Using VMWare images in VirtualBox

I started up a new project, and my client provided me a VMWare image. I was on Ubuntu 10.10 so I had to use it in my VirtualBox. I first tried by creating a new virtual machine and providing the VMDK image as a disk. It ran successfully, I was happy as I could see the LAMP stack setup over the Virtual Machine working perfectly. Then, I changed the display settings and installed some software upgrades, everything till that point worked well. 


But when I restarted the system all the changes in display and all upgrades were gone and I was like WTF!!!.


I googled for some time and found that people were discussing about importing VMDK to VDI which is default disk format in VirtualBox. Some of them were also talking about the three image write modes in VirtualBox.


Finally I was looking in the file menu of VirtualBox and found an "Import Appliance" option, I gave it a click and It worked like magic. 


The import appliance option requires you to provide the the OVF(Open Virtualization Format) file that I had received within the image dump from my client. This file actually contains the settings the exporting machine has had. Once the file is provided, Virtualbox will show you the settings in GUI. You may optionally change some of them, for example the path of my VMDK file was wrong, and I had to provide the correct path. I also changed the sound and network adapter settings according to my hardware. Once done with these settings, the import process will take the given VMDK image and create a copy of its own. After that it all works like you have created a new machine.


I hope this helps, this is the first time i am putting my experience on web so please accept my apologies if this is hard to read and understand.


I also request you to put your comments and suggestions on how can i improve my writing habits.


Thanks a lot!!