Sun VirtualBox practice 1 - A Portable Personal Lab

I use to store my Personal Virtual Lab carrying with VMware workstation edition based guest OS (such as, Windows, Linux and Solaris) on an external hard drive.

With a simple customized customize VMware workstation guest OS Configuration file to the external hard drive, my Personal Lab was able to be easily plugged in and worked on different hosting OS (with same OS type), for instance, simple switch from one Windows XP desktop to one Windows XP laptop (both of hosting OS have the same VMWare workstation edition installed already) and continue your works in the Personal Lab.

This approach has been working with me for many years, did the great job and especially did save my lot of time. Sometimes, you might need a quick Lab testing based on an existing environment (for instance, Windows 2003 SE with SQL 2005), with this approach and VW snapshot, there will be no extra environment setting up time at all.

With the free PUEL (Personal Use and Evaluation License) Sun VirtualBox software, a similar approach could be configured to achieve plugging in and working on a different hosting OS (with same OS type) as below:

1. Open Sun Virtual Box, Sun Virtual Box -> File -> Preferences -> General, change the Default Hard Dish Folder and Default Machine Folder to the external hard drive, for instance,

Note: this configuration should be done on all of hosting OS

2. During Create New Virtual Machine, Save the Virtual Disk Location to the external hard drive, for instance,

3. Always copy the latest version of %UserProfile%\.VirtualBox (VirtualBox.xml is under .VirtualBox folder) to the external hard drive when finish works in the Personal Lab.
Note: this is the key to achieve our goal -- portable Sun VirtualBox guest OS on different hosting OS.
This latest version of .VirtualBox folder (with associated VirtualBox.xml) need be copied back into your new hosting OS under %UserProfile% folder if you do want to switch and also assuming the same version of Sun VirtualBox installed already on the new hosting OS.
4. If Enable Network Adapter is checked, Select an associated Network by simple picking the right one from the drop down list.

Note: All of VirtualBox guest OS should be Power Off.