Search results for 'app:weblogs' matching tag 'VHD'

LAB – Exchange 2010 Service Pack 1 + OCS 2007 R2 + Windows 2008 R2

Anonymous — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 05:00:00 GMT

Armo mucho lab. Lo reconozco. Mi problema es que armo y desarmo. Generalmente termino tocando tantas cosas dentro del laboratorio que para asegurarme que quede como nuevo, hago uno nuevo. Tuve varios de éstos. Con Exchange 2003, 2007 y 2010 en una misma organización, en diferentes organizaciones, en diferentes sites… Todo es un lab nuevo. [...] Related posts:

Exchange y Windows 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 Hola amigos, Como ya es de público conocimiento, el Service...
OCS 2007 R2 Ya soportado en Windows 2008 R2! http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982021 La semana pasada se anunció el soporte de OCS...
Todo lo nuevo de Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1 – Parte 1 La semana pasada Microsoft lanzaba el Service Pack 1 de...

Novidades do System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Release Candidate

Leandro Carvalho — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 05:00:00 GMT

Foi disponibilizada a versão Release Candidate de um dos produtos que irá revolucionar a forma de gerenciarmos nossos ambientes virtuais, sejam ele com Hyper-V, VMware ou Citrix. Imaginem a capacidade de criar, gerenciar e delegar controle para servidores hosts, virtuais, storage e load balancers em uma única console, com opções de criação de templates de máquinas virtuais, serviços e até criação e administração de nuvem privada. Pois é, isso é só uma porcentagem das funcionalidades do novo System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 RC.

Para comecar a ver algumas de suas novidades como instalação, configurações, criação de templates e nuvem privadas, dêem uma olhada nesta série de artigos sobre o VMM 2012: http://msmvps.com/blogs/msvirtualization/archive/2011/06/01/s-233-rie-de-artigos-sobre-system-center-virtual-machine-manager-2012.aspx

Pra quem já está acostumado com o SCVMM 2008, só pra ter uma idéia, a versão 2008 R2 tem praticamente 30% dos recursos que o novo SCVMM oferece. Veja abaixo alguma dessas novidades:

Lista dos recursos do SCVMM 2012 RC (em inglês)

Setup Upgrade
- New in RC: Upgrade and setup will support the following upgrade paths:

- VMM 2008 R2 SP1 > VMM 2012 RC > VMM 2012 RTM

- VMM 2012 RC > VMM 2012 RTM

Fabric Management
- Hyper-V and Cluster Lifecycle Management – Deploy Hyper-V to bare metal server, create Hyper-V clusters, orchestrate patching of a Hyper-V Cluster
  - New in RC:

- ISO or CD-based OSD for environments with DHCP without WDS

- OSD will now convert dynamic to fixed type of VHD destination

- All network adapters on host can be configured during provisioning

New in RC:

- Ability to bypass cluster validation during cluster creation

- Run cluster validation reports on-demand

- New Cluster status tab to view an aggregated status and a cluster validation report

- Ability to see current CSV owner in the properties of the cluster

Third Party Virtualization Platforms - Add and Manage Citrix XenServer and VMware ESX Hosts and Clusters
Network Management – Manage IP Address Pools, MAC Address Pools and Load Balancers
- New in RC:

- Simplification of the logical networks in the Fabric workspace

- Ability to see IP addresses that are in use from a IP pool

- Added support for Microsoft Network Load Balancer

- Gateway and DNS are no longer mandatory fields for logical networks

- Load balancer can now support affinity to logical networks

Storage Management – Classify Storage, Manage Storage Pools and LUNs
- New in RC

- Create persistent sessions to iSCSI array and logon initiator to array

- Better scalability of storage operations - LUN create, snapshot, clone, masking, and unmasking

- Option to create storage groups per cluster (BETA only supported creation of storage group per node in a cluster)

- Enablement of MPIO feature when provisioning a new Hyper-V server

- Automatic MPIO device claim

- Support for arrays that implement OnePortPerView

Update Management- Keep your VMM Fabric Servers (VMM roles, hosts, and clusters) up-to-date with patches.
- New in RC:

- Share a WSUS root server between System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2/ System Center Configuration Manager 2012 Beta

- Hyper-V Cluster Orchestration- Nodes put into VMM Maintenance Mode can be set to trigger Maintenance Mode in Operations Manager.

