Thursday, February 04, 2010

The virtualization of Windows 7

Just like when Vista first launched and I rolled out a couple of Vista's right at the very early beginning of busy season, I'm doing it again with Windows 7.  But this time I'm adding a bit of virtualization.  Key to a succesful migration is keeping an image of that old deskop around just in case.  In the past I would use storagecraft to image the drives.  Not anymore.  The current recipe is as follows:

1.  I copy of http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx.  Download it and make a image vhd copy of the original XP hard drive.

2.  I copy of a virtual hard drive resizing tool should the original PC be larger than 127 gigs. http://vmtoolkit.com/files/folders/converters/entry87.aspx  Shrink down the vhd.

3.  A spare server.  Now in the past I would buy a separate harddrive and put it inside the new workstation to be the respository of the virtual old machine, but with the HyperV/Virtual Machine/XP Mode technology I can just plop that vhd drive on a spare file server somewhere.

4.  Now you can use Windows Easy Transfer to move stuff, but you can also merely go into the Windows 7 interface and merely attach that built VHD

Read more: THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS "DIVA"

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