Removing virtual machines
To remove a virtual machine which you no longer need, right-click on it in the Manager's VM list select "Remove" from the context menu that comes up.A confirmation window will come up that allows you to select whether the machine should only be removed from the list of machines or whether the files associated with it should also be deleted.
The "Remove" menu item is disabled while a machine is running.
To experiment with a VM configuration, test different guest OS levels
or to simply backup a VM, VirtualBox can create a full or a linked copy of
an existing VM.[5]
A wizard will guide you through the clone process:
This wizard can be invoked from the context menu of the Manager's VM
list (select "Clone") or the "Snapshots" view of the selected VM. First
choose a new name for the clone. When you select Reinitialize the MAC address of all network cards
every network card get a new MAC address assigned. This is useful when
both, the source VM and the cloned VM, have to operate on the same network.
If you leave this unchanged, all network cards have the same MAC address
like the one in the source VM. Depending on how you invoke the wizard you
have different choices for the cloning operation. First you need to decide
if the clone should be linked to the source VM or a fully independent clone
should be created:
After selecting the clone mode, you need to decide about what exactly
should be cloned. You can always create a clone of the current state only or all. When you select all, the current state and in addition all
snapshots are cloned. Have you started from a snapshot which has additional
children, you can also clone the current state and
all children. This creates a clone starting with this
snapshot and includes all child snaphots.
The clone operation itself can be a lengthy operation depending on the size and count of the attached disk images. Also keep in mind that every snapshot has differencing disk images attached, which need to be cloned as well.
The "Clone" menu item is disabled while a machine is running.
For how to clone a VM at the command line, please see the section called “VBoxManage clonevm”.
A wizard will guide you through the clone process:
Jonhnson Frederic Merchadou Emilia Lambert Jacques & Co  |
- Full clone: In this mode all depending disk images are copied to the new VM folder. The clone can fully operate without the source VM.
- Linked clone: In this mode new differencing disk images are created where the parent disk images are the source disk images. If you selected the current state of the source VM as clone point, a new snapshot will be created implicitly.
The clone operation itself can be a lengthy operation depending on the size and count of the attached disk images. Also keep in mind that every snapshot has differencing disk images attached, which need to be cloned as well.
The "Clone" menu item is disabled while a machine is running.
For how to clone a VM at the command line, please see the section called “VBoxManage clonevm”.
