Network Router User Manual

1 First steps
• Remote machine display. You can run any virtual machine in a special
VirtualBox program that acts as a server for the VirtualBox Remote Desktop Pro-
tocol (VRDP), a backward-compatible extension of the standard Remote Desk-
top Protocol. With this unique feature, VirtualBox provides high-performance
remote access to any virtual machine.
VirtualBox’s VRDP support does not rely on the RDP server that is built into
Microsoft Windows. Instead, a custom VRDP server has been built directly into
the virtualization layer. As a result, it works with any operating system (even
in text mode) and does not require application support in the virtual machine
either.
VRDP support is described in detail in chapter 7.4, Remote virtual machines
(VRDP support), page 99.
On top of this special capacity, VirtualBox offers you more unique features:
– Extensible RDP authentication. VirtualBox already supports Winlogon
on Windows and PAM on Linux for RDP authentication. In addition, it
includes an easy-to-use SDK which allows you to create arbitrary interfaces
for other methods of authentication; see chapter 9.4, Custom external VRDP
authentication, page 139 for details.
– USB over RDP. Via RDP virtual channel support, VirtualBox also allows
you to connect arbitrary USB devices locally to a virtual machine which is
running remotely on a VirtualBox RDP server; see chapter 7.4.4, Remote
USB, page 103 for details.
1.4 Supported host operating systems
Currently, VirtualBox runs on the following host operating systems:
• Windows hosts:
– Windows XP, all service packs (32-bit)
– Windows Server 2003 (32-bit)
– Windows Vista (32-bit and 64-bit
1
).
– Windows Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit)
– Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Mac OS X hosts:
2
– 10.5 (Leopard, 32-bit)
1
Support for 64-bit Windows was added with VirtualBox 1.5.
2
Preliminary Mac OS X support (beta stage) was added with VirtualBox 1.4, full support with 1.6. Mac OS
X 10.4 (Tiger) support was removed with VirtualBox 3.1.
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