Changing UUID for a disk in VBox

To change the UUID for a disk in VBox

VBoxManage internalcommands sethduuid

this will create a new UUID for the disk.

Shared disk in Virtulal box

Virtual box is the desktop virtualization tool from Oracle which is of same category to VMware workstation . But this one is the freeware and is free to download .

One of the feature that lags in virtulbox to that of vmware workstation(5.x and 6.x) was the shared disk concept , which made it of no choice for cluster like application test environment .

With the recent releases of VBox , it has added this shared disk feature . This post describes how we can create a shared disk with VBox . But this can only be done with command line and no luck to use GUI for this feature .

1.Create a new disk named shared1.vdi as below . Size is accepted in MegaBytes . Here we are creating a 100mb disk

C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox>VBoxManage.exe createhd --filename shared1.vdi --size 100 --variant Fixed
0%...10%...20%...30%...40%...50%...60%...70%...80%...90%...100%
Disk image created. UUID: 08f2f2aa-cc49-4991-b4b7-8918937867d2

2.Add the created disk to the VM. (more over VM needs to be in shutdown state to add the disk).

C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox>VBoxManage.exe storageattach "solaris 64" --storagectl "SCSI Controller" --port 1 --device 0 --type hdd --medium shared1.vdi

3.Once the disk is added successfully , you can modify it with the below command to change the type to shareable.

C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox>VBoxManage.exe modifyhd "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\shared1.vdi" --type shareable


Below is the disk status after modification which shows the type as shareable .

UUID: 08f2f2aa-cc49-4991-b4b7-8918937867d2
Parent UUID: base
Format: VDI
Location: C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\shared1.vdi
State: locked read
Type: shareable
Usage: solaris 64 (UUID: 08f2f2aa-cc49-4991-b4b7-8918937867d2)

Now this disk can be used to share between two VMs .