What you are doing
You will build a virtual machine three times, on three hypervisors, and find that it
is the same job every time. That is the point: a technician who can drive only one product has
learned a menu, not virtualization.
- Stage 1, Oracle VirtualBox. One guest on your desktop: memory, an installer,
an isolated network, a snapshot. You will see what an empty computer does when you boot it.
- Stage 2, VMware Workstation. The same machine, every concept renamed.
.vdi becomes .vmdk,
Guest Additions becomes VMware Tools, and "Internal Network" is gone. Finding what replaced it
is the task.
- Stage 3, a Type 1 host. The subject stops being one VM and becomes the
server: several guests, one finite pool of physical memory, and a host that does not warn when
it runs out. It refuses.
Nothing is graded on clicking. Every tick is computed from the machine you actually built, and it
goes back out if you break it.
The software, and where we have it
Oracle VirtualBoxStage 1 · Type 2 · free, GPLv3
Signal Toolkit → Oracle VirtualBox
Our install guide for Windows, macOS and Linux, with the download link and the Extension Pack step.
VMware Workstation ProStage 2 · Type 2 · free for personal use
Signal Toolkit → VMware Workstation
Needs a free Broadcom account. Not available on macOS, so that page points you to Fusion.
VMware ESXiStage 3 · Type 1 · bare metal
Run it nested inside Workstation
You do not install this one on your laptop. It takes the machine over. Nested inside Workstation is the practical route, covered on that page.
This is a simulation, not the real binary. It models the decisions, the
vocabulary and the arithmetic: how much memory you may safely hand a guest, what isolation
actually means, why a bare-metal host refuses your fourth VM. Install the real thing from the links
above and build the same machine again: everything here transfers, because the constraints are the
same constraints.