microsoft-hyper-v-manage-from-windows-7-pro
Hyper-V Management Tools
A prerequisite for Windows 7 is the Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 (RSAT)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=7d2f6ad7-656b-4313-a005-4e344e43997d
After installing the software use Control Panel -> Programs -> Turn Windows Feature on/off This will allow you to add the checkboxes for Remote Server Administration Tools Hyper V and Server Manager
Hyper-V mmc is pretty straight forward, connect
First you want to use the Virtual Network Manager to create a virtual network (so your virtual machines can connect to your host adapter(s) External (allow management OS to share)
Going through the "New Virtual Machine" wizard is easy (but not a whole lot of options which isn't so great for a professional)
Unfortunately creating a new Virtual Hard Disk takes a LOOONNNNGGG time because of security reasons it apparently zeroes out all of the allocated disk (memset anyone?)
Ever clever M$ don't actually bother to give you a progress bar... 20GB takes from 9:00
Allow Server Manager Remote Management = using the dos menu program on your Virtual Host
on the CLIENT, Server Manager -> connect to remote Server
but it gives me all sorts of unavailable and access denied errors.
rdp into the test-server and at the dos prompt you can search all subdirs cd c:\ dir *.vhd /s
amazingly there are fun hidden folders in c:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Hyper-V
that you can't see with dir... but you can cd into!
at only 43,000 bytes after one hour... hmmm...
cancelling the new disk creation seems to hang the Virtual Machien Wizard...
I will try creating a .vhd quickly and insecure and then wiping the data... (zero fill utility afterwards if necessary)
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/vhdtool
Create a new 10 GB fixed VHD in the current directory. VhdTool.exe /create "c:\Program Files\MyApp\foo.vhd" 10737418240
Convert an existing flat image file into a VHD & do not output status to the command line. VhdTool.exe /convert bar.img /quiet
Extend an existing fixed format VHD to a larger size. VhdTool.exe /extend foo.vhd 21474836480
Repair a Hyper-V snapshot chain broken by expanding the base VHD. VhdTool.exe /repair base.vhd base_EF2F9402-E85B-402F-A979-631CB287C2C4.avhd
NEVERMIND, DON'T USE HYPER-V as it is not easy to use, not very compatible with other OS', and isn't fully mature.
If M$ wasn't so concerned with limiting the features and making money they might actually catch up to VMWare (and VirtualBox)...
e.g. The bare metal hyper-v install should have a management platform built in. (It doesn't have to be GUI, see how well Xen, qemu, and VBoxManage work!)
The menu should allow making a Virtual Network (aka bridged / NAT ) with a virtual adapter during machine creation
Virtual Disks shouldn't take hours (24+ hours!), use Dynamic allocation and if you're worried about security give people a "make this secure but really slow" option. Also don't have a "msdn developer code" to "fix it" tool, just build a "zero hard drive tool" you can import into the Virtual Machine.
The list goes on and on...