicon CPUs. An installation package is provided for Apple silicon hosts.

See Available Installation Packages.
Guest operating systems for Arm hosts. Oracle Linux for Arm (aarch64) can be used as a guest OS, when running on an Arm platform host.

Note:

x86_64 VMs on an Arm host are not supported.

See Guest Operating Systems.

Note:

For known limitations when using an Arm platform host, see Arm Platform Host Limitations.

VBoxManage Command Line Changes

The following VBoxManage command changes have been introduced:

VBoxManage createvm: The new --platform-architecture option is used to specify either an x86 or Arm architecture for the VM.
VBoxManage modifyvm: The --chipset option now includes a setting for Arm platforms.
VBoxManage cloud instance clone: Creates a clone of an existing cloud VM instance.
VBoxManage cloud instance metriclist and VBoxManage cloud instance metricdata: Commands used to display performance data for cloud VM instances.
VBoxManage unattended: You can specify passwords for an administrator and a user account on the guest operating system.

Software Development Kit Changes

The application programming interface (API) has been redesigned for this release.

See the SDK Programming Guide and Reference for more details of the changes.