virtualbox.org

Hey there.

I'd like to use some Win XP-VMs. I'd be great if I could use 1 "base-image" and "differ-images" (1 per VM) to save storage. Is this possible using vbox?

Yes. Probably easiest is to create linked clones of your first running VM. See section 1.12 of the user manual.

And just to eliminate a common misconception: bear in mind that the shared base image must be frozen, you cannot apply OS updates to it later, these would have to be applied to each individual child VM.

It is not? I thought tghis would be realized as some kind of 2-layer-file system. So if a file is not present in the individual image, it will be searched in the base image?!

It is a two-layer system. The second layer holds only changes to the base image. That is why you cannot change the base image itself.

BillG wrote:It is a two-layer system. The second layer holds only changes to the base image. That is why you cannot change the base image itself.

Yeah, it's a two-layer system - but a 2-layer disc-sector-system, not a 2-layer file-system. VirtualBox's VHD files are totally file-system agnostic, otherwise you could only use a handful of file-systems that were supported by VirtualBox...

bjklkhjfgf wrote:Hey there.

I'd like to use some Win XP-VMs. I'd be great if I could use 1 "base-image" and "differ-images" (1 per VM) to save storage. Is this possible using vbox?

see http://www.electricmonk.nl/log/2011/09/ ... -on-write/