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 :)

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.

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