Resource Optimization
- Dynamic Optimization – proactively balance the load of VMs across a cluster
- Power Optimization – schedule power savings to use the right number of hosts to run your workloads – power the rest off until they are needed.
  - New in RC:

- Set Operations Manager Mode for powered down hosts

PRO – integrate with System Center Operations Manager to respond to application-level performance monitors.
- New in RC:

- Support added for System Center Operations Manager 2012 Beta

- VMM will ship two sample PRO Packs: Cluster scale out and Service scale out MPs

Cloud Management
- Abstract server, network and storage resources into private clouds
- Delegate access to private clouds with control of capacity, capabilities and user quotas
- Enable self-service usage for application administrator to author, deploy, manage and decommission applications in the private cloud
Service Lifecycle Management
- Define service templates to create sets of connected virtual machines, OS images and application packages
  - New in RC:

- Service Designer and Specialization UI enhancements

- Added ability to use Service Template Patterns

Compose operating system images and applications during service deployment
- New in RC:

- IP-based provisioning

- New application instance view

Scale out the number of virtual machines in a service
Service performance and health monitoring integrated with System Center Operations Manager
Decouple OS image and application updates through image-based servicing
- New in RC:

- Streamlined ability to enable OS VHD updates to a Service Template

- Publish updated Service Templates in order to update Service Instances

Leverage powerful application virtualization technologies such as Server App-V

Para download do produto acesse este link: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27252

Para download do disco virtual (VHD) com o SCVMM já instalado, acesse http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=10712

Para acesso a toda documentação disponível do SCVMM 2012, use o link http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg610610.aspx

XP Mode and differencing disks, Creating Multiple Virtual Machines

jeffl — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 05:00:00 GMT

Scenario

You have multiple needs for Virtual Machines based on XP mode in Windows 7. You want to use the base XP Mode operating system as a reference and create other systems using differencing disks and new virtual machine setup files (.vmcx).

Process

Differencing disks which reference the Windows XP Mode virtual hard disk and new virtual machine files will be used to create new environments which leverage the base configuration stored in the Windows XP Mode VHD file.

Reason

I want to be able to do a number of things with my XP mode virtual machines and most of all I want to be able to have multiple machines without taking up lots of Hard Drive space. Secondly, I want to be able to create virgin environments for testing.

Differencing disks allow you to reference a source disk and in this case I am using the XP mode disk found here

C:\Users\<USER>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Virtual PC\Virtual Machines\Windows XP Mode.vhd

(Where <USER> is your logged on user name. Use whoami if you are not sure).

Note:

The Windows XP Mode.vhd file is a differencing disk which references the parent disk: C:\Program Files\Windows XP Mode\Windows XP Mode base.vhd
Be sure to mark your XP Mode.vhd as read only. This step is required or else writes to the XP Mode VHD will corrupt the other differencing disks rendering them unusable. Read-only will cause your XP mode virtual machine to fail to start. Later after you have created a new differencing VHD file to reference the XP Mode.vhd you can set the XP Mode virtual machine hard drive 1 to the new differencing disk. You will be able to use XP Mode VPC again after that.

What is in my XP Mode base

The only thing I add to my XP mode base is Security Essentials. However another good option might be the Internet Explorer upgrades. It is a matter of personal preference bear in mind there is no problem creating another level of differencing disks.

Overview of three levels of differencing disks.

The image above describes how the differencing disk references the XP Mode VHD. The XP Mode VHD is a differencing disk itself and it references its parent disk the XP Mode Base VHD.

Step by Step Process to creating a new Virtual Machine which uses a differencing disk that references the XP Mode VHD.

Shutdown the XP Mode Virtual Machine.

