Innovative Technology Weblog

2 months ago I did the Windows 7 beta exam.
http://www.buit.org/2009/05/05/windows-7-beta-exam-071-680/

Today I noticed on my transcript that I’ve passed the exam. Nice timing from Microsoft, cause last 2 weeks I’ve passed every Server 2008 exam for my MCITP Admin and MCITP Enterprise Admin.

On the 9th and 10th of june 2009, I visited the Citrix iForum Benelux 2009:

iForum is the event where virtualisation, networking and application delivery meet.

The 9th of june offered two workshops of which I attend the one hosted by CDG: ‘Optimizing your datacenter with Citrix and Novell Platespin’. Products covered where Novell Platespin Recon and Migrate, CItrix XenApp, XenServer, XenDesktop and Provisioning Server. The workshop featured a nice package of demo’s on screen. I think a Provisioning Server brings some very nice features to the Citrix productline. The main worry of every Citrix admin (how do I keep my XenApp servers identical? ) isn’t much of a challenge anymore with provisioning server, which streams a single read-only vDisk to every XenApp server via PXE. A major downside is obviously the load on the network at boot time.

After the workshop I checked into my hotel and prepared for an interesing evening programm fully loaded with “networkiwork related consumptions… Accompanied by a live performance of the greatest rock band The Netherlands have ever produced: Golden Earring (still going strong despite of being in their sixties).  

The 10th of june was the “real” conference day; lots of workshops to choose from. With a very interesing opening keynote by Mark Templeton (CEO Citrix), introduced (in Double Dutch, quite understandable for native dutch speakers) by Rob van der Hoeven (Area Vice President Benelux). Mark Templeton presented his vision on tomorrows workspace and the direction Citrix is heading to provide solutions to the challenges of the (near) future.  Introducing Dazzle as an iTunes-like portal where enduser can “shop” their own applicationset which can also incorporate 3rd party webapplications etc. Citrix Reciever for iPhone (windows mobile coming soon) bringing the amount of citrix clients down to (the power of) 1. Futhermore, introducing XenClient: a hypervisor solution for the desktop allowing endusers to switch easily between their own private OS and the controlled environment of the corporate desktop also availble for MAC. This promises to be a very interesting product indeed, especially because of its pricing: FREE Also free of charge is the use of XenServer, which is now the preferred platform for hosting XenApp and incorporated some interesting features like XenMotion (vMotion) at no additional costs… Since results of virualized XenApp environments on other (vmware) products varied, XenServer is definately the way to go!

 My workshop program for the day:

1. Keynote: Mark Templeton, CEO & President of Citrix Systems Inc. & Rob van der Hoeven, Area Vice President Citrix Systems Benelux
2. Virtualize your XenApp: how to maximize XenApp server potential by Martijn Bosschaart
3. Meet the Experts - Ask the hard questions! by Thomas Zell, Derek Thorslund, Simon Frost, Rob Sanders and Jan-Frans Lemmens
4. LUNCH
5. Citrix Receiver: the new framework to manage your Citrix clients by Simon Frost
6. Best Practices XenApp by Rob Sanders
7. XenServer 5 - what the other virtualisation guys don’t want you to know by Peter Bats
8. Closing keynote

OpsMgr is mainly used to get a grip on you server infrastructure and to optimize performance and availability by using best practice, which knowledge provide in the MP’s, and resolve errors with a head start with the provided knowledge. But the next step into monitoring is getting the most out of your infrastructure and Virtualization is one of these things that can help you get there.

Currently a lot of organizations want to save money and cut back on hardware and power with the great green IT wave landing in most organizations right now. OpsMgr can help you that. VMM 2008 has the ability to manage and optimize performance, load and availability and cut back on the off hour work by leveraging the heterogenic environment to a single management console in combination with PRO ( Performance and Resource Optimization ) it does give you the insides and tips in your environment. So System Center Operations Manager and Virtual Machine Manager will give you the tools you need the manage it all.

But how can i select the best virtualization candidate in my environment to make the first steps in optimizing my infrastructure? The answer is easier than expected.

