Virtualbox: Cloning machines with the Import & Export appliance utilities.

What is interesting about virtual box is that you can clone virtual machines that are running on another computer.

Let's say that you have Windows XP running as a virtual machine on your laptop computer. Let's also assume that you have your virtualized XP installation completely configured with all of your favorite software.

Suppose that you want to install Windows XP as a virtual machine on another computer but you don't want to go through the hassle of installing all of the software that you regularly use all over again on a fresh XP install.

Then what you can do, using Sun's VirtualBox software, is export the machine that is currently running Windows XP with all of your installed applications, and then transfer that exported machine to the other computer which you would like to clone the machine to, and then you can import the machine on another computer using the easy to use import utility of virtual box

I just did the above five minutes ago because I have Dragon NaturallySpeaking installed on a Windows XP virtual machine on my laptop and I didn't want to have to reinstall Windows XP on a new virtual machine on my desktop, and then reinstall Dragon NaturallySpeaking and have go through all of the bother with other installed application.

Cloning virtual machine is on virtual box is as easy as going to the "File" menu of VirtualBox, then clicking on "Export Appliance", following the prompts, and then copying the exported machine files over to the computer which you would like to import the machine to.

Importing the machine you have cloned with the Export utility is as easy as clicking on the "File" menu of VirtualBox, then on "Import Appliance", and then following the easy to understand prompts.

The cloned virtualbox machine will work just as the original machine did and will have identical settings. It's a real time saver if you don't want to install Windows XP along with many software packages over and over on multiple machines which you would like to have identical instances of a Windows operating system (or any operating system for that matter) running.