By default the XP Mode Virtual Machine hibernates. It needs to be in a shutdown state to be referenced as a differencing disk parent disk. From within the XP Mode environment:

Go to Start > Windows Security
Select Shutdown to shutdown the Virtual Machine

From the host operating system navigate to the VHD file for XP Mode and set it as read only. (C:\Users\<USER>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Virtual PC\Virtual Machines\Windows XP Mode.vhd )

Using windows explorer navigate to C:\Users\<USER>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Virtual PC\
Right click on the Windows XP Mode.vhd file and select properties
Click to enable Read-Only

Create a new virtual machine with a differencing disk.

Go through the steps of creating a new virtual machine. When you get to the virtual hard disk section follow these screen shots.

Select Create a virtual hard disk using advanced options

Select Differencing Disk

Browse to the location of your XP Mode VHD file C:\Users\<USER>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Virtual PC\Virtual Machines\Windows XP Mode.vhd

After you click create the virtual machine will complete.

To create other instances of the same base configuration you only need to choose the differencing disk portion while creating new virtual machines.

Conclusion

This article covers how to use differencing disks based on Windows XP mode to create multiple systems which have their own unique settings. As a consultant I find this useful for simulating other user experiences, simulating different client environments and isolating changes which may only be used temporarily.

This is an resource efficient method for saving disk space while giving you the flexibility to work according to your needs.

Now I am off to install my 32 bit Office 2010 so I can run the CRM 4.0 Outlook Client.

Suggestions for Windows 7 team

A great feature would be to give you Windows 7 Mode which would allow you to install a minimal Windows 7 environment as easily as XP mode installs an XP environment.

Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

Diferenças e melhorias nos discos virtuais do Hyper-V R2

Leandro Carvalho — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 05:00:00 GMT

A Microsoft vem usando discos virtuais (VHDs) desde 2003 em sua primeira versão de software de virtualização e até hoje continua utilizando em vários outros recursos. O VHD é um encapsulador que contém uma imagem de disco rígido que possui uma flexível maneira de armazenar dados em um simples formato de arquivo. Para ter noção dos benefícios que podem ser abstraídos dos VHDs, desde o Windows 2008 o arquivo de backup usam a extensão VHD, a partir do Windows 7 e do Windows 2008 R2 é possível iniciar um sistema operacional físico baseado em um VHD e também é possível criar e gerenciar VHDs usando o gerenciamento de discos e a linha de comando diskpart.

O Windows Server 2008 R2 trouxe interessantes novidades relacionadas à virtualização e uma delas foram as melhorias feitas na arquitetura dos discos virtuais. Antes de entrarmos em detalhes sobre elas veremos na tabela abaixo os quatro tipos de discos e as respectivas instruções de uso de cada um deles.

Tipo de VHD	Recursos	Instruções de uso
Disco dinâmico	O arquivo começa com alguns kbs e cresce apenas quando os dados são adicionados alocando-os em blocos. O arquivo é limitado de acordo com as configurações dadas durante a criação do disco. Tem aproximadamente 10% a 15% menos performance que um disco fixo	As melhorias existentes na versão R2 faz com que esta opção se torne viável para ser usada em alguns cenários de produção. A capacidade de armazenamento do host e a fragmentação podem ser um risco.
Disco fixo	Cria um arquivo dedicado que não muda de acordo com o conteúdo que é adicionado. Isso garante mais performance comparando-o com o disco dinâmico.	Usado em servidores em produção aonde a performance e a disponibilidade seja importante
Disco Diferencial	Registra apenas as alterações feitas e tem um arquivo VHD usado como base. Possibilita versionamento flexível, mas geralmente tem um VHD base configurado como dinâmico, que faz com que a performance não seja tão boa	Usado em ambientes testes e de desenvolvimento, pois não consome muito espaço em disco uma vez que o disco base seja usado para várias máquinas virtuais.
Disco Pass-Through	A máquina virtual tem acesso direto ao disco com acesso exclusivo possibilitando o maior nível de performance entre os tipos de VHDs.	Usado em produção onde performance é a prioridade máxima, mas não suporta snapshots, fazendo que não seja tão flexível para reverter alguma configuração que foi feita.

