Booting from VHD files and using Windows Server 2008 R2 as a Workstation

hvdkamp — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 07:39:35 GMT

For my work I'm using a laptop that has several operating systems installed. Depending on the customer related work, e.g. office work, giving presentations and developing software, I'm booting one of these environments.

My multi-boot installation consists of several environments including:

Windows 7
Windows Server 2008 R2 with SharePoint 2007
Windows Server 2008 R2 with SharePoint 2010
Windows Server 2008 R2 with SharePoint 2007 and Dynamics CRM 4.0.

All the operating systems boot from a virtual hard disk instead of using virtualization by booting an operating system that hosts an other operating system.

I prefer using VHD files and booting from them because of several reason, e.g.:

The whole virtual memory is available for use on the work environment, instead of loosing virtual memory to an operating system that hosts a guest operation system using virtualization
Creating backups of a whole operating system is easily done by just backing up one .vhd file.
Normal hardware and drivers are used instead of emulated hardware and drivers.
By creating a clean installed base environment, you can quickly go back to that state or derive environments based on the base environment.

People often ask me:

How do you install operating systems on a VHD file and setup up a multi-boot environment?
How can you boot from a virtual hard disk?
What did you change to your Windows Server 2008 environment so that it looks like Windows 7?

You can get answers to all of these questions by visiting "How can I install Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 to a virtual hard disk (VHD) file?" about how to install an operating system on a VHD. Visit Win2008r2workstation.com which explains how to convert your Windows Server 2008 R2 server to a workstation.

Extend VHD with Windows 7

Mark Willems — Wed, 12 May 2010 10:46:00 GMT

My favorite feature in Windows 7 is the built-in partition manager! Often I copy VHD files from colleagues and use those as a starting point for my own development. Sometimes I run into the issue that I want to install additional software on the image but there is no more space available on the image.

My solution for this is the following:

Take a backup of your VHD.
Run the "VHD Resizer" tool to add extra disk space to the VHD.
Start the VHD and take a look at the disk via Disk Management. You will see that the disk has now extra unallocated disk space.
Because the disk is the system disk you cannot use DISKPART to add the unallocated disk space to the system partition. But….. Windows 7 is there to the rescue
Shutdown the VHD and again take a backup.
Go to Start\Control Panel\Administrative Tools\Computer Management in Computer Management select Disk Management.
In the right pane expand “More actions” and select “Attach VHD”
Specify the VHD you want to extend
Right the partition you want to extend and select ‘Extend Volume’
Complete the ‘Extend Volume Wizard’ and the result should be an extended VHD file as shown below. After that detach the VHD by right clicking the Disk and then selecting the option 'Detach VHD'

Search results matching tag 'VHD'

Booting from VHD files and using Windows Server 2008 R2 as a Workstation

Extend VHD with Windows 7