With one simple trick you can make your VirtualBox VM creation much more efficient.
How to add ISO images to VirtualBox 6
With one simple trick you can make your VirtualBox VM creation much more efficient.
VirtualBox
is a great way for users, developers, and administrators to not only test different operating systems, but to implement virtual machines in your data centers of different types and purposes. One of the many reasons why I use VirtualBox to meet my VM needs is because it works efficiently when creating virtual machines.
One area that VirtualBox really shows how efficient it is is the ability to re-use ISO images for deploying VMs. It’s almost the same way you can reuse a Docker image to implement containers. Once added to the system, you can use as many containers as you need – all from that single image.
But how do you add images to VirtualBox? You can add them as needed, for example when creating a new VM, or you can use a tool to add as many ISO images as your data center needs, knowing that they are ready when you go a new virtual machine to make.
I want to show you how you can add ISO images to VirtualBox, so that they are always ready when you want to create a new VM.
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What you need
The only things you need to make this work are:
How to use the Virtual Media Manager
The tool that we will use is called the Virtual Media Manager. From this tool you can add new hard disks, optical disks and (if you seriously have old older technology) diskettes.
To use this tool, open VirtualBox and click File | Virtual Media Manager. In the resulting window (Figure A), click the Optical Discs tab.
Figure A
The VirtualBox Virtual Media Manager.
On the Optical Discs tab (Figure B), click Add in the upper left corner.
Figure B
The Optical Discs tab of Virtual Media Manager.
Find the first ISO image that you want to add and click Open (Figure C).
Figure C
Add the Fedora Server ISO image.
Since you can only add one ISO image at a time, once the first ISO has been added, go back to the Optical Discs tab and add another. Continue to do this until you have added all the ISO images you need.
The warning
Once you have added those ISO images, they are always available for use when creating virtual machines, with two exceptions. If you remove these ISO images from local storage or move them to another folder, they are not available for use. Therefore, make sure that you save that ISO image on a disk or partition where they can always remain.
I keep all ISOs that VirtualBox must use on their own disk. By doing this, I don’t have to worry that they take up valuable system or data space. I can add to my collection if necessary and VirtualBox will always be satisfied, knowing that those images stay in place.
This method is much more efficient than adding ISO images if needed. Load the VirtualBox Media Manager with all the images that your data center needs and that VMs can be created and implemented with an efficiency that you have never experienced before.
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