Create virtualbox snapshot tutorial

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Create virtualbox snapshot tutorial

Since I’ve been creating a lot of server configuration tutorials its really hard for me to always create myself a virtualbox or virtual machine to test and properly create the tutorial for you readers to have a proper test case tutorial. As such, virtualbox snapshots option comes in to help me by allowing me to always revert myself to a state where the specific snapshot was created. This ease up the way I work with test cases and I can always create examples or tests on only one virtualbox. In this tutorial I’m going to show you how simple it is to create a virtualbox snapshot and also how you can restore it back so that you can start over.

Virtualbox virtualization

I don’t really believe I’ve said anything about this piece of software till now, Virtualbox is a virtualization software developed by Oracle and can be used to install as a guest OS almost any operating system, from Windows to linux, solaris and many more.

I’ve been using it for a long time now, has helped me also with my master degree exam and with my own work. It gives you the Enterprise features of any virtualization software out there and is totally free under GNU license. It also works on Windows and Linux (which I currently use).

Create virtualbox snapshot

Anyway, lets get back to our things, we need to create a snapshot on our existing virtual machine. To do this, we only need to select the virtualbox machine from the left side list, and from the right side, we need to choose the “Snapshots” option.

Here we should see a new list with only a name “Current state“.

Heads up! It is imperative that you highlight the “Current State” from the list when creating a snapshot. 

To create a snapshot you need to click only on the first button under the snapshots option, “Take snapshot“, or by hitting the combination key:

This will get you a popup where you can give it a name and some details about the snapshot:

Create virtualbox snapshot

Create virtualbox snapshot

Hit the OK button and that is all. You now have a snapshot.

Restore virtualbox snapshot

To restore a virtualbox snapshot is as easy as creating one. Again go to the Snapshots option and there you will have to make sure you click on the root from the list, above the “Current state” so that you would be able to restore it, else there is no point in having a restore on a current state, right?

virtualbox snapshot list

virtualbox snapshot list

As you can see in the above image, you can either select the Bare (root snapshots) or the Snapshot 2 which I created just now for this example for you. Once you are sure to which you want to restore, select it, then hit the combination:

or use the second button under the Snapshots option, “Restore snapshot“. In some cases where changes have been made to the current state, you will be asked if you want to create a new snapshot of that current state. It is your choice to create it or not, you decide if you still need it.

restore snapshot

restore snapshot

Anyway, that’s about it to creating and restoring a virtualbox snapshot. Hope it helped you and see you again in our next tutorial.

 

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