To select the best virtualization candidates just import the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and the System Center Virtualization Reports 2008 Management pack from the catalog to run the report for virtualization candidate selection, even when you not using VMM 2008 in your environment.

This MP is not only for the SCOM 2007 R2 users but can be used in SCOM 2007 SP1 too. Just download the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 and import the Microsoft.SystemCenter.VirtualMachineManager.2008.mp and the Microsoft.Virtualization.Reports.2008.mp and you can run your reports.

Getting into the report go, in the SCOM console, to the reporting area and navigate to the System Center Virtualization reports 2008  and select the Virtualization Candidates report. Now you can define the parameters for you selection of virtualization candidates.

Start identifying you virtualization candidates and building your dynamic datacenter, have fun with it!

Update: The selection process for virtual candidates relays on the “Virtual machine” property “IsVirtualMachine” to be FALSE for selecting the physical machines in your environment. The downside to that property is that VMWare virtual machines are not detected so the generated reports will show the physical machines you want to see and the virtual VMWare machines.

The solution to that problem is the following Management pack made by Pete Zerger of the System Center Central. Thanks Pete!

Virtual Machine Discovery MP for OpsMgr 2007

This MP extends existing discovery of virtual machines by Operations Manager and Essentials to include VMware guests. The MP will update the “IsVirtualMachine” property of the Windows Computer object to TRUE for VMware guests. Also disables and replaces the existing discovery rule that sets this value to false for non-MS VMs.

Regards,
Walter Eikenboom
http://weblogwally.spaces.live.com

As a System Center Operations Manager Specialist I’m happy to tell you all that SCOM 2007 R2 has hit Release to Manufacturing today. The Operations Manager Team has worked for two years to get this version out there. Thank for that!

The SCOM 2007 R2 is a solid piece of work with numerous new and improved features to make it easier to do your daily task in getting a better an more cost effective infrastructure. In this article I will discuss a few of the new improvements and features in R2.

One of the big eye catchers is the cross platform functionality that OpsMgr 2007 R2 provides out of the box. OpsMgr 2007 R2 will integrated touch and feel for both Windows and Unix/Linux based clients. With this integration you can watch your environments health through a single pane of glass.

The SCOM 2007 R2 supported cross platform operating systems are:

When Service levels are in place the access and security to these IT services becomes more and more interesting. Audit Collection Services ACS gives the insight IT organizations need to drive compliance and investigate un-trusted and unwanted access to there services. ACS provides an integrated solution and with SCOM 2007 R2 the ability to use ACS on no windows systems will broaden de scope as a complete solution for compliancy.

Ease of operations is always a nice to have but in these times when application updates and product renewal is a day to day operations the ease of use and ease to operate is key for any product. SCOM 2007 R2 even made it a bit easier. A full upgrade from the SCOM 2007 SP1 is supported and all tuning and configuration you have done over the last two years will stay in place. Notifications where simplified and the the latest Management packs will provide reports with easier object selection. Enormous performance increate in console usage, which was a big down side in SCOM 2007 and SCOM 2007 SP1. Even the show updated management pack function as was used in MOM 2005 is back in SCOM 2007 R2. Not as an alert but when importing Management packs from the online catalog you can select the option to show update Management pack which you have installed in your environment.

 If you want to tryout all these features in the new version download the System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 evaluation edition. I will get in more detail about some of the new features in some upcoming articles.

Regards,
Walter Eikenboom
http://weblogwally.spaces.live.com

Hi there,

Today I took the Windows 7 beta exam TS: Windows 7, Configuring and had to let you know my findings.

I have more then a year experience working with Windows 7 as my employer is a TAP participant in the Windows 7 TAP, currently we have more then 300 Windows 7 machines deployed in our environment. So I tought ‘why not try the exam’

The exam lenght is 180 minutes, but I only needed 45 minutes for the 75 questions. This is not cause of the exam, but somehow I allways manages to do an exam within the hour.

I wont give you any questions and/or answers cause the exam is under NDA, but I can give you the subjects that I’ve got in my exam.