Os discos fíxos e Pass-Through são os mais recomendados para serem usados em ambientes em produção que precisam de alta performance, mas comparado com o Windows 2008 o disco dinâmico teve grandes melhorias de velocidade, sendo possível seu uso em ambientes de produção que não precisam de muito I/O de disco como Domain Controllers, Web Servers, DHCP Servers, dentre outros.

Hoje é normal vermos projetos e servidores de alta capacidade como Exchange Servers e SQL Servers sendo usados em produção com o Hyper-V R2. Quase todos os novos produtos que são lançados no mercado estão sendo testados e homologados em ambientes críticos usando a virtualização e os benefícios que o R2 oferecem.

Na próxima tabela fica evidente todas as melhorias desde o 2008 até a versão R2 como velocidade, tamanho de blocos e funcionalidades como o adicionamento a quente de HDs virtuais.

Recursos de Virtualizacão	WS08 + RTM Hyper-V	WS08 SP2 Hyper-V	Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V
Performance de VHD dinâmico	A escrita é 3x mais lenta que o fixo. Isso ocorre por causa da limitação de cache de meta data	A escrita é 3x mais lenta que o fixo. Isso ocorre por causa da limitação de cache de meta data	Disco Dinamico e Fixo tem a performance com quase a mesma paridade
Diff Disk Scaling Performance	1x	1x	4x – 5x
Tamanho de IO (Virtual SCSI)	64KB	64KB	8MBytes (melhoramento de throughput)
Tamanho de IO (Virtual IDE – Sem alteração)	64KB	64KB	64KB
Tamanho de blocos nos VHDs	512KB	512KB	2MB
Velocidade de criação de disco Fixo	1x	1x	3x – 4x
Hot add de storage	Não	Não	Sim
SCSI Command Pass-through	Não	Não	Sim

O tamanho de Imput/Output (IO) usados nos discos virtuais SCSI faz com que o sistema utilize e distribua melhor os dados em blocos maiores, garantindo maior performance, mesmo em grandes ambientes de armazenamento.

Vale ressaltar que o tamanho máximo para arquivos VHD são 2 Terabytes.

Outra grande melhoria foi a velocidade de criação dos VHDs no Windows Server 2008 R2. Em alguns casos a demora do 2008 era perceptível, mas observando o próximo gráfico fica claro a diferença de velocidade, mesmo em discos grandes.

Nos próximos dois gráficos podemos ver a diferença de performance entre os discos dinâmicos do Windows Server 2008 e o Windows Server 2008 R2 em ambientes de produção. No primeiro exemplo foi usado um processamento de workload em uma transação online.

No segundo exemplo foi usado um Web Server onde podemos ver que a latência do disco diferencial do Windows Server 2008 é muito maior que o R2.

É importante verificarmos todas as variáveis, recursos que cada tipo de VHD apresenta e suas diferenças entre o Windows 2008 e o Windows 2008 R2 na hora de planejarmos nossos sistemas virtuais. Fica muito mais fácil identificarmos cada necessidade dos servidores de acordo com os VHDs e suas opções. A compra do armazenamento (storages) também é muito decisivo. Não se preocupe somente com o tamanho, como geralmente é feito, mas também com a velocidade de acesso aos discos. Na maioria dos casos esse detalhe é muito mais importante que a capacidade.

Referencias: http://blogs.technet.com/b/puneetvig

VHD Performance Writepaper: http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/7/7/0778C0BB-5281-4390-92CD-EC138A18F2F9/WS08_R2_VHD_Performance_WhitePaper.docx

Exchange Server 2010 SP1 VHD Demo Download

jeffl — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 05:00:00 GMT

Microsoft has published the Exchange 2010 SP1 Virtual Server for Download on a 60 trial activation. This gives administrators the ability to test drive the functionality before implementing the changes in a production environment.

