Starting back in 2006, I wrote a post about how to enable Aero Glass support for Virtual Machines by using Remote Desktop / Terminal Services.  Last August, I wrote another post describing how Windows Virtual PC for Windows 7 is able to make Aero Glass happen in a Virtual Machine (hint – also Remote Desktop).  So what more could I possibly have to say on the subject?

Well, remember when Microsoft bought Calista Technologies back in 2008?  Today, we’ve finally announced the results of that purchase: RemoteFX, an amazing set of technologies for enabling VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) with Hyper-V.

RemoteFX is an enhancement to the Remote Desktop Protocols that enhance the end-user experience in a VM, providing “full-fidelity video with 100% coverage for all media types and highly-synchronized audio, rich media support including Silverlight and 3D graphics, and of course, Windows Aero [support].”

Check out Max’s post for more information, or watch the videos from Microsoft’s Desktop Virtualization Hour.

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!

The other day, Ben Armstrong posted the steps for installing Windows PowerShell on Hyper-V Server 2008 R2.  How awesome is that?  A real, modern, powerful shell on Hyper-V Server!

It should be noted that this also works on Windows Server 2008 R2 Core SKUs, so if you’re running Hyper-V on one of those, you can also use this trick.

So why is this cool?

Well, first of all, if you install PowerShell on a Server Core SKU, you can use a new and more powerful tool for installing and configuring server roles and features.

To do this, you need to load the Server Manager module into your shell with the following command:

Import-Module ServerManager

You can get a list of the new cmdlets that this module provides by running:

Get-Module ServerManager

So, if you’re on a Windows Server SKU, you can install all of your roles or features this way.  To install Hyper-V, you would use this command:

Add-WindowsFeature Hyper-V

Ok, that’s cool and all, but it’s not that spectacular.  So how about being able to actually interact with Hyper-V from this shell?  Even on Server Core or Hyper-V Server 2008 R2?

Check out James O’Neill’s PSHyperV project over on CodePlex.  If you download this library, you can interact with Hyper-V directly from your Core console. 

The first thing to remember is that you need to dot-source the HyperV.ps1 script so that all of the functions remain in memory, like so:

. .\hyperv.ps1

After you do that, you’ll get a list of all of the new functions and filters that this library provides.  Just as an example, you can create and configure a VM with these commands:

$vm = New-VM -name “MyVM”
Set-VMMemory -vm $vm -memory 2GB
Set-VMCPUCount -vm $vm -CPUCount 2
# some other logic to create a hard drive, or attach an existing one.
Start-VM -vm $vm -wait

It was my New Years Resolution that I’d do an average of 2 blog posts per week this year.  So far, I haven’t been doing a very good job of that, but I think I have a good excuse.  I’ve been very busy with preparing to release a new tool, and now, I can finally announce it.

Fine citizens of the Virtualization Nation: I present to you the Windows® Image to Virtual Hard Disk Converter, or WIM2VHD as I like to call it.

WIM2VHD is a tool that will create a bootable VHD from a specified Windows 7 or 2008 R2 WIM image (like the INSTALL.WIM file that ships on the installation DVDs) without having to run Windows Setup.  That means that you can a Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 virtual machine up and running much, much faster.

You can use these VHDs in Virtual PC, Virtual Server, Hyper-V, and … some other things, too.  We’ll talk more about that later.

You can get WIM2VHD here. 

I’ve done my best at creating some good documentation for WIM2VHD, which is available from the link above.  Please make sure that you read the docs.  If you have any questions, feel free to start a discussion thread at the WIM2VHD site.

Here’s a video I made introducing WIM2VHD, and showing it in action.  More are one the way.

Please be aware, however, that while the underlying process of creating the VHDs is supported by Microsoft, WIM2VHD is not.

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The Remote Desktop application in Windows has a nifty little feature where you can save all of your custom settings for a specific remote computer to a single .RDP file, and then just use that .RDP file as a shortcut to connect to that remote computer instantly.

VMConnect, which is the name of the application that you use to connect to the console session of a Hyper-V Virtual Machine, doesn’t have that option. 

Curses!  What is an administrator to do!?!

Well, if your VM is running Windows, you could always Remote Desktop directly into the guest OS, but that won’t connect you directly to the console (i.e. you won’t be able to watch the VM boot).

But there’s a better way.  VMConnect allows you to specify the name of the Hyper-V server and the name of the VM you want to connect to on the command line.

So, let’s say that you have a Hyper-V Server called “MyHost” and a VM called “My Guest” that you want to connect to quickly.  All you need to do is create a shortcut that points to VMConnect.exe with the following syntax:

Remember to use quotes around the VM name if it contains spaces!  Also, if the VM exists on the same machine as the one you’re creating the shortcut on, you can use the name “localhost” for the server.

Click Next, name the shortcut whatever you want, and you’re good to go.

In the RC0 release of Hyper-V, you may recall, you had to use the same QFE to Windows Server 2008 host and guest machines to get the Integration Component versions matching.

In RTM, you simply need to choose the Insert Integration Services Setup Disk option from the Action menu in VMConnect, just like you do for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Vista.

However, after you get the ICs working and you connect up to Windows Update, the Hyper-V QFE for Windows Server 2008 (KB950050) is still listed.  That little logical paradox causes you to check which QFEs are actually installed on your system, and you find that KB950050 isn't in that list.

What sort of crazy voodoo magic is this?

Well, according to Occam's Razor, the simplest answer is typically the correct one.

The simplest answer in this case is that Windows isn't lying - KB950050 isn't installed.  For RTM (actually, this happened in RC1), we added another QFE to the mix so that the standard way of installing the ICs (the VMGuest.ISO, which is what gets inserted into the VM's DVD-ROM drive when you click Insert Integration Services Setup Disk) worked for Windows Server 2008.

Since the RTM update actually contains an updated VMGuest.ISO file, it would be impossible for us to put the RTM update in the ISO (it's a classic "chicken-and-egg" problem). 

So, we added another QFE that just contains the Integration Components and nothing else to make life easier for all of you.  You can still apply KB950050 if you want to.  In fact, you can just apply KB950050 if that's your thing.  Or, if you want to be totally up to date, you can apply both of them.

Ok, now I'm really going to the ship party.  Honest.