Sharing the administration of VMs on Windows Server 2008

[nielsonj100]

I've installed Oracle Virtualbox on a Windows Server 2008 machine. There are several people who access this server and wish to run VMs on it.

If I create a VM via the Virtualbox front end, although other people can see and interact with the VM that I have created, they can not log onto the Windows 2008 Server and view/edit the VM that I have created via the Virtualbox front end. They only see the VMs that they alone have created.

Is there a way of sharing the administration of VMs, so we can see all the VMs that are active on a particular machine?

The reason I ask is that if I start a VM and I am off the next day, my colleague is unable to stop it or do very much with it if required.

Many thanks in advance. I've scanned Google but so far not seen anything related to this.

JN

[BillG]

The vm is "owned" by the user who creates it. Although I know of no way to share them, you could create a vm for each of your colleagues using his/her Windows account. That way each user would have his/her own vm.

[socratis]

For new VMs you can change your default settings to point to "C:\Users\Public\lalala" (or something of that nature). For a Mac, that would be "/Users/Shared/lalala". U*ix doesn't have one by default, but you can easily make one. These folders are meant to be shared.

For existing VMs, you could move them (the whole folder) to a public folder and make sure that you have RWX permissions for everyone. Then you simply "Add..." the VM to your list of VMs. "Nasty" issue on the Mac: the files are read-write by the owner, read-only by the rest of the users (translation: not good, you have to reset them every time [chmod -R og+rw /Users/Shared/lalala]).

About your question, "so we can see all the VMs that are active on a particular machine?", you can check with task manager, process explorer or something similar. Or, even better, use "VBoxManage list runningvms" from a command prompt (make sure you're in the directory that VBoxManage resides).

[nielsonj100]

Many thanks for both the replies. I have a feeling that Virtualbox doesn't do what I want it to do, but I will explain a little further. We are currently using Virtualbox to deliver a development environment to our team at work. It works really well and so far I am pleased with the results. The only issue I can see is that the VM is started under the windows acount of the person who originally created and started the VM. If this is me, and for sake of argument, I am off work sick, and there is a request to stop, amend and re-start the VM, how would this be possible without sharing my login and paasword to another member of my team? I've tried importing the *.vbox file but this always says the status of the VM is "Powered off" even when I know it to be running. If I attempt to start it I get a rather odd error (unsurprising as it is already started).

Am I asking too much of Virtualbox? Are VMs linked to the Windows user who started them and they cannot be easily stopped by another user?

Thanks,
JN

[socratis]

Create a <VMUSER> shared Windows account that everyone has access to.

[nielsonj100]

Thanks Socratis, I think that may be the most logical (if lo-tech!) way of working around our issue!

Many thanks,
JN