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Boot to Differencing VHD in VirtualPC?

Respondida Boot to Differencing VHD in VirtualPC?

  • lunes, 07 de mayo de 2012 19:06
     
     
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    Hey Everyone,

    Is it possible to boot from a Differencing VHD being hosted in a domain from VirtualPC? What I am looking to do is set up multiple demo VHDs and allow people to show off demos from their laptops.

    What I don't want to have to do is boot the laptops into the VHD, but boot VirtualPC from their laptops to the VHD on our server so they can show off the demos.

    Is this possible?

    Jacob Geiser BS of IT -- Network Technologies Kaplan University


    • Editado Jacob.Geiser lunes, 07 de mayo de 2012 19:14 Incorrect Title Spelling
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  • lunes, 07 de mayo de 2012 19:40
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    I don't know if VirtualPC supports UNC paths to boot from the network.  But it does exist in user mode.

    You can create a differencing disk VHD from teh parent and boot to that - but again, I don't recall if UNC is supported as a path for the parent disk.

    If you can get the permissions right, it should work.

    Brian Ehlert
    http://ITProctology.blogspot.com
    Learn. Apply. Repeat.
    Disclaimer: Attempting change is of your own free will.

     
  • lunes, 07 de mayo de 2012 20:01
     
     
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    Just to clarify, you don't "boot" Virtual PC, it resides as an application that runs on top of the laptop's OS. You can't boot a laptop using Virtual PC, you'd boot your laptop's Windows 7, then start Virtual PC, and then run your VM from the differencing VHD.

    it is something you can do, but is it something you should?

    Can your network handle the read traffic from booting multiple instances of Windows?  I've seen this done on wired networks as a PoC. 

    You're going to need to configure each laptop for the VM and diff-disk, so you're not gaining much in the administrative savings.  You'll see some initial hard drive space savings on the laptops, but as your demo and it's Windows host are updated, a lot of that will be eaten up.

    For future reference, there is a specific forum for Virtual PC, this one is for Hyper-V.

    http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itprovirt/threads

    • Editado Steve JainMVP lunes, 07 de mayo de 2012 20:02 add url
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  • lunes, 07 de mayo de 2012 20:30
     
     
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    smjain,

    Apologies, I forgot to switch that forum tab in the bottom... (Could a mod move this to the correct spot?)

    Anywho, I know that is how VirtualPC works as it works similarly to any VM program.

    So if I understand you correctly, if I were to create a VHD, point my VM to use that VHD, it would need to save the vhd on the Host computer? It couldn't run the VHD, do what ever demo needs to be done and then when they "shut down" the VM, the differencing VHD will or won't reset itself?

    Jacob Geiser BS of IT -- Network Technologies Kaplan University


     
  • lunes, 07 de mayo de 2012 21:33
     
     
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    You would create your parent disk on the the network, then on the demo laptops, create your VM and a differencing disk that points to the parent disk on the network.

    This allows you to read the network hosted parent disk and all writes go locally.  You'd also want to use Undo disks and set it to discard all changes when you stop the VM, that way your demo environment stays pristine.  A differencing disk doesn't reset changes, it keeps the changes on a separate VHD from the parent, so you'd want to use Undo disks for this. 

    You could just set up the network hosted VHD as the boot disk for your VM, enable undo disks, set the default action for Undo Disks to "turn off and discard changes," and skip the diff disks. This would allow you to have your pristine demo environment "reset" each time the VM is turned off.

     
  • martes, 08 de mayo de 2012 7:04
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    Hi,

    I am not a Virtual PC guy, however, as far as I know, differencing disk is a Hyper-V feature instead of Microsoft Virtual PC 2007. I you have Hyper-V available on the laptops, why not use Hyper-V directly.

    By the way, according to the description, it seems that you want to setup multiply demo VHDs among the guys. So why not create a base VHD file, install the needed applications in it, sysprep the system then share the VHD to them? Then the guys can use  the VHD file on their laptops.