LHC@home

Unfortunately, all Virtualbox apps have always been quite opaque when it comes to actual memory and bandwidth requirements. Boinc Manager is unable to display them and you can't google this information (I tried before I asked here).

You may use the search function of this forum.
Just 1 example:
After a break of more than a year CMS had been relaunched in early 2019.
Short after the relaunch Ivan posted a comment that included a hint regarding the bandwidth saturation:
https://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/forum_thread.php?id=4967&postid=38231

Since then he always informed about changes in the CMS setup that had an influence on job runtime or upload size.
Other scientists do the same for their projects.

The VM console doesn't display what the workunit actually does ...

ALT-F1 .. ALT-Fn provide lots of information about what the VM is doing.
Beside that the "show graphics" button of the BOINC manager opens a browser that allows you to examine the logfiles inside the VM.
Not perfect?
Right - but better than nothing since there is no better interface to exchange data between the VM and the host it is running on.