The Oracle Linux and Virtualization team is pleased to announce VirtualBox 7.1, the latest release of the world’s most popular free, open source, and cross-platform virtualization software. VirtualBox helps DevOps engineers and distributed development teams increase productivity and reduce their organizations’ operational complexity and cost. The new release improves the developer experience and introduces support for macOS on Apple silicon as well as a step-by-step wizard to create virtual machines (VMs). 

Oracle VirtualBox 7.1 includes the following new features and enhancements:

  • Support for macOS on Apple silicon: An installation package is provided for Apple silicon hosts and provides support to run Oracle Linux for Arm VMs.
  • Improvements for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
    • Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Instance cloning in the cloud: The VirtualBox user interface allows you to clone OCI Instances in the cloud.
    • OCI Instance reset: The OCI instance is stopped and restarted automatically.
    • OCI Instance performance monitoring: OCI Instances, managed through VirtualBox, are now included in the VirtualBox Manager performance monitoring tools.
  • VirtualBox Manager
    • Experience levels: A basic or expert user interface can be selected.
    • 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.
    • Guest Control File Manager: File navigation is improved with new toolbar icons and controls.
  • VBoxManage Command Line Interface
    • VBoxManage createvm: The new –platform-architecture option specifies 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 to displayperformance data for cloud VM instances.
    • VBoxManage unattended: Users can specify passwords for an administrator and a user account on the guest operating system.
  • More
    • Networking: VirtualBox now includes an updated engine for NAT IPv6 support.
    • Screen recording: Improves performance for video encoding, resulting in less CPU usage while recording is active.
    • Unattended Installation: Supports cloud-init-based installers, enabling the installation of more modern Linux-based virtual machines.

For further information on the release content please check the official Oracle VirtualBox Release Notes.

With Oracle VirtualBox 7.1 we refreshed our community website and logo. Please visit and bookmark the website.

Additional Resources