Click New in the VirtualBox Manager window. A wizard is shown, to guide you through setting up a new virtual machine (VM).
On the following pages, the wizard will ask you for the bare minimum of information that is needed to create a VM, in particular:
The Name of the VM you choose is shown in the machine list of the VirtualBox Manager window and is also used for the VM's files on disk.
Be sure to assign each VM an informative name that describes the OS and software running on the VM. For example,
Windows 10 with Visio.The Machine Folder is the location where VMs are stored on your computer. The default folder location is shown.
For Operating System Type, select the OS that you want to install. The supported OSes are grouped. If you want to install something very unusual that is not listed, select Other. Depending on your selection, Oracle VM VirtualBox will enable or disable certain VM settings that your guest OS may require. This is particularly important for 64-bit guests. See Section 3.1.2, “64-bit Guests”. It is therefore recommended to always set it to the correct value.
On the next page, select the Memory (RAM) that Oracle VM VirtualBox should allocate every time the virtual machine is started. The amount of memory given here will be taken away from your host machine and presented to the guest OS, which will report this size as the virtual computer's installed RAM.
CautionChoose this setting carefully. The memory you give to the VM will not be available to your host OS while the VM is running, so do not specify more than you can spare. For example, if your host machine has 1 GB of RAM and you enter 512 MB as the amount of RAM for a particular virtual machine, while that VM is running, you will only have 512 MB left for all the other software on your host. If you run two VMs at the same time, even more memory will be allocated for the second VM, which may not even be able to start if that memory is not available. On the other hand, you should specify as much as your guest OS and your applications will require to run properly.
A Windows XP guest will require at least a few hundred MB of RAM to run properly, and Windows Vista will not install with less than 512 MB. If you want to run graphics-intensive applications in your VM, you may require even more RAM.
As a rule of thumb, if you have at least 1 GB of RAM in the host computer, you can safely allocate 512 MB to each VM. In any case, ensure that the host OS has at least 256 to 512 MB of RAM remaining. If insufficient RAM remains, the system might excessively swap memory to the hard disk, which effectively brings the host system to a standstill.
As with the other settings, you can change this setting later, after you have created the VM.
Next, you must specify a Virtual Hard Disk for your VM.
There are many and potentially complicated ways in which Oracle VM VirtualBox can provide hard disk space to a VM, see Chapter 5, Virtual Storage, but the most common way is to use a large image file on your physical hard disk, whose contents Oracle VM VirtualBox presents to your VM as if it were a complete hard disk. This file then represents an entire hard disk, so you can even copy it to another host and use it with another Oracle VM VirtualBox installation.
The wizard displays the following window:
At this screen, you have the following options:
To create a new, empty virtual hard disk, click the Create button.
You can pick an existing disk image file.
The drop-down list presented in the window lists all disk images which are currently remembered by Oracle VM VirtualBox. These disk images are currently attached to a virtual machine, or have been attached to a virtual machine.
Alternatively, click on the small folder icon next to the drop-down list. In the displayed file dialog, you can click Add to select any disk image file on your host disk.
If you are using Oracle VM VirtualBox for the first time, you will want to create a new disk image. Click the Create button.
This displays another window, the Create Virtual Hard Disk Wizard wizard. This wizard helps you to create a new disk image file in the new virtual machine's folder.
Oracle VM VirtualBox supports the following types of image files:
A dynamically allocated file only grows in size when the guest actually stores data on its virtual hard disk. Therefore, this file is small initially. As the drive is filled with data, the file grows to the specified size.
A fixed-size file immediately occupies the file specified, even if only a fraction of that virtual hard disk space is actually in use. While occupying much more space, a fixed-size file incurs less overhead and is therefore slightly faster than a dynamically allocated file.
For details about the differences, see Section 5.2, “Disk Image Files (VDI, VMDK, VHD, HDD)”.
To prevent your physical hard disk (host OS) from filling up, Oracle VM VirtualBox limits the size of the image file. But the image file must be large enough to hold the contents of the guest OS and the applications you want to install. For a Windows or Linux guest, you will probably need several gigabytes for any serious use. The limit of the image file size can be changed later, see Section 7.22, “VBoxManage modifymedium”.
After having selected or created your image file, click Next to go to the next page.
Click Create, to create your new virtual machine. The virtual machine is displayed in the list on the left side of the VirtualBox Manager window, with the name that you entered initially.
After becoming familiar with the use of wizards, consider using the Expert Mode available in some wizards. Where available, this is selectable using a button, and speeds up the process of using wizards.