If you have to attach /mount VHDs (virtual hard disks) frequently and are looking for a tool to make this task more convenient, give VHD Attach a try. This freeware tool allows you to attach VHDs from the context menu in Windows Explorer (Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 only) without having to use the Windows Disk Management applet.

VHD Attach can also display information about a VHD without mounting it. For example, you can access information such as virtual and physical size or vendor ID (see screenshot).

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Probably, the most important enhancement of Windows Server 2008 R2 is the new Hyper-V R2. Hyper-V Server R2 is Microsoft’s bare metal hypervisor that doesn’t require a complete Windows installation. This post lists Hyper-V Server R2’s new features and compares the stand-alone hypervisor to Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V.

Hyper-V Server R2 vs. Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V

One of Hyper-V Server’s advantages is that its footprint is smaller than that of Windows Server 2008 R2 plus Hyper-V R2. Its biggest plus of course is that it is free. However, in considering this, you have to take into account that it doesn’t include any Windows licenses for guests. Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard includes one Windows Server guest license, Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise includes four Windows guest licenses, and the Datacenter edition allows you to install an unlimited number of Windows Server guests.

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Have you ever wondered why it takes so long to create a fixed virtual hard disk (VHD) in Hyper-V or Virtual Server 2005? The Virtual PC Guy dealt with this issue in a blog post. The reason is that the hard disk space assigned to the VHD is wiped out. This is just as if you are using a tool like Active@ Kill Disk to make sure that deleted data can’t ever be recovered again. The process is so time-consuming because every byte on the disk has to be overwritten.

It is unnecessary to zero out dynamically growing disks, because they only occupy disk space when they actually write data to disk, thereby erasing all the data still stored on the corresponding hard disk sectors. Fixed virtual disks already occupy the hard disk’s space before the virtual machine writes data on it. Therefore, if you don’t wipe out the data on the disk, it is possible to recover data that has been stored on the hard disk before the space was assigned to the VHD.

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Greg Shields published an interesting article that explains the difference between the hypervisors of Microsoft’s Hyper-V and VMware’s ESX. It is a response to a widespread misunderstanding. VMware supporters tend to believe that VMware ESX has a bare metal hypervisor, whereas Hyper-V runs like Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 on top of Windows. Greg explains in detail in what sense both virtualization solutions are Type 1 hypervisors contrary to Virtual Server and VMware Server, which use Type 2 hypervisors. A Type 2 hypervisor is installed on top of the administrative OS, whereas a Type 1 hypervisor runs on bare metal, a layer below the administrative OS (Windows Server 2008 in the case of Hyper-V and Red Hat in the case of ESX).

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Submitted by 4sysops Reader

VirtualIQ enables centralized monitoring, performance management, capacity planning, policy-based alerting and automation of repetitive windows virtualization admin tasks for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V environments. It also works with VMware, Citrix, Oracle virtualization platforms.

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Submitted by Jerome Laban – Blog: Jerome Laban’s Blog

A tool that allows to move Hyper-V VMs without having to export them. It also works remotely with Hyper-V Server.

This utility can also work remotely, particularly with Hyper-V Server 2008.

Here is a list of facts to know before using this tool :

• A VM can only be detached if it is in the “Saved” or “Stopped” state.
• It is not necessary to stop the Hyper-V service and all modifications are detected live by the service.
• A VM can only be imported if it contains at least on HDD on the IDE 0 controller.
• All the VM files must be under the same directory, HDD and snapshots.
• All files that are modified are backed-up next to the original files; All other files are not modified nor moved.
• .NET 3.5 must be installed.
• Both command line and GUI tools must run “as administrator”.
• For remote operations, the current user must be an member of the administrators group of the remote system.

Hyper-V VM Mover

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In my last post, I described some of the ways in which Windows 7’s support for native boots from a VHD can prove to be useful. In this article, I will outline how you can install Windows 7 on a VHD. I am aware of four alternative methods:

Install Windows 7 directly

1. You can install Windows 7 directly to a VHD. I find this procedure quite complicated.

Install Windows 7 in a Hyper-V virtual machine

2. If you have Hyper-V, you can install Windows 7 there, and then copy the VHD to the physical computer from which you want to boot this machine. Don’t forget to sysprep the machine first:
C:\windows\system32\sysprep\sysprep /generalize /shutdown

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You may have heard that the boot manager of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 has a new feature that allows you to a boot natively from a VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) on a physical computer. I had a closer look at this interesting new feature and was surprised by how easy it is to set it up. In this post I will outline how this feature can be used and in the next two articles I will describe how you can create a VHD with a Windows 7 installation and how to add a corresponding boot entry on a Vista machine.

You might wonder why anyone would like to boot a physical machine from virtual disk. Actually, there are several scenarios where this could be useful:

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I guess there are many IT shops these days that migrate from VMware ESX or VMware Server to Microsoft’s Hyper-V. I believe this trend will continue as soon as Hyper-V 2 for Windows Server 2008 R2 is available. Unfortunately, VMware and Microsoft use different formats for their virtual disk images. VMware virtualization solutions use the Virtual Machine Disk Format (VMDK) and Microsoft uses the Virtual Hard Disk Format (VHD).