See the Download page here: Exchange 2010 SP1 VHD

Program Details

The evaluation period for this virtual machine image ends 180 days after the image has been activated. After the 180 days, the evaluation period is over and the image should be discarded.

For complete use-rights, please refer to the EULA contained within this evaluation package.

· Do not redistribute this image.

· Do not put this image into a production environment.

· It is recommended not to join this image to a corporate network.

· If you choose to join this image to an external network, you should immediately download updates and security patches for the operating system and all applications.

Prerequisites

In order to use this evaluation package you will need to have Microsoft Hyper-V installed on a physical machine.

Hyper-V is available on Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2, and the details on how to install Hyper-V can be found here.

Getting Started in Hyper-V

Overview

The evaluation package referenced in this document includes a number of pre-configured virtual machine that you will use to run your evaluation

File name

SLC-DC01.vhd

The above table includes the file necessary to deploy this evaluation image. The file was extracted into the same folder as this document when you ran the installer.

In order to use this evaluation you need to add this package as a new virtual machine to your Hyper-V installation. To do this, perform the following steps from the administration console of your Virtual Server:

· Add the virtual machine to Hyper-V Manager

· Launch the virtual machine

· Configuring virtual networks

· Activate Windows Server 2008 R2

Import the virtual machine to your Hyper-V Manager

1. Open Hyper-V Manager. Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Hyper-V Manager.

2. If you are not already connected to the server that owns the shared storage, connect to that server.

3. From the Action pane, click Import Virtual Machine.

4. Click Browse and select the folder SLC-DC01 in the Import Virtual Machine popup screen.

5. Click Import and then click close.

Launch the Virtual Machine

1. Once you go through the steps in Add the virtual machine to your Hyper-V manager, the virtual machine you added will be listed under the Virtual Machines pane.

2. Right-Click on the virtual machine and click Start.

Configuring virtual networks

Open Hyper-V Manager.
From the Actions menu, click Virtual Network Manager.
Under Create virtual network, select the type of network you want to create. The types of network are External, Internal, and Private. Note: You'll need to select "External" to perform the activation step next.
Click Add. The New Virtual Network page appears.

Type a name for the new network. Review the other properties and modify them if necessary.

Activate Windows Server 2008 R2 (for 180 day eval)

If SLC-DC01 is not started at this time, right click SLC-DC01, In the Hyper-V Manager, and choose Start.
Once it is started, double-click SLC-DC01 to open the window. At the logon prompt, logon using the Username and Password below. Note: There will be a pause while the VM installs the new hardware and assigns a DHCP address from your network.
Click Start, right-click Computer, and then click Properties.
In the System Properties window, click Activate, in the Windows Activation section. Choose the option to Activate over the internet, when prompted.
Once activated, click Start and then Shutdown.
Once the VM is shutdown, you can perform two optional steps:
1. Change your network adapter type from External to Internal or Private, by bringing up the properties of the network adapter in the Virtual Network Manager under the Actions menu.
2. Take a snapshot of your virtual machine by right-clicking SLC-DC01 in the Hyper-V Management console and choosing Snapshot.

Username and Password

Use the following information to log on to Microsoft Windows contained within the virtual machine

· Username: contoso\Administrator

· Password: pass@word1

Evaluation package contents

Operating System

This image contains Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition installed using a default configuration. No optional components are included.

Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

Disk2VHD: The 127 GB File size limit. UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME

jeffl — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 06:00:00 GMT

In a previous post I talked about the Disk2VHD file conversion tool. Here is an "Oh Golly Gee Darn" moment.

(This blog is G rated however the rediscovery rates stronger wording.)

Analysis:

There were really two problems with the disk I created. Both problems were fixable.

The VHD file was too large for use with Virtual PC 2007 which has an IDE drive size limit of 127 GB.
In creating the file I copied all of the partitions from the previous XP box. However in installing Windows 7, I only reformatted the OS drive and installed Windows 7 v64. Therefore, the XP VHD contained all of the Data partitions as well as the OS partition. The actual hardware had the orginal data partitions as well as the new OS partition. When I attempted to mount the VHD in Windows 7 using the native support for VHD the drive signatures were the same and created a signature collision. However I could mount the VHD on different hardware without a problem.

