LiveDeviL's Lab.

If you already know how to run your VirtualBox Virtual Machine as service, now you can run multiple VMs as service, all at once… Pretty cool isn’t it?

Here is how we are going to do that…

1. First of all, if you haven’t read the first tutorial, please do so.
2. Shutdown all your VMs if they’re running.
3. Open up the Windows Service Commander, and set the created virtualbox service’s startup type to manual. This is to make sure it’s not running the next time we reboot the host system.
4. Reboot the host system. We do this so the VirtualBox.xml file is not opened by any other process, which will prevent us from modifying it.
5. After reboot, open C:Documents and SettingsYOURUSERNAMEHERE.VirtualBoxVirtualBox.xml with notepad and make sure all src path for ALL your VMs are already in the form of absolute path. (eg. C:Documents and SettingsPersonal.VirtualBoxMachinesVM1VM1.xml instead of MachinesVM1VM1.xml )
6. Save the file and copy it to C:Documents and SettingsLocalService.VirtualBox and overwrite the old one.
7. Open the file C:vmsrvstart.ini with notepad. Modify the file so it will looks like this.

   env=VBOXGUI="C:Program FilesSunxVM VirtualBoxvirtualbox.exe"
   env=VBOXHEADLESS="C:Program FilesSunxVM VirtualBoxvboxheadless.exe"
   env=VBOXWEBSRV="C:Program FilesSunxVM VirtualBoxvboxwebsrv.exe"
   env=VBOXMANAGE="C:Program FilesSunxVM VirtualBoxVBoxManage.exe"
   env=VBOX_PROG="C:Program FilesSunxVM VirtualBox"
   env=VBOX_BASE="C:Documents and SettingsYOURUSERNAMEHERE.VirtualBox"
   env=VBOX_MACHINES="C:Documents and SettingsYOURUSERNAMEHERE.VirtualBoxmachines"
   env=VBOX_VDI="C:Documents and SettingsYOURUSERNAMEHERE.VirtualBoxHardDisks"
   env=USERPROFILE=C:Documents and SettingsLocalService
   
   debug=1
   debug_out=>C:vmvm.log
   
   [VM1]
   startup=%VBOXHEADLESS% -startvm VM1
   shutdown_method=command
   shutdown=%VBOXMANAGE% controlvm VM1 savestate
   
   [VM2]
   startup=%VBOXHEADLESS% -startvm VM2
   shutdown_method=command
   shutdown=%VBOXMANAGE% controlvm VM2 savestate

8. All you need to do, is adding the VM names you’d like to run as service at the bottom of srvstart.ini file. In the example above, I’m adding VM2 section at the bottom. So you get the idea now. If I want to simultaneously run 3 VMs called VM1, VM2, and VM3 as service, then I must add the VM2 and VM3 section at the bottom, and so on.
9. Save the file.
10. Now open the Windows Service Commander and add a new service like we did last time. It’s just this time we change the service name to differs from the first one. This is what we’re going to put in the service executable path

    c:VMsrvstart.exe svc VM2 -c "c:vmsrvstart.ini"

11. Proceed like before until finish.
12. Test your new VM service by starting it.
13. If everything’s in the right direction, you can set your VM services(yes, all your VM services) startup type to Automatic.
14. After that, you can reboot the host system to see them all running simultaneously.

Caution: Please make sure you have enough memory to run all the VMs at once. The total amount of memory allocated for these VMs must NOT exceed the available memory. Plus, you must consider enough amount of memory for the host system itself.