Looks like Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell are up to their old tricks again, with an awesome new tool called Disk2VHD.

From the web site:

Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk - Microsoft’s Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). The difference between Disk2vhd and other physical-to-virtual tools is that you can run Disk2vhd on a system that’s online. Disk2vhd uses Windows’ Volume Snapshot capability, introduced in Windows XP, to create consistent point-in-time snapshots of the volumes you want to include in a conversion. You can even have Disk2vhd create the VHDs on local volumes, even ones being converted (though performance is better when the VHD is on a disk different than ones being converted).

Disk2VHD can run on Windows XP SP2 and higher, as well as Windows Server 2003 and higher.

Awesome work, Mark and Bryce!

Of course you do.  And in this episode of the Virtualization Nation Podcast, I’ll show you how. 

But first, a little background.

Earlier today, I posted a description of the new Native VHD integration in Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 on the Windows Virtualization Team blog, along with a link to a nifty little Powershell script called Install-WindowsImage.ps1 which I’ll talk about some other time.  The main point of that post was to start getting the word out about Native VHD Boot.

So, what’s so special about this?

Well, put yourself in the shoes of a corporate network administrator (though, when I was a network admin, I didn’t wear shoes all that often).  It’s really very common for a company to have a “base” Operating System image that they can apply to a server or workstation.  This image is usually tweaked with some software and/or patches installed, or is specially configured in some other way.

If that’s the case, it’s possible that you would need to maintain two (or more) images: one for virtual machines (probably a VHD), and one for physical machines (maybe a WIM or a Ghost file).

With Native VHD Boot, you can finally have one, single base image that works everywhere.  Your VHD can be booted in virtual machines, just like it always did, and it can also be used to boot your physical servers. 

Ok, let’s get right to the heart of this thing.

To boot from a VHD, you need the following things:

• A physical machine with the Windows 7 boot loader on it.
• A VHD with a SKU of Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7 (Enterprise and Ultimate only – sorry), or Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2.

Now, you’ve got those things ready, right?  You’re all set?  You’ve read the VHD FAQ? Cool. 

Ok.  You can find instructions on how to configure your computer on various web pages and videos, but they all seem pretty lengthy.

Want something simple?  Something easy to remember?

Of course you do.

You can watch me run through the steps in the video below, or download it here.

For those of you who don’t want to download a video for a “simple” command, here are the Cliff’s Notes:

1. Get to an elevated or WinPE command prompt.
2. Use your favorite VHD-creation method to install Windows in a VHD.
3. Use DiskPart or DiskMgmt.msc to attach your VHD as a drive on your computer, and give it a drive letter (V:\ for example).
4. Run BCDBOOT.EXE  V:\Windows
5. Sit back, relax, and reboot your computer to start booting into your new OS.

Important Notes:

1. If you’re booting to a Dynamically Expanding VHD, make sure that you have enough room on your physical disk to hold the VHD as if it were fully expanded to its maximum size.  If you don’t have enough space, you’ll get a bugcheck during boot.
2. Hibernation is disabled when booted to a VHD.
3. You can’t boot to a VHD that lives on a network share or a removable storage device.

Some of you may remember that, a long while ago, I asked what sort of things you'd like to see in a Virtualization-themed podcast.  Though it's been over a year since that post, I've still been thinking about starting a podcast and talking with other people on my team about getting one together.  The reaction has been positive so far.  There are quite a few folks who seem interested in putting something together.

However, we haven't gotten down to planning any of the solid details quite yet, so a regular podcast is still aways off.  But there's really no reason why I have to wait for everyone else... and so, I give you the first episode of The Virtualization Nation Podcast.  Episode 2.

Wait, what?

Well, since I promised all of you some more WIM2VHD videos, and since I'm nearly gotten the whole process down (I wound up buying Sony's Vegas Movie Studio Platinum, or whatever it's called... and it crashes a lot.  Like, really a lot.), I deciced to start releasing them as video podcasts.  As such, we're just going to call the first WIM2VHD video I made 'Episode 1', and go from there.

So there you have it:  We're not ready to start doing this regularly yet, and the format is likely to change around a lot, and we don't have the whole XML feed thing set up quite yet... but the next episode is ready!

Click here to download the .WMV file.

The webbernetz are abuzz with news that a new version of Ubuntu has been released today.  As such, I figured that I should post instructions on how to get it going under Hyper-V.