The Windows 7 exam is a real ‘new technolgy’ exam, maybe there are 5 questions that I could ansfer from my experience with XP and Vista the other question are all about new technology. If you need to take this exam or if you are planning for 070-680 (the number after this exam goes live) be prepared to answer questions on the following technology :

* BranchCache
* Direct Access
* IPv6 (only a couple of questions)
* Imaging
* USMT
* System Restore
* Windows Update (couple of questions)

Also know how to make a bootable USB Windows 7 installation stick and try to study on how Windows 7 works in a HomeGroup (not all questions are Enterprise related but also home-use related)

The exam is currently in beta so no score report, after 8 weeks I will know if I passed or failed the exam.

If you take this exam, ‘Good Luck’

Regards,

Erik

This morning Brad Anderson, General Manager Management & Services Division of Microsoft Corporation did the opening Keynote at MMS 2009 in Las Vegas. Central topic of his opening keynote was the user centric approach for end user desktop experience without the current device restriction.

Brad talked about Windows 7, App-V and Med-V giving these feature to the end user without bothering them with technical details or action to give the full functionality. With windows 7 the new feature that will help provide these goals in a secure and cost effective way will be:

• Direct Acces
• Branch Cache
• Federated Search
• Navigation
• Bitlocker
• Bitlocker on the Go
• Applocker
• Security Development lifecycle
• Powershell
• Windows client troubleshooting platform
• Deployment tools
• VDI enhancements

Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 with MDOP and System Center will provide Discover & Assess, Compatibility, Deployment and User productivity, faster and easier in every stage for the modern client. To really get this on the road Microsoft is changing there client licensing ECAL to support full Client lifecycle management. New in the ECAL will be the DPM client CAL and the System Center Service Manager Client CAL. Service Manager will be key in these scenarios for delivering enriched client support, self-service and desired operation state in the Desktop optimization model, based on the infrastructure optimization model.

All these solution apply to the onsite IT infrastructure but the future of IT, Like Bob Kelly stated in yesterdays keynote, is the Cloud. Brad Anderson announced the System Center Online Desktop Manager to be available in beta shortly. The power of choice in this scenario will be the On-Premise support model, cloud support model and the combination by the use of federation. The V1 will not have the federation options but in the 6 month update cycle federation will come available shortly after the V1.

Some of the announcements made at the keynote where Configurations Manager Service pack 2 within 60 days and of course the always interesting System Center Road map.

Will keep you posted on the latest MMS 2009 news.

Regards,
Walter Eikenboom
http://weblogwally.spaces.live.com

Today at MMS 2009 Bob Kelly presented the MMS 2009 attendees a gimp on how the Cloud will effect the future of IT and how the Microsoft Windows Server and System Center will live up to the cloud expectation. The Cloud will provide Reliable, Predictable and automated service to companies and end users to drive their business and enable the evolution of IT. But is the Cloud The evolution of IT?

The cloud will provide services and scalability for all, from managed datacenters or your own organizations server room so we are the cloud!!! With this knowledge Microsoft explained the private cloud and Public cloud scenario where federation and management integrate seamless in both clouds.

The Private cloud will be the interesting part because that’s our environment connect to the world. The change in management will be the service oriented look at the infrastructure and how to scale out using the cloud to leverage with business needs, the Dynamic IT model will provide additional investments in virtualization, security and interoperability to get connected and in control. Some of the tools needed to accomplice this where announces by Bob Kelly in the MMS 2009 Keynote:

System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 within 30 day with key futures:

• SLA monitoring
• Visio integration
• Performance dashboard
• Linux/Unix Support by the use of open standards and common discovery for all server types
• Partner investments on PRO for VMM by HP and DELL Hardware management and cross platform MP’s for Apache, MySQL, Orcale and VMWare.

Virtual Machine Manager with cloud connection (migrating offline machines to the cloud for leveraging your resources, Demo by MaximumASP) possibilities and live migration in combination with Hyper-V in Windows server 2008 R2.

Dynamic Datacenter Toolkit for Hosters available today!

