Scripting VirtualBox and isolating from existing installation

I am trying to create an application that runs on windows. I want this application to download a "disk image" from the network (from pre-assigned server) and create a virtual machine based on it. This VM would run for a specified number of hours and then shutdown.

I want to use VirtualBox by scripting it. I found VBoxManage command and it seems to be what I am looking for. However, it seems that VirtualBox tools store their configuration as XML files in User home directory. I did learn that i can change the value of VBOX_USER_HOME environment variable to control where they are stored. However, I am not sure whether this is enough.

My problem is that the user may already have installed VirtualBox on his/her computer. I do not want my application code (and it's packaged VirtualBox binaries and conf) to mess with the existing installation.

How do I cleanly isolate my application specific VirtualBox binaries and configurat开发者_开发技巧ion from the potentially pre-existing installed VirtualBox setup? (Even if both instances of VirtualBox binaries are being used at the same time)

I chose VirtualBox because of it's open source license and applicability of commercial use (if I compile my own binaries from the source) and because it works on Windows too (heard QEMU support for windows is still not stable). Will VirtualBox suffice for my use-case or should I look elsewhere?

Thanks for reading so far :)

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If the VBoxManage command really does rely on the environment variable VBOX_USER_HOME then you could write your scripts to change the environment variable to reflect your deployment for the execution of that script and its children, staying away from user data.

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Check out the VirtualBox SDK http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/SDKRef.pdf