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A basic Windows 10 image can happily hit 20GB, and if you end up playing with a few VMs, each could easily be 4GB. If you’re running a smaller SSD boot drive, you’ll likely want to tell VirtualBox to store these on a data drive. Technically, these are reusable and portable, plus you have snapshot and history capabilities, hence the separate manager.īefore we create anything, though, consider where your VMs will be stored-both the small VM configuration (.vbox) files, and the potentially large virtual media drives (.vdi), and their snapshots. Click the top-right “Global Tools” button to list all the created virtual media drives, which are the virtual drives you create to store your virtual machines’ OSes and data. The main “Machine Tools” interface displays all your created virtual machines. If you haven’t done so already, start VirtualBox. Your real PC running VirtualBox is called the host VirtualBox is technically the hypervisor and any virtualized systems it runs on the host PC are called guests, and are your virtual machines (VM). Once you’ve installed and fired up VirtualBox, let’s get some lingo down.
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VirtualBox helps you build a virtual wall, keeping all invaders safely trapped, running inside a seemingly happy real system of their own. Oracle might not be the most loved company in the world, but we’ve got to love VirtualBox.
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