In modern operating systems, including Windows, application programs and many system processes always reference memory using virtual memory addresses which are automatically translated to real (RAM) addresses by the hardware. Only core parts of the operating system kernel bypass this address translation and use real memory addresses directly.
Virtual Memory is always in use, even when the memory required by all running processes does not exceed the amount of RAM installed on the system. Continue reading →
When you create a Microsoft Virtual Hard Drive either through Virtual PC or Virtual Server, you have to specify the maximum size of the file up front. While you can set the VHD to be a fixed or dynamically sized file, the total size the VHD is determined at the time you create it. Over time, however, you may want to increase the total size of the VHD file as requirements for the system change to allow more space for installed programs and data files. Continue reading →
At work, we are still strictly using Windows XPSP3 as our desktop OS. However, as I’m an avid home user of Windows 7, I was very keen to try it out as my main work OS.
I was also particularly interested in testing Windows XP Mode, to run some of our legacy business applications that aren’t currently supported in Windows 7.
I didn’t want to start messing around with disk partitioning, and so decided to find if it was possible to use Native VHD Boot on my Windows XP machine.
Luckily, via Mark Wilson’s excellent blog, I found this guest post written by Garry Martin that showed just how easy it was to “Native VHD Boot on Windows XP” and my work PC is now dual-booting Windows XPSP3& Windows 7 Enterprise. What makes this approach a great alternative to partitioning your drive and setting up a traditional dual-booting system, is that it can be set-up and removed very quickly — so it is an ideal set-up for testing. Continue reading →
I have been looking for an easy way to create bootable VHD images, to help speed up the deployment of virtual machines.
After some searching, I found the Windows Image to Virtual Hard Disk Converter (aka WIM2VHD) — a free command line tool from Microsoft that “allows you to create sysprepped VHD images from any Windows 7 installation source.”
Not only does it work for Windows 7 installation sources, it apparently also works for Windows Server 2008 R2 installation sources, although I have yet to test that.
Dynamic Memory — a long awaited enhancement to Hyper-V — is finally on it’s way in Hyper-V R2SP1.
Ben Armstrong (aka Virtual PC Guy) recently gave a presentation at TechEd about Dynamic Memory — he has kindly posted a copy of his presentation on his blog.
TechNet’s Channel 9 also posted a video to demo Dynamic Memory.
In this video, Matt McSpirit walks through the initial installation and configuration of the RDS Session Host (traditional Terminal Server) in a Windows Server 2008 R2 environment.
He enables the roles, sets up the initial bits, and then goes on to show some of the different ways to deploy RDS Applications, also know as RDS RemoteApp.
This video discusses the Microsoft Server Virtualisation R2 Technologies, which includes aspects such as Hyper-V as part of Windows Server 2008 R2 and also Hyper-V Server 2008 R2