Now, I know that these steps are pretty complex, so I'll try to use as much detail as I can when writing them out.

Step 1.  Download the ISO for Ubuntu.
Step 2.  Create a VM and attach the ISO to it.  Use a Legacy Network Adapter if you need network access.
Step 3.  Turn the VM on.
Step 4.  Follow the on-screen instructions.

That's it.  It works right "out of the box", so to speak. 

Enjoy!

Every now and then, I like to visit the WIM2VHD website and see how many people have downloaded it.  Aside from the ego boost, it’s a nice little figure to pass on to my management so they can see that this project was worth the time that I’ve spent on it.  But yeah, it’s mostly the ego boost :)

Last night, I decided to check the download count before I went to bed, and I saw something that made me very, very happy:  at around 10:30 PM PDT last night, there were about 1030 downloads.

That’s right – over 1000 downloads in about 45 days.  Now, when compared to other projects – like Hyper-V – 1000 downloads in a month and a half is not earth shattering.   But Hyper-V had marketing behind it.  People knew that Hyper-V was coming – it was demoed at conferences and by news outlets.  WIM2VHD was a surprise (and I hope it was a pleasant one).

It’s very humbling to know that something I’ve been working on is useful to you, and is (hopefully) helping you use Windows and virtualization more efficiently.

So, to all of the people out there who have downloaded and used WIM2VHD; to all of the people who have blogged about it; tweeted about it, or told co-workers about it; and to everyone who joined the “Fans of WIM2VHD” group on Facebook:

Thank you!

So, seeing how many people have downloaded WIM2VHD – How are you guys using it?  Are you just playing around with it, or has it actually helped you be more productive?  I’d love to know, so if you don’t mind sharing your stories and experiences please leave a comment letting me know.

Again, thank you all very, very much.

This is a pretty common question on our internal mailing lists, and I’d imagine that it’s common outside of Microsoft as well, so I thought it would make a nice blog post (since I’m way behind on blogging…).

So, you have a VM that’s joined to a domain and working perfectly.  You take a snapshot so you can restore to this magical point of workingness at any time, and life is good.

One day, you need to fire up this VM and test something, so you revert to your snapshot and start the VM.  That’s when you’re told that the domain doesn’t trust your (virtual) workstation anymore.  What the heck just happened?  No changes were made to the snapshot!  That’s why it’s called a snapshot!  Why did this break?

Well, you’re right.  No changes were made to snapshot, and that’s part of the problem.

It’s part of the default Active Directory domain policies for a domain member to change the password for it’s account every now and then.  You’ve no doubt had to change the password for your User Account occasionally, so this shouldn’t be a surprise.  What may be a surprise is that the same thing happens for Computer Accounts.  That’s right – computers have accounts, too.

Every now and then (by default, it’s 30 days, but the value is configurable via domain policy), the workstation will negotiate a new password with the domain.  It all happens behind the scenes, so you’d never know it.  It just works.

Unless you, you know, have a domain-joined VM with snapshots.

The problem comes about because the workstation – at some point – negotiated a new password with the domain and recorded it for future use.  Then the snapshot was applied, and you turned your VM into a time traveler.  This VM from the past was brought into the future, and has no knowledge of anything that happened in the interim.  So, it thinks that it’s old password is still good.  And it tries to use that password.  And the domain says “um, no”.

Well that’s stupid.  Why does Hyper-V let this happen?

It’s not just Hyper-V.  Many years ago, in my previous life as a network admin, this happened all the time to my VMWare images.  The same thing will happen in any situation where you convince Windows that the computer account password is something that it’s not (like restoring a snapshot or any other kind of backup).

Fine.  What can I do about this?

There are three possibilities that I’m aware of.  If anyone has any other suggestions, please feel free to leave them in the comments.

1. If you can, change the default domain policy, or get an exception created for your computer account(s).
   This is not the best option because it opens up a security hole (small as it may be).
   
2. Log into a local administrator account on the system and leave the domain.  Then rejoin it.  The computer account will get updated with a new password that your workstation knows.  Alternately, you could use NETDOM.EXE to reset the computer account password.
   You could even automate this if you need to.
   
3. Sysprep the VM and create an unattend file that will configure it to your liking, and that will automatically join the domain for you.  Once the machine is sysprep’d, make a snapshot and restore to that one from now on.

Hope that helps.