It is fairly common in web development to run code in a virtual machine (VM) so that you can mirror your production environment. However, using a GUIless operating system through VirtualBox’s GUI window is a terrible experience. Fortunately VirtualBox provides an easy way of starting a VM using their command line tool VBoxManage in a headless mode.
# List virtual machines
VBoxManage list vms
"MyVM" {e4b0c92c-4301-4a7d-8af8-fe02fed00451}
# Start VM in headless mode
VBoxManage startvm MyVM --type headless
# Power off VM
VBoxManage controlvm MyVM poweroff
Once the virtual machine has started you can connect to it over SSH and use it as you would any server operating system.
via https://schier.co/blog/2013/03/13/start-virtualbox-vm-in-headless-mode.html