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How to create a virtual machine with a pre-installed OS and applications up and running instantly in any PC?
I'm using shared PCs in the library which have special hardware that will regenerate the harddisk image after a reboot. Although I can use their hard disk freely but any applications installed will be lost after reboot. I want to be able to run my applications instantly without having to reinstall everything after every reboot. Furthermore, I need to be able to install those applications that require reboot during their installation process.
My idea is to use a Virtual machine. Installing a Virtual machine is the only overhead I need to bear with which is acceptable provided that the virtual machine installation doesn't require reboot by itself. VirtualBox is a good candidate. But the problem is that I have quite a large volume of preinstalled applications which cannot be fitted into a single DVD/USB drive. The PCs have 1 DVD drive and 2 USB ports, so I can combine them for my need. But, that would means my virtual disk image file must be split into 3 physical files (1 in DVD, 2 in 2 USB drives) in order to be up and running INSTANTLY (ok I can zip a large file into multiple DVDs but that requires a lengthy unzip process).
Questions:
- How to make VirtualBox (or any other virtual machines) to split the disk image file (.VDI) into multiple files that can be used instantly. Is it via snapshot?
- Apart from virtualbox is there anyother virtual machine that does not require reboot during its installation process?