Paul Thurrott - Windows 8 Secrets

Figure 14-9:Hyper-V Manager

Hyper-V Manager is such a feature rich application that describing all of its features would require a book in its own right. But here are the top things you can do with this utility:

• Connect to other PCs or servers:While you can of course work solely on your PC, you can also connect to other Hyper-V installs on other PCs or servers in your environment. In fact, you can connect to multiple Hyper-Vs, which is useful for copying virtual machines from machine to machine, within Hyper-V Manager, using drag and drop.

• Create a virtual machine:The primary function of Client Hyper-V, of course, concerns the creation and configuration of virtual machines, or VMs. To create a new virtual machine, click New and then Virtual Machine in the Actions pane and then step through the wizard to complete the action. Each virtual machine can be configured with a name, (dynamic) RAM allotment, a network, one or more virtual hard disks (VHDs), and an attached installation media (which can be a physical disc, an ISO, or other source).

Don’t have Hyper-V Manager? You can also create VHDs from Disk Management. From that application, choose Action, Create VHD.

• Create and manage a virtual hard disk:Separate from your virtualized environments, you can create and then edit virtual disks that can be used by any of these environments (or accessed as physical disks from the host OS—your PC—using a new VHD shell integration feature we’ll describe shortly). To create a new VHD, click New and then Virtual Hard Disk in the Actions pane and then step through the wizard. Note that Client Hyper-V now supports the newer VHDX format, which provides support for virtual disks up to 64 TB. But VHDX is not supported in OSes earlier than Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. Also, VHDs can (and should be) configured to be dynamically sized. That way, a 2 TB virtual disk—which appears as a single file to the host system—won’t take up much too much disk space unless you later fill it up with content. To edit a virtual disk, select Edit Disk from the Actions pane.

• Create and manage virtual switches and SANs:Useful in both testing and production environments, you can create and manage both virtual switches—external, internal, or private networks—and virtual SANs, which emulate a corporate storage area network.

• Manage virtual machines:Once you’ve created a virtual machine, you can access its settings and configure far more features than were available in the New Virtual Machine wizard. Among other features you can configure are the device boot order, the memory (RAM), the number of virtual processor cores, the attached hard disks (which can be virtual or physical), and much, much more. As you can see in Figure 14-10, virtual machines come with a dizzying array of settings.

• Install and run an operating system in virtual machines:At some point, you are of course going to need to install an operating system in that virtual machine, configure it to your liking, and then possibly install applications within it. You do so as you do when installing Windows or other OSes on a physical PC, except in this case it’s running virtually and is accessible in a window as shown in Figure 14-11.

• Import and export virtual machines:If you’ve created a virtual machine in another instance of Hyper-V, you can use the Import functionality to import it to whatever machine you’re connected to (the host PC or a remote PC). Likewise, you can export virtual machines so they can be used elsewhere. You may do this, for example, when you’ve completed configuring a VM and would like to deploy it to a product server.

Figure 14-10:Settings for a virtual machine

Hyper-V is a one-stop shop for creating and managing virtual machines and other virtual resources, but sometimes all you need to do is connect to a virtual machine, which can be found on your own PC or in a Hyper-V install on a different PC or server in your environment. When you want to just work with a single virtual machine that’s already created and configured, you can use Hyper-V Virtual Machine Connection (VMC) instead of Hyper-V Manager.

As you can see in Figure 14-12, VMC looks an awful lot like the desktop version of the Remote Desktop Connection utility from Windows 7 (which can be found in Windows 8 as well).

To connect to a virtual machine, you’ll need to select the server first. This can be a bit tiresome; if you don’t see the server name in the top drop-down list (named Server), choose the option called Browse for more, then click Advanced and then Find Now to search the local network for Hyper-V servers.

Figure 14-11:Virtual machines are often run in a window so you can access the host machine simultaneously.

Figure 14-12:Virtual Machine Connection

Then, select the virtual machine you wish to use from the Virtual Machine drop-down list and click OK to connect. When you do, VMC will resemble the Virtual Machine Connection window shown back in Figure 14-11. This gives you the opportunity to interactively access the virtual OS and its virtual apps and resources in a window on your host PC.

If it’s configured correctly, you can also connect to a virtual machine using Remote Desktop Connection (RDC). By configured correctly, we mean that it’s attached to the same network and includes remote desktop host functionality (see later in the chapter) that is enabled. You’ll also need the VM’s host name or IP address and the proper sign-in credentials.

Windows 8 now offers direct shell integration with VHD files, letting you seamlessly “mount” them as if they were physical disks and then browse through them using File Explorer. To do so, all you need to do is locate the VHD file in question in the filesystem—remember, you can create them with Hyper-V manager—and then double-click it in File Explorer. (Or, right-click and choose Mount.)

When you do, the VHD is mounted and made accessible as the next available drive letter, much as is the case when you insert a USB drive or memory stick. This can be seen in Figure 14-13.

Figure 14-13:Mounting a VHD as if it were a physical disk

OK, fine. But why do this? Working in virtual environments can sometimes be a lot slower than doing so with physical PCs and disks. By bridging the gap—accessing a virtual disk from your host, physical PC—you can perform actions like bulk file copies more quickly than if you do so from within a virtual OS. When you’re done, simply right-click the disk in Explorer and choose Eject to unmount it.

We describe Windows 8’s VHD shell integration further in Chapter 4.