Moving Hyper-V VMs

Ok, in my never-ending attempt to keep all electronic files for the Deron S. Dilger Presidential Library, I added another TB of storage to the home LAN. I put it in the Windows Server 2008 box that has become my primary server. As this machine is acting as the Hyper-V Virtual Host for several VMs running on GTech's LAN, I wanted to get a second SATA drive in this box to try and get some better performance outta the VMs who were running from the system drive.

Anyway, got the 1TB drive added and formated and ran Robocopy to move a bunch of stuff (including the VM folders/files) off the C drive. Last time I moved around my Hyper-V VMs I had to export them and re-import them in Hyper-V Manager to get the type of directory structure I wanted (i.e. to keep the VM's XML and VHD files in their own folders for ease of grouping and backup). This time I figured there had to be an easier way.

Not only did I (ok, Google) find this great explanation of how Hyper-V Manager keeps track of "its" VMs, that link in turn pointed to a freeware utility (DiMASoft's Hyper-V File Manager Utility) that makes the whole moving of HV VMs super easy. I was cursing at Hyper-V at first, especially now that I've also been running VMWare for the last few months. Much easier to move around VM folders/files with VMWare! But now with this utility, I'm back to feeling like Hyper-V and VMWare are comparable (for my purposes).

I also learned about mklink. Plan to use that tool more to organize my electronic rat's nest. Let's hear it for abtractions and vitualizations.

Virtualize On, Baby!