Is it required to keep the virtual machine window open to keep it running in Virtual Box

unattendedvirtualboxvirtualization

Using Windows XP as host and guest(s) and VirtualBox as virtualization solution.

Do I have to keep the guest's window open in order to keep it running?

When I try to close it, the "Close Virtual Machine" popup comes up.

If not possible, how can I reduce the overhead caused by keeping the windows open?

It's nice in VmWare Server 1 and 2 that you can keep the instances running without keeping the guest windows open.

Thank you in advance.

Best Answer

The recommended way is to start the VM using vboxheadless.

VBoxHeadless --startvm <uuid|name>

The only problem of doing this from command line is that the process become the child process for the command prompt windows. So you will need to put it in a bat file to get it behave like a "background" process in Unix.

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