Dynamic Datacenter Toolkit for Enterprises within 60 days

With all these new announcements the strategies to get your business cloud ready:

Regards,
Walter Eikenboom
http://weblogwally.spaces.live.com

One of the most anticipated features of SCCM 2007 R2 is “App-V Integration”. We have recently tested the end-to-end scenario for this integration and we can say with confidence: it BLOWS . In a nutshell, by integrating App-V with SCCM you lose App-V’s best features and reduce the solution to something that’s even worse than SCCM by itself!

So what happens when you enable the App-V/SCCM integration feature in the SCCM Management Console?

• Control of the App-V client is seized by the SCCM client. If you had App-V running on its own before you enabled the integration, you’ll notice that all App-V apps that are published through App-V’s Publishing Server are now rendered invalid. On launch you’ll get a “Unable to initialize package information (0×00000000)” error.
• You must now publish your App-V apps through SCCM as “Virtual Application Packages”. This works by importing the .XML file of the App-V package. SCCM will distribute the packages to its Distribution Points and you can enable those Distribution Points for HTTP(S) streaming.
• To get the App-V apps to your clients, you’ll have to create SCCM advertisements. Basically SCCM advertisements replace the App-V Publishing Server. The behavior of getting App-V apps to your desktop now becomes eerily similar to SCCM’s way of installing applications. No more getting your shortcuts immediately upon logon (like you get with App-V); you will have to go get a cup of coffee and hope that SCCM is willing to give you your apps today.
• If you created non-mandatory assignments, then you’ll have to go to Add/Remove Programs yourself and click “Run” for all the apps that you want. However clicking “Run” doesn’t actually run your app, it only registers the App-V app with the local App-V client. Don’t expect to see any progress bar or visual feedback that the registration actually happened; just keep scouring around in your Start Menu in hope of finding the shortcuts for your new app.
• If you created mandatory assignments, you’ll get one or more notifications from SCCM (after some time ofcourse) that SCCM has App-V apps for you that it would like to register with the local App-V client. It will do that on *every* desktop you logon to. Prepare to spend quite a bit of quality time with the SCCM Client…
• If you’re using either Windows Terminal Services or Fast User Switching in Vista, you’re SOL because the SCCM Client is allergic to terminal sessions. You’ll get a message telling you that “No programs are available to run from a Terminal Services session”. How nice. If you happen to be running the console session, you won’t notice this limitation because at the console session, everything works just fine. So make sure you also test your solution via a terminal session so you won’t get caught by surprise.

As a result of the findings described above, we were pretty disappointed with the solution and decided to reverse our decision to integrate App-V with SCCM. However we did like the idea of using SCCM Distribution Points to stream App-V apps from. So we had a go at doing a manual integration of App-V with SCCM so that we could use just the SCCM parts we wanted. The idea was inspired by Tim Mangan’s article which included this diagram:

In his article he never got around to actually testing if it was possible to stream an application that was published by App-V’s Publishing Server from an SCCM Distribution Point. He only verified that is was possible to install the App-V app through an MSI with SCCM. So we ventured to get HTTP streaming working against SCCM Distribution Points, with the shortcuts still being provided by an App-V Publishing Server. In a nutshell: it works! You do have to setup a few mechanisms to get load balancing working though.

Here is how it works:

