[There's a reason that Yoda is the unofficial mascot of SBS. Size indeed matters not.] Odds and ends on HyperV - THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS DIVA
Sat, Oct 13 2012 22:43 bradley

Odds and ends on HyperV

Odds and ends on hyperV and using Windows 8 as a hyperV base...

If you want to play with an existing computer and you want to virtualize it, I still say one of the key tools that work great is

Disk2vhd:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx

So using that tool you can make a copy of an existing physical computer and move it to a HyperV. 

As in everything with Microsoft ..it's not if you can do it (you can) it's whether or not it's legal to do so (if it's OEM, it's not without buying a retail version of the software).  

To ptov it, you run the tool that makes vhds that match the physical hard drives of the machine. You get set up the first drive to be an IDE drive in the hyper V "new machine" wizard and any additional drives are set up as SCSI drives. 

If you use a Win8 as a hyperV parent,  one thing that you lose is the backup that reaches through the parent to backup the children.  Personally I still backup the children independently as I feel this gives me the best backup for purposes of getting official support no matter what.  So I set up a dynamic VHD disk on a usb attached hard drive and attach the vhd as scsi attached hard drive and back up to that.

There's just something conforting about having a backup like the native wizards want to do the backup and not backing up through the hyperV.

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# re: Odds and ends on HyperV

Sunday, October 14, 2012 8:09 AM by Joe miner

Great post!  Thanks!

# You got this one wrong

Sunday, October 14, 2012 9:50 AM by Joe Raby

There are no full retail copies of Windows 8 - only upgrades.

System Builder copies now have personal use licenses.  And yes, they do include VM rights, but each VM requires a separate license, so you'll have to start out with a minimum of 2 licenses for every box.  If you were to go P2V with your original install, you'd have to have another license for a new parent.

I don't personally know if royalty/direct OEM copies include the ability to go P2V though.

# re: Odds and ends on HyperV

Sunday, October 14, 2012 10:56 AM by bradley

I wasn't talking about making a ptov of Windows 8.  I was talking about anything you were trying to PtoV needs a retail license.

Was there a retail license of Home Server v1?

# re: Hyper-V odds and ends

Monday, October 15, 2012 2:29 PM by Joe Raby

Home Server v1 never had a retail license, but neither did Home Server 2011.  They were OEM only (royalty/direct/embedded, and "System Builder"), and normally OEM-only licenses don't have virtualization rights (because the OEM tests it to be loaded directly on hardware).

Microsoft changed the System Builder license for Windows 8 though.  Now they include a "personal use license" for Windows 8 so that DIY'ers can now legally buy Windows 8 in a system builder kit ("OEM" software that you buy from distribution) and use it on their own computer, whether physical or virtual - but only one.  Previously, even with WHS v1 and 2011, you couldn't legally buy it for your own use because system builder licensing requires that you resell the software preloaded on a computer to a third party.

Yes, the Softies that made WHS wouldn't tell you that.  They would tell you to buy it from a distributor or an online wholesaler like Newegg and install it on an old PC you might have, but legally, you couldn't do that.

So yes, you are correct that retail licenses allow transfer rights.  However, Microsoft's new personal use license allows DIY'ers to "use it on one computer that they own" but doesn't explicitly say that transfer rights are not included.  They do mention that it can be a physical or virtual PC though.  Regular System Builder licensing says that the system builder that bundles it with hardware doesn't include transfer rights, so a customer that wants to buy it and possibly transfer from one computer to another has to buy a system builder copy separately from the hardware and install it themselves.  Microsoft now allows these scenarios (but they still don't have end-user tech support for system builder copies, regardless of who does the installing).