Newbie Help using Oracle Virtual Box

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Hi

I'm new to setting up VM's but am now setting up my own lil lab of VM's in a hope of advancing my knowledge of AD & Exchange. My boss has just bought me the Microsoft press book on Exchange 2010 so I have just set myself up a simple domain controller and then a user PC to connect up to this DC. Then next on my list is follow the book which i believe starts off taking you through setting up another server and installing Exchange.

Would i be right in saying the best way to run these is to set them up then connect to them is using remote desktop? It feels like that neway as the lil windows that open in Virtualbox the mouse is all laggy etc.

Anyway my question is once ive connected to these VM's using remote desktop is there anyway i can close down these Virtualbox VM windows without being asked if i want to shut down the VM.

My main reason for wondering if i can close down these windows whilst the VM is still running in the background is because i only have 6GB memory on this machine and want to try save resources. Ive used vsphere at work and know that u dont have to have windows open so just wondering if it was the same with this.

 

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6 Gigs is plenty for a couple of VM's, you should change the default amount of ram allocated down to 1GB per vm which should be enough just for labbing stuff up.
Have you installed the virtualbox tools in each VM as this may help you with the laggy mouse issue, but TBH using RDP is the best bet. You can use an app such as mremoteNG to easily connect to rdp sessions and toggle between them.

You wont be able to close "windows" as such and if you could it wouldn't make any difference you best bet is to go through the memory residient programs on your host pc and get rid of anything your not use (adobe reader, microsoft office quickstart, skype and all that other stuff that seems determined to run at startup).

 

As dales said, you need to install the VM guest additions to eradicate the laggy mouse. It will also allow you to resize the VM window and let you move your mouse cursor in and out of the host and guest without pressing ctrl key.

 

Thanks for the info, I set both of them up using 2GB but your probably right i could quite easily change this down to a 1GB.

Now im relising the way this works with the bridged network and you give them IPs off your normal internal IP range ive relised ive got a spare laptop which i could probably use to RD to the VM's on my machine or even connect it to the domain as the user PC.

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Thanks, maybe il give this ago before deciding to RDP to the VM's