I really don\u2019t get this whole \u201cstorage is cheap\u201d stuff.\u00a0 Storage to stick in the back of your PC is cheap but server storage is far from cheap.\u00a0 The cost of a 146GB disk may be a fraction of what it was 5 years ago but we need to use a heck of a lot more to do the same stuff now as we did back then, e.g. look at the size of a Windows boot drive now.\u00a0 Someone has to pay for this, e.g. an ever decreasing IT budget (IT is a non-profit generating cost centre which isn\u2019t so popular these days) or a customer (either internal or external) has to pay for it and we all know that customers don\u2019t want to pay for something they don\u2019t directly use, e.g. a VMM library.\u00a0 Then ask yourself, why would you fill that library LUN with files that are 75% empty? <\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve been using VMware ESX then you know how efficient it is when it comes to storing template machines.\u00a0 Unfortunately, VMM 2008 isn\u2019t that intelligent.\u00a0 I tried to have this conversation with one of the folks at TechEd but because of MS\u2019s tendency to rename every industry accepted term<\/a> he hadn\u2019t a clue at what I was trying to say. <\/p>\n So here it is in VMware (sort of) lingo and then I\u2019ll translate.\u00a0 In Virtual Center, you can sysprep a machine (either via the GUI which I do not recommend because sysprep is both OS and service pack specific which VC cannot handle) or manually (which I do recommend).\u00a0 When I covert that VM into a template it\u2019s removed from the production VMFS LUN and placed into the library.\u00a0 Part of this (if I remember correctly \u2013 it\u2019s been a while) was that the disk is stored as a dynamically expanding disk instead of a fixed size one.\u00a0 Why store 40GB of mostly empty virtual disk when you can store 8GB?\u00a0 Imagine having lots of templates that you need to manage.\u00a0 You could have a library that\u2019s TB upon TB of wasted space.\u00a0 When you deploy the template, the virtual disk is converted back to fixed size on the VMFS LUN. <\/p>\n So I asked about taking a template machine in VMM and doing the same.\u00a0 Straight away said person got confused because MS decided template would refer to the simple file that describes the VM configuration and nothing else.\u00a0 The conversation beyond that point could go nowhere.\u00a0 So here\u2019s what would be great.\u00a0 Take a VM and sysprep it down.\u00a0 The library storage process would take the VHD on the Hyper-V host and if it\u2019s fixed it would convert (without an unnecessary copy taking up space) over the wire to a dynamically expanding VHD in the library.\u00a0 A deployment of that VHD would ask if you want a fixed or dynamic disk.\u00a0 If it\u2019s fixed then the VHD would be converted, again over the wire without a wasteful copy, and a new fixed size VHD would appear in the destination LUN on the Hyper-V host. <\/p>\n Here\u2019s What I Do<\/strong> <\/p>\n That\u2019s not there now so I\u2019m doing something slightly more manual.\u00a0 I build a template (yeah I said \u201ctemplate\u201d cos that\u2019s what it is; Ask any OS deployment person) using a dynamically expanding VHD on my development host.\u00a0 I then copy it into my library which is a compressed folder.\u00a0 Sure it\u2019s a slight bit slower but it\u2019s worth the saved space.\u00a0 For a VM deployment I deploy a VMM template (ICK \u2013 the machine configuration kind) to the Hyper-V host\u2019s LUN for that VM.\u00a0 I log into the host and then fire up the Hyper-V console.\u00a0 Using the disk editor I browse to the VMM library and convert that disk to a fixed type whose location is the VM\u2019s LUN.\u00a0 <\/p>\n That manual process does everything that I\u2019d like MS be able to do with VMM.\u00a0 It might take me about 1 minute more to deploy a VM than it would otherwise but I\u2019m saving a tonne of space on expensive<\/em> disk. <\/p>\n This is the only thing that really bugs me with VMM.\u00a0 But it really<\/em> annoys me.\u00a0 I\u2019m guessing the mix between the restrictive Hyper-V security model and the inability to access GUID drives over the network have caused this.\u00a0 The new cluster file system in Hyper-V R2 will give them an opportunity to sort this out.\u00a0 Hopefully MS will sort it out.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I really don\u2019t get this whole \u201cstorage is cheap\u201d stuff.\u00a0 Storage to stick in the back of your PC is cheap but server storage is far from cheap.\u00a0 The cost of a 146GB disk may be a fraction of what it was 5 years ago but we need to use a heck of a lot … Continue reading “Tip On Saving Space In Your VMM 2008 Library”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hyper-v"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9377\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}