How to Use Oracle Box For Virtualization



Before installing Oracle Box, be sure to go to your BIOS and ensure that Virtualization Support is enabled. After you install Oracle Box, click the start menu and select all programs. Scroll down until you see Oracle Box and double click to start the program. When you first start Oracle Box, you should see a window like this one pop up:  

               

As you can see this window is called the Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager. To create a new Virtual Machine, click the new button. You should then see a window like this:

 

The Virtual Machine name will be later seen in the VirtualBox Manager window. You can name your VM (Virtual Machine) anything but if you were to name your VM Alan’s VM for example, it would be much easier to call it the name of the Operating System especially if you were creating a lot of VM’s. After naming the VM, the next thing is to select the type of Operating System you are using. 

 

For my example here I am creating Windows 7 so my type is Microsoft Windows. After clicking next, the next page will be about how much RAM you would like to use. Be careful when selecting the amount of RAM because the amount of RAM you allocate to the VM will not be available to your host Operating System whilst it is running.  It is recommended to leave between 256 MB to 512 MB of RAM in your host computer. If you have more than 1GB of RAM in your computer, it is generally safe to allocate 512MB of RAM to the VM.

 

After clicking next after allocating your VM RAM, the next window will be about creating a Virtual Hard Disk. Here you can create a Virtual Hard Disk or use an existing disk image file to install the VM.

 

Using Oracle Box for the first time you are usually recommended to create a new Virtual Hard Disk. After clicking create you should see a window like this:

 

When using Dynamically allocated, it will only grow in size when the user stores data on the Virtual Hard Disk. It will initially be small on the host hard drive and only later grow to the size specified once it is filled with data. When selecting Fixed size, it will immediately occupy the file specified, even if only a fraction of the virtual hard disk space is actually in use.

 

After clicking create on this final window, your VM will be created. After loading the VM for the first time, it will be as if you have no Operating System on there. You can either use a CD or DVD in your host computer or use an .iso file to install your desired operating system.

After installing your desired VM, whenever you decide to shut down the VM you can use the close option which gives you 3 options, Save the machine state, Send the shutdown signal and power off the machine. Saving the machine state will start where it left off again once loaded back up. Sending the shutdown signal is like using your power button to turn off your machine. Powering off the machine stops running the VM without saving its state.

 
When taking a snapshot, this makes a copy of your machines state that you can go back to at any time. To save a snapshot, simply click on snapshots like the example below:
 

Click the blue camera next:
 

Then you will see a window like this:
 

After clicking OK, your snapshot has been saved. If your VM is having problems and you need to go back to a certain point, right click and select Restore Snapshot. 
 

To delete a snapshot simply right click the snapshot and delete but be aware it will not will not affect the state of the VM, but it will release files from the VM disk that was used to store the snapshot data and will therefore release some disk space. A snapshot is like having a system restore point which makes it quite efficient.

Alan Conyard