Questions about the best way to bullet proof an xp install in virtualbox

Hi list,

I would like to move my small home business laptops (workstations) away from Windows. I setup a test system on an older Dell laptop (Inspiron 1150) and put Lubuntu 14.04 on it and XP in virtualbox. It is functioning well and want to install our main application that we depend on based on ACT! 11.0 which is a Windows app. After getting this test workstation setup I would like to take an image of it that can be used to restore it intact should the OS or application files get damaged.

Is there a standard way of doing this? For example is there an application like "ghost" or other imaging software that could save the image to an external drive to be used to restore the virtual OS back? I am thinking also if the XP VM got infected with a virus or other malware, I could wipe it and restore from image, then put back my latest backup of our database and be back in business. One way to prevent infection will be to make sure that we don't run with admin rights. I chose to run it under Linux to help insulate ourselves from infections out there especially in light of the fact that XP is no longer supported, formally.

Any thoughts on this?

Thanks for the help,

Tony