Summary and Setup

This lesson introduces virtual machines and containers to a novice audience of librarians, subject specialists, and library staff with interest or work that intersects data management, data science, or research computing. The intent is breadth, rather than depth. Prior experience is not required but we assume some familiarity with basic computing concepts and with reproducible research. Those that need a refresher of the latter may consider reviewing the Reproducible Research Workflows lesson.

Data Sets

We will be using a prebuilt virtual machine that already contains most things needed to get started. Download the .ova file to your system but do not do anything else with it at the moment. We will import it as part of the virtual machines episode.

Software Setup

VirtualBox

VirtualBox is the software we will be using for this lesson. Your computer must meet these requirements:

  • A recent Intel or AMD CPU
  • Windows, Linux, or MacOS (see the sections below for additional information).
  • Administrative access
  • 8 GB of total memory
  • 7 GB of free disk space

Most laptops that are newer than 5-6 years should work.

The prebuilt virtual machine image you downloaded previously contains a preconfigured Docker installation which will be used for the containers portion of the lesson.

Although VirtualBox runs under older version of Windows, at least Windows 10 v1803 is needed to minimize the chance for conflicts if there is other virtualization software installed (e.g., Hyper-V).

  • On the downloads page under the VirtualBox Platform Packages section, select Windows hosts.
  • Install the downloaded package.

During installation, you may get warnings about missing Python core / win32api dependencies. You may safely ignore this warning as it relates to scripting VirtuaBox with Python which we will not be doing.

There are different download packages depending if you have an Intel Mac or an If you have a Mac with an Intel CPU or an Apple Arm CPU (M1, M2, or M3).

  • Intel Macs: On the downloads page under the VirtualBox Platform Packages section, select MacOS / Intel hosts
  • Apple M1, M2, or M3: On the Test builds page, download the MacOS / ARM64 Dev Preview file. This version of VirtualBox is experimental and may or may not work for you.

Install the downloaded package. Upon first run, you will need to grant the various system permissions it asks you for.

If VirtualBox crashes on startup, even after granting permissions (may happen for the Test Builds), you may not be able to follow the virtual machines portion of the lesson. You may wish to install Docker directly on your machine if you would still like to follow the containers portion of the lesson.

We recommend installing VirtualBox from your distribution’s package manager. If the version that comes with your distribution is different than the version used in this lesson, the screenshots might differ. If you wish to install the latest version, follow the instructions for your distribution.