Tossing a VM between machines

[d000hg]

I was thinking that if you had your dev-PC running as a VM, you could simply throw this single VM file between your desktop and laptop when you have to travel rather than muck about with SVN, Dropbox, yada yada.

Is this feasible - is a VM image a single entirely self-contained file?
Are there even any tools to sync a VM image between multiple machines so you don't have to copy the whole multi-Gb file each time?

[SimonMac]

This is what I do )

Its not quite a single file as I use Virtualbox so its a *.vmdk file (The "Hard Drive") and a *.vbox (The "System"), you could try and really be clever and install the vmdk into Dropbox or another such application and then you don't have to worry about having to transfer it etc.

[Bunk]

I'm pretty sure you can make the VM a portable file but I think if you used Dropbox to sync it, it would upload the entire file every time you did anything inside the VM. You want to sync the files inside the VM, not the actual VM file.

I think...

[Pondlife]

WSMS

Virtualbox has an export function that allows this but I'm assuming you could just as easily have a VM on two different machines that use the same virtual harddisk.

Just to add, certainly WinXP is happy to use the same license for both copies of the same machine

[SimonMac]

I'm pretty sure you can make the VM a portable file but I think if you used Dropbox to sync it, it would upload the entire file every time you did anything inside the VM. You want to sync the files inside the VM, not the actual VM file.

I think...

I wouldn't say portable, but you can export the *.vmdk and *.vbox as one *.ova file, but its a one hit thing so not sure how much time you would have if you are regularly swapping between machines.

I use what Bunk's suggest of syncing the files within the VM with Dropbox

[Sysman]

With VirtualBox I just copy the complete subdirectory for the machine, so that I get the snapshots (if any) and logs

Here's a typical subdirectory

ls -lh Ubuntu-LTS/
total 9541848
drwx------  5 test  staff   170B 21 Jan 16:48 Logs
drwx------  3 test  staff   102B 21 Jan 17:02 Snapshots
-rw-------  1 test  staff   9.7K 21 Jan 17:03 Ubuntu-LTS.vbox
-rw-------  1 test  staff   9.7K 21 Jan 17:03 Ubuntu-LTS.vbox-prev
-rw-------  1 test  staff   4.5G 21 Jan 17:02 Ubuntu-LTS.vdi

Then:

1. Fire up VirtualBox, but don't start the VM yet.
2. Instead go into Settings for that VM, and VirtualBox will automagically work out if things like the network need changing for the new environment, and apply necessary changes.
3. Start the VM

[Sysman]

I wouldn't say portable, but you can export the *.vmdk and *.vbox as one *.ova file, but its a one hit thing so not sure how much time you would have if you are regularly swapping between machines.

It's been a while since I bothered with .ova files because I found creating them incredibly slow and they didn't always work.

[d000hg]

Maybe I misunderstand when you guys talk about syncing the contents. The 'contents' of the VM would not just be things like programming code, but all the installed apps on a typical developer machine. If I got a new laptop, my thinking was this could save having to do any setup other than dumping the VM (or it's HD image) on it and installing the VM client. It could even include the running state of applications if I hibernate/suspend the VM?

Work would still be saved into SVN or other backup solutions, this is more like cloning the whole setup than something I'd do every morning.

[d000hg]

I even wondered if one could simply keep the VM on a portable USB drive, then use it on any PC you wanted... but is that impractical with USB2?

[doodab]

I even wondered if one could simply keep the VM on a portable USB drive, then use it on any PC you wanted... but is that impractical with USB2?

Completely practical, especially if you have an SSD in there. I actually bought my first SSD for exactly this purpose, though I also bought an eSATA express card the VMs ran fine over USB2. The only minor annoyance is that you won't have TRIM support.