• First and foremost: disable the App-V integration with SCCM. To do this, go to the SCCM Console -> Site Database -> Site Management -> <Site> -> Site Settings -> Client Agents -> Advertised Programs Client Agent -> Properties and make sure “Allow virtual application package advertisement” is NOT selected.
• Enable your SCCM Distribution Points for BITS, HTTP and HTTPS content transfer. To do this, go to the SCCM Console -> Site Database -> Site Management -> <Site> -> Site Settings -> Site Systems -> <your DP> -> ConfigMgr distribution point -> Properties and select “Allow clients to transfer content from this distribution point using BITS, HTTP and HTTPS”.
• We found that (at least in the RTM version of SCCM 2007 R2) you don’t have to enable “virtual application streaming” on the “Virtual Applications” tab of the distribution point to be able to stream from a SCCM DP when using our manual integration. The added benefit of this is that you can now also use Secondary Site DP’s as streaming servers!
• Set up an App-V Management Server on any server you like. You can even set it up on a SCCM server, it doesn’t matter. Use the default installation settings for the entire installation. After installation, set the Default Content Path to the following: http://%SFT_SOFTGRIDSERVER%
• Add an App-V package to SCCM for distribution and streaming:
  • Go to the SCCM Console -> Site Database -> Computer Management -> Software Distribution -> Packages -> New -> Package. Enter the information about your package and click Next. Select “This package contains source files” and set the Source Directory to the location of your App-V package and click Finish. Note that you import the App-V package as a normal SCCM package and NOT as a Virtual Application Package. Importing it as a Virtual Application Package will cause the .SFT file in the App-V package to be renamed and cause the .SFT file to be added to not 1 but 2 locations on each SCCM Distribution Point, doubling storage requirements.
  • When the package is added to SCCM, find the Package ID and use it to update the streaming location in the App-V OSD files. For each OSD file in your App-V package, update the HREF statement to HTTP://%SFT_SOFTGRIDSERVER%/SMS_DP$/SMSPKG/<your SCCM Package ID>/<name of your SFT file>
    (If you are using a File Share Distribution Point, the IIS vdir may be different than SMS_DP$. Verify the vdir name in IIS Manager and ensure that all DP’s are either standard DP’s or File Share DP’s.)
  • Now add some SCCM Distribution Points to your package so that SCCM can distribute the App-V content
• Import the same App-V package into the App-V Management Server so that you can distribute the shortcuts and set permissions:
  • On the App-V Management Server, go to the App-V Management Console, go to Applications
    -> Import Application and go to the same App-V package folder. Select the .SPRJ file and click Open. Perform your regular App-V import steps and finish the import.
  • The imported applications in the App-V Management Console should now show the correct http:// paths to both the OSD file(s) and the SFT file(s).
• That’s it! Now just configure your App-V Clients on the desktops to use your newly setup App-V Management Server by configuring a Publishing Server and use Group Policy to set the %SFT_SOFTGRIDSERVER% to the name of a SCCM Distribution Point nearby. We set this variable to DNS name that uses DNS Round Robin to distribute the load to multiple DP’s.

We email each other a lot nowadays. I spend a significant amount of time behind my Outlook client everyday. Reading and writing emails. I especially like all the “FYI” (For Your Interest) mails. Usually they are very interesting but there is no direct action required. So, you need to save this email for awhile. Your inbox grows rapidly this way and online email providers understand this. They give you a 7 Gb mailbox or more!

But your company IT department is less generous. You’ve got a 100Mb mailbox within your organisation. This means you’ll have to clean your mailbox every week at least and because you want to save a lot of mail you create your first offline archive, a PST file. A PST file will always result in loss of data. During every migration or system failure someone forgets to backup it’s PST files and has lost all his communication of the past years.

Until your IT department wakes up and puts the whole mail service in the cloud, you can use a good alternative. Put your whole email archive within a Gmail mailbox!

Some simple steps:

1. Open a new Gmail account
2. Within Gmail, go to Settings, Forwarding and POP/IMAP and enable IMAP
3. Configure your emailclient to connect with the Gmail mailbox (http://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=12913)
4. Drag and drop all the folders and mail items from your mail archive (PST file) to the Gmail mailbox (this took me a while)
5. Remove the Offline Archive and your done!

From now on drag all the emails you want to keep to the Gmail mailbox and it’s always available. You can even search your archive from an internet café, simply by going to gmail.com and logging in with your credentials.

The mail items within Outlook are also offline available and Windows Vista or 7 automatically indexes them!

I received this article from a college: Roel Janssens and I published it here with his permission.

The Virtual Hard Disk file format is getting more and more important for Microsoft (for example think Windows Azure) and with the introduction of Windows 7 Microsoft offers for the first time native VHD support. Working in Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003 you could mount a VHD with vhdmount, but the possibilities now have expanded and a lot more is going to happen in the future.

