Windows Server 2008 R2 adds some new Hyper-V based technology called Native VHD.\u00a0 VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) is a file that simulates a hard disk.\u00a0 MS has been using it for virtual machines since Virtual PC and Virtual Server and published the format for others to use and integrate with.\u00a0 Normally, on a Hyper-V server we have lots of VM\u2019s.\u00a0 What happens if we want the portability of VM\u2019s but the power of a dedicated machine?\u00a0 Windows 2008 R2 allows us to have a small boot partition that surfaces (mounts) a VHD on another partition and boots from that.\u00a0 Now your VHD is on a dedicated server with all the performance that goes with it. <\/p>\n
This gives us added flexibility, performance and drastically simplifies OS deployment. <\/p>\n
That begs the question, what about Windows Deployment Services and ConfigMgr OS deployment?\u00a0 I don\u2019t see WDS and OSD going anywhere but MS are strongly hinting that they only want 1 disk format in the future.\u00a0 ConfigMgr OSD is based on WDS.\u00a0 WDS and \u201cPanther\u201d (the installer used by Vista, W2008, Win7 and W2008 R2) all use WIM files.\u00a0 It appears that MS plan on moving away from there to only using VHD. <\/p>\n
If you are using WDS for deploying dedicated servers that you\u2019re likely using a captured WIM file.\u00a0 If so, you can switch from that to deploying VHD\u2019s to W2008 R2 using Native VHD.\u00a0 What about your existing images?\u00a0 You\u2019re not going to toss them aside.\u00a0 You could also use this to convert existing WIM\u2019s into template VHD\u2019s that you can stick into your VMM 2008 library for VM reuse. <\/p>\n
There\u2019s a free converter<\/a> which will convert WIM to VHD, i.e. Windows Image Files to Virtual Hard Disks.\u00a0 There\u2019s a video demo on the site to show you how it works. <\/p>\n Credit: Virtual Varia<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Windows Server 2008 R2 adds some new Hyper-V based technology called Native VHD.\u00a0 VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) is a file that simulates a hard disk.\u00a0 MS has been using it for virtual machines since Virtual PC and Virtual Server and published the format for others to use and integrate with.\u00a0 Normally, on a Hyper-V server … Continue reading “WIM to VHD (WIM2VHD) Converter”<\/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-9407","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\/9407","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=9407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9407\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}