It is a good idea to backup your VirtualBox VM when you reach a milestone during a complex installation. It’s something very easy to do and it takes only a few minutes. This small tutorial will show you how to do it.
In previous tutorials, I described how I installed Oracle Linux 8.5 in a VirtualBox VM, how I did the oracle user setup and how I installed the VirtualBox Guest Additions. It was now a good time to do a backup of the VM before going on with more installations. The process is pretty straightforward and you only need a few minutes and some disk space. So let’s see how to do it:
The VM needs to be shutdowned before you can create a backup, you can do it by executing the command “sudo shutdown -h now” from a Oracle Linux shell or using the “Machine > ACPI Shutdown” menu from VirtualBox.
The VM was now shutdowned, I selected the “File > Export Appliance” menu from VirtualBox Manager.
Then I selected the “OracleLinux8.5” Virtual Machine from the list of VMs and clicked the “Next” button:
I used the default Appliance settings for exporting the Virtual Machine. I only changed the export directory to “C:\VBOX” where I store all the VMs and I clicked the “Next” button:
The next screen allowed to add some descriptive information to the exported appliance. I kept the default values and I clicked the “Export” button.
The export stared and it took a few minutes to complete. The amount of time may took more or less time depending on the amount of data to save and the disks speed.
The backup file had an .ova extension and a size of 4.29GB.
Conclusion:
I now had a backup of the Virtual Machine and I was now ready to go on with the installations. I would recommend you to create a backup every time you reach an important milestone during a complex installation. It will allow you to quickly restart the installation process from a previous successful milestone in case of need.
Disclaimer
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