Expanding Virtual Hard Disks with Hyper-V

Question

Richard Gadsden — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 17:22:27 GMT

Sorry to go OT from the post, but I can't find an answer to this anywhere.

Can Virtual PC run on Windows Server 2008? I know I could use Hyper-V, but I want to run a 32-bit OS on my desktop, and Hyper-V is 64-bit only at the moment.

re: Expanding Virtual Hard Disks with Hyper-V

ITzik — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 20:23:08 GMT

Can you reduce the VHD size the same way ?

without using the Precompact and Compact tools ?

re: Expanding Virtual Hard Disks with Hyper-V

Norman Diamond — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 04:13:16 GMT

"You can't do this to a virtual hard disk that is associated with a running or saved stated virtual machine."

Hmm, now I need to find time for an experiment. On a real machine, hibernate Windows XP, dd the entire drive to the front of a larger drive, swap drives, and try to resume Windows XP ^_^

If you swap other devices while XP is hibernating then usually it handles them with no problem after resuming. So actually I've wondered why Virtual PC requires guests to be fully shut down before making the same kinds of virtual changes.

re: Expanding Virtual Hard Disks with Hyper-V

Yadong — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 01:13:50 GMT

It seems a VM can’t be moved from one host to another, as easy as Virtual Server. I have a small VM environment, one Windows file server, store all VM images; three VM host machine, run ~5 VM on each host, all VMs run directly from file server.

From time to time, I need to switch VM to host B from Host A. In Virtual Server 2005R1 (it is a little bit slow but great and easy to use), all I need to do is unregister VM from Host A, then register it on Host B. No VM and VHD file copy is needed as every file stored on file server.

However, on Hyper-V, I have to re-create VM machine on Host B, move all VHD files to this VM machine and run it. It takes time and easy to make mistake. Is there any way “register” VM to Host B without doing lengthy import/export?

I don't use SCVMM, it is overkill for my simple environment.

re: Expanding Virtual Hard Disks with Hyper-V

Carlo — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 11:53:31 GMT

I made a mistake of doing the 2nd item on your three things to note:

"You shouldn't do this to a virtual hard disk that is associated with a virtual machine that has snapshots (as you will invalidate the snapshots)."

Is there a way to salvage the VHD and the snapshots and all the VM data? Can I revert the VHD size back to the original size?