Posts Tagged ‘hyper-v’
Top 12 referrers over the past 3 months
Here are the Top 12 referrers to our blog over the past 3 months, the numbers of referrals are in parentheses.
- http://pro-linux.de/berichte/ext4/ext4.html (546)
- http://dabcc.com/article.aspx?id=9653 (342)
- http://networksecuritytoolkit.org/nst/index.html (110)
- http://polishlinux.org/apps/cli/ext4-defragmentation-with-e4defrag/ (59)
- http://communities.vmware.com/thread/189804?tstart=0 (49)
- http://techblog.41concepts.com/2008/03/31/shrink-your-windows-disk-image-on-wmware-fusion-mac/ (42)
- http://blog.rightscale.com/2009/01/09/amazon-launches-ec2-console/ (37)
- http://wordpress.com/tag/vhd/ (33)
- http://wordpress.com/tag/vmdk/ (32)
- http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2009/01/updated-homebrew-esx-hardware-list.html (32)
- http://blogs.msdn.com/heaths/archive/2005/07/30/445621.aspx (32)
- http://kakku.wordpress.com/2008/06/23/virtualbox-shrink-your-vdi-images-space-occupied-disk-size/ (31)
Thank you for the referrals. Hope the content is meaningful for our readers.
How to convert a VMWare VMDK to a Microsoft, Xen VHD?
- How to convert a big VMWare VMDK to a Hyper-V VHD?
- WinImage VMDK to VHD converter for Microsoft Virtual PC and Virtual Server
- VirtualToolkit VMDK to VHD converter for Xen
- VHD to VMDK: There does not seem to be a demand for this.
A Brief Primer on Virtualization
I went through this process of discovery over the past three weeks and felt I should share my learning with you.
What is virtualization?
Virtualization is the technology that allows you to run several different OS’es, each of which is independently running on a dedicated (virtual) machine, concurrently on the same physical machine.
Wikipedia describes different types of virtualization
How is virtualization realized?
A hypervisor is the software layer that virtualizes the underlying host OS and hardware to allow multiple operating systems to run concurrently on the same physical machine. You can read about the hypervisor in depth here.
Which are the primary virtualization technologies in use commercially?
There are principally three arms vendors for virtual machines, VMWare, Microsoft and Xen. Their technologies differ in subtle but important ways.
VMWare implements full virtualization. The VMWare hypervisor simulates the underlying x86 hardware completely so that Windows and Linux variants designed for the x86 architectcure can run unmodified within individual VMWare virtual machines.
Microsoft and Xen implement paravirtualization. The hypervisor exposes a software interface to virtual machines that is similar but not identical to that of the underlying OS/hardware. The calls supported by this interface are called hypercalls, analogous to the OS syscalls. Paravirtualization simplifies the design and implementation of the hypervisor and virtual machines that run on them can achieve performance closer to non-virtualized hardware. However, the downside is that operating systems must be explicitly ported to run on top of such a hypervisor.
Microsoft’s Hyper-V hypervisor, introduced in Windows 2008, supports Windows 2008, 2003, 2000 and SuSe Linux Enterprise Server 10 as guests,
How are these systems architected?
VMWare:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc768520.aspx
How do the VM’s differ?
VMware uses the vmdk file format
The set of files necessary for VMWare VM
Microsoft and Xen use the vhd file format.
Virtual Machine Disk Image Compression
Experience with running out of storage
Background about sparse files, Windows NTFS and VHD
- NTFS Compression, sparse files and operations on them
- UNIX sparse files
- Be Careful with VHDs and Windows XP Compressed Folders
- Why do VHD’s grow?
- What is a VHD file, what is a disk image?
VHD Pre-Compactor & Compactor
When you create a new VM you can pre-allocate all the storage in one shot or let the storage grow on demand. In the latter case, the VM uses a sparse file
- Compact your Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 VHD Files
- Compressing Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 VHD files
- Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 by Roger Dittner, David Rule, Jr., Ken Majors
- How to compress Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 hard disks
- Compressing Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 Images
- Compressing Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V disk images
VMDK Wipe & Shrink
- Wipe & Shrink
- Enable compression on individual .vmdk files
- Issues
3rd Party (Not from MSFT & VMW)
- Raxco Software
- Parallels Compressor
- Desktop Version
- Server Version
Rsync: for transferring files between machines
Research
Compressing Virtual Images
Experience with running out of storage
Background about sparse files, Windows NTFS and VHD
- NTFS Compression, sparse files and operations on them
- UNIX sparse files
- Be Careful with VHDs and Windows XP Compressed Folders
- Why do VHD’s grow?
- What is a VHD file, what is a disk image?
VHD Pre-Compactor & Compactor
When you create a new VM you can pre-allocate all the storage in one shot or let the storage grow on demand. In the latter case, the VM uses a sparse file
- Compact your Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 VHD Files
- Compressing Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 VHD files
- Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 by Roger Dittner, David Rule, Jr., Ken Majors
- How to compress Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 hard disks
- Compressing Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 Images
- Compressing Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V disk images
VMDK Wipe & Shrink
- Wipe & Shrink
- Enable compression on individual .vmdk files
- Issues
3rd Party (Not from MSFT & VMW)
- Raxco Software
- Parallels Compressor
- Desktop Version
- Server Version
Rsync: for transferring files between machines
Research
