VirtualBox Made Easy: Virtualize Your Environment with Ease

Information Technology has come a long way in the past 5-10 years and one of the greatest advancements in this field has to be that of virtualizing computers and servers in order to save IT administrators a lot of time and their companies a lot of money when it comes to building their backend systems. And now we can even go beyond virtualizing computers and virtualize our networks as well.

Because virtualization allows us to run multiple computers (machines) on one piece of hardware it makes it's easy to set up multiple systems quickly and also allows a way for us to set up “test” systems that we can use for our labs to test out new software and operating systems. Then when we are done, we simply wipe out that test system and it was like it was never there.

Since virtualization is so common within organizations, it was just a matter of time before it was implemented on a smaller scale so we could use it on our desktops. Now we have software like Oracle's VirtualBox that allow us to create multiple virtual machines within one physical machine (your desktop computer) and even let them communicate with each other via their virtual networks.

The goal of this book is to get you up and running with VirtualBox and cover all the things you need to know to get you started on creating virtual machines and a virtualized environment without confusing you at the same time. It sticks with the basics yet covers a wide variety of topics to help you achieve your goals and get your VMs up and running in no time.

The chapters in the book cover the following topics:

Chapter 1 – What is Virtualization and VirtualBox?

Chapter 2 – Installing VirtualBox

Chapter 3 – The VirtualBox Manager

Chapter 4 – Creating a Virtual Machine (VM)

Chapter 5 – Virtual Machine Settings

Chapter 6 – Networking

Chapter 7 – Preferences and Additional Features