Discussion:

The tool give no warning about the 127 GB file size limit Vrtual PC has for files. This is a big problem if you intend to boot from the created file. Big problem if you just used the tool to create your Virtual PC XPmode before going to Windows 7 64bit. So what can you do?

What to do if you created a VHD file larger than 127 GB as a backup of your PC before reformating.

First, I empathize with the situation and it is an easy trap to fall in to. You say to yourself, it worked for smaller sized drives so there was no reason to doubt it would work with larger drives. The example on the Disk2VHD page even uses a larger native drive but has less used space than 127 GB. So one day the example file will stop working if it grows beyond 127 GB. That is a pretty lame problem.

So what can you do? Hyper-V can use larger VHD files. And so can Windows 7. In part the solution is that you can mount your VHD file in Windows 7 and then rerun the tool to copy out individual drives to individual files. My post on Native support for VHD files will come in handy for you on this.

What to do if your VHD has "signature collision" with the "host computer" when trying to mount drives using native support for VHDs in Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2.

It is important to understand what is happenning in order ot understand how to solve the problem. In my case I had created a perfect copy of the drives on the physical computer using Disk2vhd. Then I deleted only one of the disk partitions (The OS Disk). When I reinstalled the OS in the partition I reformatted I now had a new OS with the old partitions. I also had the VHD which included the old OS partition as well as an exact copy of the physical partiitions I had on the host OS.

So when I went to mount the partitions in the VHD file, the OS recognized the the disk signatures as being identical in the VHD as on the host system.

The fix: Mount the VHD on another Windows 7 box as read only and run Disk2VHD again breaking out the partitions as individual files.

If you need more help feel free to contact me.

Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

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Hyper-V: Disk2vhd Free Physical Disk Conversion tool

jeffl — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Well dual boot just went obsolete. At least installing to two different directories it did. Now you can achieve true isolation. Mark Rusinovich wizard extraordinaire and the Microsoft Sysinternals team launched a great new tool. Disk2VHD excerpted from the Sysinternals site:

Download Disk2vhd (704 KB)

Introduction

Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk - Microsoft’s Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). The difference between Disk2vhd and other physical-to-virtual tools is that you can run Disk2vhd on a system that’s online. Disk2vhd uses Windows’ Volume Snapshot capability, introduced in Windows XP, to create consistent point-in-time snapshots of the volumes you want to include in a conversion. You can even have Disk2vhd create the VHDs on local volumes, even ones being converted (though performance is better when the VHD is on a disk different than ones being converted).

The Disk2vhd user interface lists the volumes present on the system:

It will create one VHD for each disk on which selected volumes reside. It preserves the partitioning information of the disk, but only copies the data contents for volumes on the disk that are selected. This enables you to capture just system volumes and exclude data volumes, for example.

Note: Virtual PC supports a maximum virtual disk size of 127GB. If you create a VHD from a larger disk it will not be accessible from a Virtual PC VM.

To use VHDs produced by Disk2vhd, create a VM with the desired characteristics and add the VHDs to the VM’s configuration as IDE disks. On first boot, a VM booting a captured copy of Windows will detect the VM’s hardware and automatically install drivers, if present in the image. If the required drivers are not present, install them via the Virtual PC or Hyper-V integration components. You can also attach to VHDs using the Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 Disk Management or Diskpart utilities.

Note: do not attach to VHDs on the same system on which you created them if you plan on booting from them. If you do so, Windows will assign the VHD a new disk signature to avoid a collision with the signature of the VHD’s source disk. Windows references disks in the boot configuration database (BCD) by disk signature, so when that happens Windows booted in a VM will fail to locate the boot disk.

Disk2vhd runs Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 SP1, and higher, including x64 systems.

