In this lecture, I am going to show you how you can create Virtual Machines with VirtualBox.

I have the Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager application open and what I am going to do is just click on New on the top left-hand corner.

Once we click that we are going to get a new window named Create Virtual Machine. I like to use the Expert Mode so I am going to click that button.

What this does is you get the same options but it reduces the number of pages that we have to select.

First, we are going to select a name for the Virtual Machine and we will call this one Windows Server 2016.

Next, we need to choose the Type. This will depend on the type of Virtual Machine that you are going to create. I am going to create a Windows Virtual Machine, but if you want to do Linux you can do that or choose any other of the available types.

Now, we need to select the version. I can see that automatically selected Windows 2016 (64-bit).

This is a 64-bit option so if you have only 32-bit versions available it could mean that you don’t have virtualization enabled in your BIOS or it could mean that you don’t have a 64-bit Operating System or a 64-bit processor which would be required to install Windows Server 2016.

Now, you can install Windows Server 2019 which was just released by selecting Windows 2016 (64-bit). So if you find something that’s pretty close to what you are trying to install usually you will be fine selecting that version.

Next, we have to choose the Memory size.

The easiest way to figure out how much memory you should use would be by opening Task Manager clicking the Performance tab and selecting Memory. You will see how much memory you are using right now.

I am using 17 GB out of 32 GB of available memory so I would like to pick an amount that will fit the available memory. I will pick 8 GB, which will put me around 25 GB of memory in use out of 32 GB.

I’ll move the slider to 8 GB of RAM for the Memory Size and you can see that’s 8192 MB.

Now what I am going to do is choose under the Hard Disk.

If we had a Hard Disk created we would choose not to add a virtual hard disk option or we could choose to Use an existing virtual hard disk file option and select one if available.

I am going to select Create a virtual hard disk now option and click Create.

Now, we are going to create a Virtual Hard Disk in a new window. I am going to leave the File Location at the default and this will create it under the same folder as the Virtual Machine.

Next, we have to choose a File size. I am going to select 80 GB.

For the virtual Hard disk file type, we can leave it at the default of VDI (VirtualBox Disk Image). This is only important to choose or change if you plan on importing this Virtual Machine to another virtualization technology like VMWare or Hyper-V or any other.

Now, for Storage on a physical hard disk, I strongly recommend that you use Dynamically allocated. What this does is that the Hard Disk file of 80 GB will only be as big as the files that are on the Hard Disk. So, if we install Windows Server 2016 the Operating System, and let’s say that takes 10 GB of storage the Hard Disk file will only be 10 GB in size with a maximum of 80 GB.

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