Recently, I decided I needed to be smarter about building a more versatile virtual machine. So I decided to go the route of creating a virtual hard disk (VHD).
With my main OS being Windows 7, I knew I had the ability to boot directly into a VHD. Why? Because this will allow the virtual to utilize my full system resources.
But what if I want to boot into my main OS? Good news! VHDs can be loaded by Virtual Box. Meaning I can boot into my primary OS, and then use Virtual Box to launch a virtual machine (VM) into the VHD.
And there is even a third benefit. Microsoft’s Hyper-V technology can take bootable VHDs and spawn VMs off. Not only can I leverage the VHD locally (for those on-the-go and limited/weak network connectivity times), but teams could use it out of the cloud!
The first VHD I will create is an expandable Windows 7 (x64) Ultimate, 100GB baseline. I will spell out my steps to creating it, making it accessible through Virtual Box, and finally direct booting into it.
The first part is to create a VHD. I started by leveraging someone else’s blog: http://blog.tallan.com/2011/09/06/creating-a-bootable-vhd-that-can-also-be-run-from-a-virtual-machine/
The one deviation I made was creating an expandable VHD over a fixed one. (Note: This is a baseline, I’m more worried about saving space over stealing a large chunk permanently away). It was just a matter of adding the additional command line parameter “type=expandable”.
If you prefer other alternatives, Microsoft does have good resources for creating initial VHD files: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg318052.aspx.
The blog goes on to talk about creating Server 2008, I’ll replicate many of the screen shots here for Windows 7 Ultimate.
* VM Name and OS Type
* Memory – The default is 512MB. But with 8GB available, I decided to start with a “healthy” amount.
* Virtual Hard Disk
*** Virtual Machine Successfully Created ***
Now time to install the OS.
* Go into the settings of the new drive
* Choose Storage, and then select the CD drive.
* Find where you can setup the drive. (Mine happens to be the disk image on the far right)
* Since I typically download ISOs, I have the ability to attach a virtual. You can use your physical (Host) drive and insert a real disk.
*** Success! We are now ready to install our OS ***
Since a billion people on the web have already documented how to install Windows 7, I’m just going to give you one link that you can follow: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2354687,00.asp
NOTE: I did run across the following error.
Failed to open a session for the virtual machine Windows 7 (x64) Ultimate.
VT-x features locked or unavailable in MSR. (VERR_VMX_MSR_LOCKED_OR_DISABLED).
Result Code: | E_FAIL (0x80004005) |
Component: | Console |
Interface: | IConsole {1968b7d3-e3bf-4ceb-99e0-cb7c913317bb} |
And to solve, I went out and found the following help:
Now that I have this baseline VHD. I think I’ll check out the SharePoint 2010 Easy Setup Script. (See Chris Johnson’s blog entry for more details.)
I also liked reading the rest of the blog about using BCDEDIT to launch my machine directly into the VHD.
No comments:
Post a Comment