Thanks Dieter Rauscher for the heads up,

Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

Hyper-V: Disk2vhd Free Physical Disk Conversion tool

jeffl — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Download Disk2vhd (704 KB)

Introduction

The Disk2vhd user interface lists the volumes present on the system:

Note: Virtual PC supports a maximum virtual disk size of 127GB. If you create a VHD from a larger disk it will not be accessible from a Virtual PC VM.

Note: do not attach to VHDs on the same system on which you created them if you plan on booting from them. If you do so, Windows will assign the VHD a new disk signature to avoid a collision with the signature of the VHD’s source disk. Windows references disks in the boot configuration database (BCD) by disk signature, so when that happens Windows booted in a VM will fail to locate the boot disk.

Disk2vhd runs Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 SP1, and higher, including x64 systems.

Thanks Dieter Rauscher for the heads up,

Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

Hyper-V 2008 R2 - Gotcha #1 - How to install Windows Server 2003 SP2 without a network card

jeffl — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Well I am deep into using Hyper-V R2 and I have probably forgotten a dozen things that caught me off guard at the beginning. I have resolved to just blog about them as they come up rather that put them in order of importance.

In order for Hyper-V 2008 R2 Integration services to be installed on Windows Server 2003, SP2 needs to be installed. Now in most circustances this would not be a problem because you could use slipstreamimng to make another ISO image with the SP2 or SP3 install files. For more information on slip streamimng look here: How to integrate software updates into your Windows installation source files.

Having said that, there are instances were you can't slip stream media because of deeper integrations. Just one such case is with SBS 2003 R2. It so happened that I was creating an SBS 2003 VM when I hit this snag. It is one of those catch 22 situations. The network card does not work because integrations services are not installed but you can't install integrations services without SP2 installed and you can't get SP2 on to the VM because you don't have a network connection yet.

So I started thinking through how to get SP2 on the box. My first two thoughts were Pass-Through Disk or Build an ISO. I quckly abandoned those. I started downloading SP2 while I was thinking and that is when VHD support in Wndows 2008 R2 came to mind. Before the download had completed I shutdown the VM with the partially installed SBS 2003. The following is a step by step of how to mount a VHD as a drive in Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2.

Task 1: Attach VHD as Drive on Parent Partition

Click Start > Rick Click on Computer
Select Manage from the right click context menu
Select Storage
Right click Disk Management
Select Attach VHD from the right click context menu
Browse or type the location of your VHD file (In my case it was the OS drive for SBS 2003)
Click OK. Assign a drive Letter (I will assume you selected V: for the rest of the description)
You have now mounted the VHD file as a hard drive and can access it like a regular drive.

Task 2: Add Windows 2003 SP2 to the drive

Right click on the Windows 2003 SP2 installer file you downloaded earlier
Select Send to > V: (V: being the drive letter you assinged to the VHD file)
You have now copied the file to the VHD file on you. You can vaerify this by using Windows Explorer.

Task 3: Dettach the VHD from the Parent

1. Click Start > Rick Click on Computer
2. Select Manage from the right click context menu
3. Select Storage
4. Click Disk Management
5. Right click on Drive V:
6. Select Dettach VHD from the right click context menu
7. You have now detached the VHD file as a hard drive and can start the VM again.

Task 4: Restart SBS 2003 R2 Child Partition and install SP2

Start your Child Partion
After you have logged on
Open windows Explorer and go to the c: drive
Double click the Windows 2003 SP2 installer.
After the installer complete and you have completed the required restarts, insert the Integration Services disk
Once the integration services complete the network card will find its drivers.

So finally I could complete the install of SBS 2003 R2 on Hyper-V 2008 R2.

Hope that helps,

Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

Best Kept Secret - VHD Native Support in Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7

jeffl — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Have you seen this? WOW.

Native support for VHD disks offers huge potential. Think about creating Dual and Tripple boot systems with everything containted in one file per OS. Think about Back up to VHD... think about mounting VHDs for native read write in an OS and then sharing them with a Virtualized OS. This about syspreping an imaged OS for use across your network!

Think about it and tell me you are not trying to reattach your jaw,,,

Big Secret... now you know.

Jeff Loucks
Available Technology