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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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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Networkworld recently published an interesting article entitled “7 side effects of sloppy virtualization”. This title seems to indicate that the problems server virtualization might cause are solvable by being well prepared. Nevertheless, all seven arguments discussed can be considered disadvantages of server virtualization. Because I am seriously thinking of virtualizing all of our servers, I read the article with interest. So far, we have only four virtual servers with about fifteen virtual machines, but we have already encountered some of the problems mentioned in the article.

I will discuss all seven downsides from my own perspective and share some of the experiences we have had with server virtualization.

1. Magnified physical failures

Imagine you have ten important servers running on one physical host and its RAID controller runs amok, wiping out all of your hard disks. Don’t say that this is not very likely, as we have already had two or three incidents from malfunctioning RAID controllers from well-known brands.

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The feature complete Beta of System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM 2008, sometimes you read SCVMM 2008) has been available for some days now. Microsoft’s new management tool for centralized deployment and management for Virtual Server 2005, Server 2008 Hyper-V and VMware ESX can be downloaded via Microsoft Connect. Today, I had a quick look at it. This post will also give you some tips on how you can test VMM 2008 if you are already working with Virtual Machine Manager 2007.

Considering the fact that VMM 2007 was released in September 2007, VMM 2008 has quite a few interesting new features. Most prominently are its Hyper-V and VMware ESX support. I will probably blog about the new features in another post. Today, I am just sharing some experiences I had when I played a little with VMM 2008.

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Ruben Spruijt wrote a comprehensive overview of Hyper-V over at Brian Madden’s site. In my view, Hyper-V is the most important component of Windows Server 2008. Although Microsoft’s new virtualization solution is still in beta, it can’t be wrong to get started with learning about it now. Even though, its user interface is fairly simple, Hyper-V is quite a sophisticated piece of software. This means that many different things can go wrong and you will only be able solve those problems if you understand the architecture of Hyper-V. Although parts of this overview are probably only for those who already have experience with virtualization solutions, it is also a good introduction into Hyper-V.

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I am currently evaluating Virtual Server plus Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) because I am thinking of replacing our VMware Server installations with Microsoft’s virtualization solution. Since I am still undecided, I was curious to test the beta of VMware Server 2. I was hoping that they added the feature I was waiting for (VSS support). Unfortunately, my test results didn’t end as I expected. Even though VMM didn’t really convince me to move to Virtual Server, my test of VMware Server 2 did.

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I wrote a review about VMRCPlus a while ago. It is a nifty free tool from Microsoft that can replace the Web interface of Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1. VMRCPlus has a graphical user interface that allows you to manage Virtual Server in a much more convenient way than with the original Web-based user interface. Version 1.6 has some new interesting features.

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I have spent some more time with Virtual Machine Manager (VMM), Microsoft’s new Virtual Server2005 management tool. My somewhat positive impression which I expressed in two earlier posts about VMM has been dampened a little since then. This is mostly due to the fact that VMM seems to be a bit unreliable.

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Some weeks ago, I blogged about my first impression of Virtual Machine Manager (VMM). I had some time now to have a closer look at Microsoft’s new management tool for Virtual Server. I must admit that VMM made me see Virtual Server with different eyes. A good user interface completely changes the perception of a product.

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I already reported some days ago that a complete installation of VMM is available as VHD file. Just to remind you, System Center Virtual Machine Manager is Microsoft’s new management tool for centralized deployment and management for Virtual Server machines. Now, you can also download a 180-day trial version. The compressed setup file has 1.5 GB. I installed and played a little with SCVMM today.

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Windows IT Pro has (subscribers only) a good feature list of Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Server Virtualization (WSV). I summarized and commented them in this post.

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Chris Sirrat from the Windows Virtualization Team Blog announced the release of System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM), Microsoft’s new centralized management tool for Virtual Server. As I write this, there only is a complete installation as a VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) available for download. A 120-day trial version is probably coming soon.

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Andy Malone reports that Windows Server 2008 RC0 is now offered to TAP customers (Technical Adoption Program). He also thinks that it will be available for download on MSDN soon. Alessandro Perilli of virtualization.info has learned that RC0 will contain Windows Server Virtualization (WSV) aka Viridian.

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Microsoft has a new site dedicated to virtualization. It is mostly a marketing site, but they also have some valuable information. I found two or three new interesting blogs in the Resources section and there are also some technical white papers.

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