During TechEd 2008 Mark Russinovich gave a very interesting presentation called “Inside Windows 2008 R2 Virtualization Improvements and Native VHD Support”. The first hour has some nice enhancements in Hyper-V 2.0 and the last quarter Mark live demonstrates what Windows 7 is currently capable of regarding VHD.
http://www.microsoft.com/emea/teched2008/itpro/tv/default.aspx

All steps and findings in the following story are tested and confirmed working under Windows 7 Ultimate build 7000 and Windows Server 2008 R2 build 7000.

Advantages

There is no need to install additional programs when you want to create, attach or detach a VHD, this is all default built in within Disk Management. When you are working on Windows Server 2008 R2 this is an easy way to transfer data between the parent and child partition, you can see it as a “VHD Stick”. A requirement for a child partition is that a SCSI Controller is available, otherwise you can’t live (hot) attach a VHD.

Besides working in Disk Management you now have the option to install Windows 7 inside a VHD and boot from it. After that it is also possible to make differencing VHD’s based on that installation and boot from them. Some advantages and possibilities that this offers are:

- The installation of a new Operating System no longer requires you to redesign how your partitions are arranged. All that is added is one big VHD file and one boot entry. If you want to get rid of the installation those are all you have to delete.

- Differencing VHD’s make it possible to easily and safely test an upgrade to for example a new build of Windows 7. Do you like the upgrade then you can merge the differencing VHD, otherwise throw away the differencing VHD and continue to work where you left of in the original installation.

Disadvantages

Microsoft originally set the target of maximum 10% performance loss when Windows 7 is installed inside a VHD compared to a bare metal installation. They have done good work on this part because tests show that this loss is about 1 or 2 %. There is always some noise inside those tests so you can say that it nearly approaches a bare metal installation. My own experiences during the last weeks are the same; you almost never feel you are working inside a VHD.

The boot loader of Windows Vista isn’t compatible with VHD entries; if you look at those entries from within Vista you will see some ‘unknown’ parameters. If you also have Vista on your system and for some reason it starts up in Vista Repair then all boot entries referencing a VHD will be lost! Therefore it is wise to regularly make a backup of you Boot Configuration Database with bcdedit /export, that way you can always go back.

An option that has disappeared when booted from a VHD is the option to hibernate your machine. With power management you now only have the options of Sleep and Shut Down (this also happens when you enable the Hyper-V role on Windows Server 2008). Time will tell if Microsoft is going to develop or support hibernation when working with VHD’s.

Installation Windows 7 inside a VHD

To install Windows 7 inside a VHD you need at least 20GB free disk space. For now the installation is only supported on internal disks, so no external USB drives yet. In the following procedure we are going to install Windows 7 inside a 20GB VHD which we create in the directory c:\vhd. If you have an existing fixed size VHD (for example one created with Hyper-V Manager) you can use that one and skip step 05.

01 boot from Windows 7 DVD or USB
02 Shift-F10 for a command prompt
03 dir C: (of D: E: etc.) to see where your VHD-directory has gone
04 diskpart
05 create vdisk file=c:\vhd\win7.vhd type=fixed maximum=20000
06 select vdisk file=c:\vhd\win7.vhd
07 attach vdisk
08 exit
09 setup
10 install Windows 7 on the new 20GB Unallocated Space (ignore the warning)

After the installation there will be a new boot entry created where the system default will boot from. Start a command prompt with Administrator credentials and type bcdedit /v to see the newly created entry:

As you can see the two entries ‘device’ and ‘osdevice’ don’t reference a partition (e.g. with Windows Vista), but a physical file somewhere on your computer. The funny thing is when you are booted inside this installation you can look for this file with Windows Explorer; this is somewhat strange to understand when looking at it. Something else that changes is the location of the pagefile; it can’t exist within a VHD so Windows will automatically select another location for it.

Create differencing VHD

A differencing VHD is a disk that only saves the differences compared to his parent. This way you can quickly and easily test something without modifying your current installation. Currently Microsoft only supports placing both the parent and the differencing disk on the same volume, but this might change in the future. Parent disks are only used for read only operations while differencing disks perform more write operations, I can imagine placing them on separate disk subsystems optimized for read or write operations.