The free Vmdk2Vhd tool can help you convert a VHD image into VMDK format. Note that it is recommended to convert a big VMDK file to multiple 2GB VMDK spanned files first. Jérôme Laban has described some other issues you might encounter.

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As its name indicates, VHD Resizer is a tool that allows you to resize a VHD (Virtual Hard Disk). VHD is Microsoft’s format for virtual disks, and is used by Virtual PC, Virtual Server, and Hyper-V. VHD Resizer can be used to enlarge or shrink virtual disks of all three virtualization solutions. Windows Vista and Windows 7’s system backup tools also use this format. However, it doesn’t make much sense to enlarge a backup image. There are also third party virtualization tools, such as VirtualBox, that support the VHD format.

The most common problem with VHDs occurs when the disk of a virtual server is full. The nice thing about virtual disks is that they are quite easy to expand. I can’t help but wonder why Microsoft’s virtualization solutions haven’t integrated this option. In theory, this should be possible even while the server is running. After all, it is no problem to defragment the disk of a running server, so why shouldn’t it be possible to resize an online VHD?

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• Hyper-V 2.0 Features – Windows Server 2008 R2 will include Hyper-V 2.0 As expected, it will support Live Migration.
• Using Hyper-V with Windows Small Business Server 2008 Documentation Released
• Windows 7 Preview Part 4: Apps, Internet and Devices – I linked to Part 1 – Part 4 yesterday.
• Review: System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 – Jonathan Hassell finds SCVMM 2008 a compelling solution. I agree.
• App-V Resource Kit Tools Available – 5 free useful tools for Microsoft Application Virtualization
• VMWare Server 2: Worse Than Failure – Good to know that I am not the only one who doesn’t like VMware Server 2.0.
• Core Configurator 1.1 available -  New:  Add/ Remove DNS Servers, Server Hardening plus bug fixes. My review Core Configurator
• Windows 7’s best secret feature – Discusses the new Libraries feature. Looks nice.
• Windows Server 2008 SP2 beta will be available for a small group next week – New: Hyper-V RTM and new power profile.
• Wireshark 1.0.4 released – Security related bugs have been fixed.
• AdvancedRemoteInfo update – No Vista support yet, but the author hopes to add this feature soon. My review of ARI

• I have to say thanks to all 4sysops readers! I am a MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional) now.
• Free Specops Gpupdate 2.0 (Group Policy.updates) is available. Interesting new features. I might blog about it soon.
• Windows 7 to get parallel-processing tweaks Some more Windows 7 information for your perusal
• Microsoft Select Plus licensing arrives.
• New App-V docs and files: Security Configuration Roles, ADM templates, Best Practices Analyzer.
• PowerShell WSUS powerpack. Allows you to access WSUS information using Powershell.
• Xenocode licenses its app. virtualization solution to Novell. The name is ZENworks Application Virtualization Solution.


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• Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 Preview. Paul Thurrott writes about Microsoft’s new bare metal hypervisor.
• Hyper-V Server, the bare-metal edition of Hyper-V, will be available in 30 days. One argument less for ESX supporters.
• The final version of the Linux Integration Components for Hyper-V has been released!
• Comprehensive introduction into VMM 2008. I think it is a must-have tool for larger companies working with Hyper-V.
• Windows 7: Beta 1 tracking for mid-December. Looking forward to play with it.
• Big trouble coming for Cloud Computing Being totally dependent on others is the biggest downside of cloud computing.
• Microsoft will spend $8 B to catch up in cloud computing
• Software as a Service – or Software plus Services? Good comparison by Mark Wilson. In my view, the future belongs to S+S.
• Applications, coming soon to a Mesh near you. Will Live Mesh be the core of Microsoft’s cloud OS?
• Administer WSUS 3.0 SP1 with Sever Manager on Windows Server 2008.

Reducing hardware and power consumption costs might be viable in some scenarios with virtualization technology although the possible cost savings are often exaggerated. However, there are other factors to consider here.

Sophisticated virtualization technology does not come for free. Yes, there are a couple of free solutions available. However, they have important downsides. The most prominent solution is probably VMware Server. You could run it on a Linux host without any license costs. But we all know why VMware offers this product for free. It is not just because of Microsoft’s Virtual Server. The main reason is that they want you to buy VMware ESX after you started to like virtualization technology. You will want to have more performance, more redundancy and many other features that VMware Server lacks. Of course, this is an absolutely legitimate strategy. However, for most organizations it will mean they will pay sooner or later for virtualization technology. These costs certainly also have to be taken into account when it comes to the overall costs of server virtualization.

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This is my second post in the series about the costs of server virtualization. So, what is it about the “hay argument”: ten horses require ten times more hay than one horse? Do ten servers always consume less energy than one? I don’t think so. How much hay or power is consumed does not depend solely on the number of workers performing a certain task.

I suppose a well-fed sumo wrestler consumes ten times as much food as a ballerina. However, ten ballerinas have a fair chance to floor a sumo wrestler. Power consumption is connected to the amount of work that has to be done. Thus, if a high-end server has to do the work of ten average servers, it obviously needs a lot more power than each of them does.

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