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I'm brand new to the concept of virtualization and VMs and have downloaded VirtualBox and created my first VM (an Ubuntu box).

I understand that a "virtual appliance" is very similar to a VM, however it comes with a pre-configured software stack and may even include multiple virtual machines. If this first assumption is not correct, please correct me!

My main question is this: in VirtualBox land, what is the difference between creating a virtual machine and a virtual appliance? Are they different file types? If I had two or three VMs, how would I go about turning them or packaging them into an appliance?

studiohack
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pnongrata
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1 Answers1

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None. A Virtual Appliance IS a prebuilt and configured Virtual Machine. It's a convenient way to deliver a application stack to a customer that will work without much setup.

Chris Nava
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