You can only create a differencing VHD when the parent you want to create a differencing disk from is not in use at that moment (so you can’t be booted inside your parent VHD). Following procedure again makes use of the boot functionality of the Windows 7 DVD, but you can also use a separate Windows Server 2008 installation and use Hyper-V Manager from there to create a differencing VHD. You don’t have to specify a size; this is specified by the parent.

01 boot from Windows 7 DVD or USB
02 Shift-F10 for a command prompt
03 dir C: (or D: E: etc.) to see where your VHD-directory has gone
04 diskpart
05 create vdisk file=c:\vhd\win7-diff.vhd parent=c:\vhd\win7.vhd
06 exit

99 No need to reboot right now, you can continue the next procedure at step 03

Now a differencing VHD is created with the previous Windows 7 installation as parent. The initial size of the differencing VHD will be very small, but this will grow during usage. When booted from within this differencing VHD and looking at it from within Windows Explorer you will see it’s size is the same as that from the parent. When you look at the VHD from another Operating System you will the normal size again.

Create additional boot entry

To be able to boot from previous differencing VHD you have to add an additional boot entry. You can do this from within a working Window 7 installation or again after booting from the Windows 7 DVD. The following steps can be done immediately after creating the differencing VHD.

01 boot from Windows 7 DVD or USB
02 Shift-F10 for a command prompt
03 bcdedit /v
04 bcdedit /copy {identifier-of-Windows7} /d “Windows 7 diff”
05 bcdedit /v
06 bcdedit /set {identifier-of-Windows7-diff} device vhd=[locate]\VHD\Win7-diff.vhd
07 bcdedit /set {identifier-of-Windows7-diff} osdevice vhd=[locate]\VHD\Win7-diff.vhd
08 bcdedit /v

In step 03 you have to look for the entry of Windows 7, you can Copy and Paste this identifier and use it in step 04. In step 04 the entry “Windows 7” will be copied to a new entry named “Windows 7 diff”. In step 05 you have to look for the new entry “Windows 7 diff” and Copy & Paste the identifier in step 06 and 07. In step 06 and 07 the correct parameters for ‘device’ and ‘osdevice’ will be filled in. Check the newly created “Windows 7 diff” entry with bcdedit /v

Take care of above notation, because there are some inconsistencies with the entry that is used for a normal VHD. With a normal VHD ‘device’ uses the notation device file= and with a differencing VHD we have to use device vhd=. With a normal VHD a drive letter is used, with a differencing VHD the word locate is used. A drive letter should have worked here also, but I did not manage to get that to work.

I don’t know if above inconsistencies are in fact well over thought choices by Microsoft, but I have the feeling that this is because of using beta software. With bcdedit /? /formats you get a little more information but it doesn’t give an explanation about the difference between the formats. I tried many other combinations but above screenshot is the only one found 100% working.

Merge differencing VHD

If you tried something out in a differencing VHD and you are satisfied with the result then you can merge this information in the parent VHD. You might have created a long differencing VHD chain, you can specify the depth to which you want to merge.

01 boot from Windows 7 DVD or USB
02 Shift-F10 for a command prompt
03 dir C: (or D: E: etc.) to see where your VHD-directory has gone
04 diskpart
05 select vdisk file=c:\vhd\win7-diff.vhd depth=2
06 merge vdisk depth=1
07 exit

In step 05 you have to select the differencing VHD with a depth greater than or equal to the depth of step 06. In this example we merge one level back.

Delete above experiments

Are you ready testing and do you want to get rid of the obsolete boot entries? Start a command prompt with Administrator credentials and delete them with bcdedit /delete {identifier-of-entry-to-be-deleted} Delete the physical VHD file(s) from your hard drive and everything is gone without leaving a trace.

Links

Virtual Hard Disk Image Format Specification
http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/f/e/ffef50a5-07dd-4cf8-aaa3-442c0673a029/Virtual%20Hard%20Disk%20Format%20Spec_10_18_06.doc

Inside Windows 2008 R2 Virtualization Improvements and Native VHD Support
http://www.microsoft.com/emea/teched2008/itpro/tv/default.aspx