Difference between "Clone..." and "Export Appliance..."?

[kynnjo]

What's the difference between Machine > Clone... and File > Export Appliance... ?

I realize that the latter also requires a matching "Import Appliance..." at some point, but is that the only difference (i.e. "one command instead of two")?

IOW, is Machine > Clone... the "one-step-equivalent" of File > Export Appliance... + File > Import Appliance...?

TIA!

kj

[dlharper]

The two have a different purpose, so they take a different form.

A clone is an exact copy of a VM, so after doing it you have two virtual machines on your host, identical except for the things that have to be different such as the UUIDs. If you are developing a system this allows you to fork it, restore to a former state, etc, or easily to put together a virtual network of originally-identical machines. Because of the UUIDs, in particular, you need to do this rather than just make a file-copy of the VM directory.

An appliance is a complete VM (or indeed several of them) compressed and packaged into a single file. The idea is that you can then pass this single file (on a memory stick or XHD, say) to someone else using a different physical machine. They can then easily import your system to theirs, and they do not need to do anything else to get it going. It is virtual machine(s) packed into an archive for easy distribution to others.

A clone is really designed for use on the same host, an appliance for copying to a different one.

The best way to see the difference is simply to try them both out and see what you get.

[loukingjr]

The other feature of an Appliance is, it can be imported into a virtualization program other than VirtualBox.

[dlharper]

Yes. That is what the "O" in the ".OVF" or ".OVA" file type means - "Open Virtualization Format" or "Open Virtualization Archive"

[mpack]

But just to be explicit: IMHO cloning the VM is preferable to exporting it, if the target VM platform is VirtualBox. For backup purposes you don't clone or export at all, you simply copy the VM folder to backup storage.

The essence, I think, is that Export/Import is a legacy feature left over from a time before VBox supported cloning of VMs. The difference being that cloning creates exact duplicates whereas export changes the VM to conform to OVF standards. There are few legit reasons left to use export/import - basically just interactions with other VM platforms.

[HilltopsGM]

I understand that Cloning would be smarter in this instance I am about to describe, but for my understanding - if I were to "Export" a VM and then "Import" that VM back into the same Host where the Export came from while the original VM was still in that VirtualBox installation . . . would importing give that machine a new UUID, etc, etc, that it would need to run nicely along side the original?

I hope that question made sense.

[mpack]

Yes export/import would give you the VM a new set of UUIDs, but so would cloning - and cloning guarantees to keep all the VM settings, so there would be no benefit to the former.

The whole point of cloning is to create a second VM which is capable of running alongside the first VM, on the same host, without UUID conflicts.

If you don't need to change the UUIDs (e.g. if you just want to make a backup) then you simply copy the VM folder using the host OS.