We have a windows 2008 R2 server enterprise OS installed on a machine with a
vt capable cpu. I understand from the hyper-v documents we can run 4 virtual
copies of the server so we decided to explore what this might do for us. So
I installed the hyper-v role on the server, and that seems to have worked
fine. But what now.....
I now want to install more copies of the 2008 server. Is there a way of
cloning the current os install ? If not what is the process of adding a new
copy of 2008 server ? If I'm adding 3 copies can I simplify this process ?

Can anyone point me to a good overview of how this virtualisation concept
works, including how the network, hard disk storage etc are
configured/shared in this environment ? I'm looking for some information on
how virtual machines/virtual network/virtual hard disks work together in the
hyper-v world, and how these relate to the physical server which is running
hyper-v and other roles already. I find a lot of the documents on the ms
website not useful unless you already know a lot about virtualisation.



Tony

TechNet is the best resource for general Hyper-V documentation. Most books
on Server 2008 cover this (including mine).

As for "cloning" your parent partition - not recommended, since the only
role in the parent partititon (host) should be hyper-v. This allows 4
additional Windows Server 2008 R2 virtual machines as guests. For these,
open the Hyper-V manager, and create them. Follow the wizard, it makes it
pretty easy. Once you've created the first VM, you could use standard
automated deployment techniques to create additional VMs, but for only three
additional, I'd not bother.

You also have the option of using System Center Virtual Machine Manager.
This is a powerful and fairly easy to use tool that gives you complete
control of your virtualization environment. But again, probably overkill for
a single host and 4 guests.

--
Charlie.
http://msmvps.com/blogs/russel




"tonyb61" <tonyb61@newsgroup> wrote in message
news:F0F3D8E4-8D21-4246-82F8-EA74D406A49F@newsgroup

> We have a windows 2008 R2 server enterprise OS installed on a machine with
> a vt capable cpu. I understand from the hyper-v documents we can run 4
> virtual copies of the server so we decided to explore what this might do
> for us. So I installed the hyper-v role on the server, and that seems to
> have worked fine. But what now.....
> I now want to install more copies of the 2008 server. Is there a way of
> cloning the current os install ? If not what is the process of adding a
> new copy of 2008 server ? If I'm adding 3 copies can I simplify this
> process ?
>
> Can anyone point me to a good overview of how this virtualisation concept
> works, including how the network, hard disk storage etc are
> configured/shared in this environment ? I'm looking for some information
> on how virtual machines/virtual network/virtual hard disks work together
> in the hyper-v world, and how these relate to the physical server which is
> running hyper-v and other roles already. I find a lot of the documents on
> the ms website not useful unless you already know a lot about
> virtualisation.
>
> Tony