Moving Virtual Machines

[mashcaster]

I have a virtualbox internel network simulation which involves many virtual machines all networked internally within virtual box. The simulation is not complete yet, but it took a lot of time to get to where it is. The problem is that I am having to change from Ubuntu 8.10 to Debian stable, and I do not want to start over from scratch with my virtual box network simulation.

My question is, is it possible to some how move the virtual machines and setting files which allow the virtual machines to comunicate to another PC? So I don't have to setup the virtual network from scratch again? The virtual box I am currently using is virtualbox ose 2.0.6 and I need to move to virtualbox ose 1.6.6 I think.

[Sasquatch]

If you create a backup from ~/.VirtualBox, and restore it on the new system, you're good to go. As long as you use the same or newer version as the VMs are created on, there will be no issues.

[vor_lord]

This is a related question (despite a couple hours of searching I apparently don't know the right terms to find the answer):

Will I be able to backup and restore a VM to a totally different host OS?

I currently am running a small LAMP server (Ubuntu Server) with host OS Arch Linux. I want to know if I can dual boot into Windows XP as the host OS, and still run the LAMP guest. Is a regular backup sufficient as long as my virtualbox versions match between the two host OSes?

[vbox4me2]

Should not be an issue, only watch out for the VM settings between different host OS's.

[vor_lord]

Should not be an issue, only watch out for the VM settings between different host OS's.

Are there more settings to worry about than what is in the xml file? My plan was to use the same VDI and xml file from both host OSes.

[Sasquatch]

No, you just have to compare the settings from each Host. As long as you set everything from the GUI, you're fine. Just make sure that the MAC address for the NICs are the same. It can trigger Windows activation, and will create new names on Linux systems. You can't use the same XML for both systems, as you boot between Windows and Linux.

[mashcaster]

If you create a backup from ~/.VirtualBox, and restore it on the new system, you're good to go. As long as you use the same or newer version as the VMs are created on, there will be no issues.

So does that mean I cannot go from VirtualBox 2.0.6 to 1.6.6 ???

[vbox4me2]

You can keep 2 different Host versions for one single shared VM, but when the VM starts misbehaving it can go beyond repair, so it is better to keep both Hosts on the same version. Upgrading is best done by recreating the VM settings and re-attaching the VDI's, VBox installers do not always correctly upgrade VM settings.