![]() ![]() If you think about it, that’s pretty cool.ĭisk2vhd can take quite a while (i.e., 8-10 hours) to run, so I tried to make my plan where it would run overnight. Systems Internals has a great tool called disk2vhd, which can create a virtual disk from a physical disk - even storing the virtual disk image on the physical disk it’s imaging, while the physical disk is running the OS running disk2vhd. We’ll see how well this worked in a moment, but first I’ll mention the tool which kicked off this whole adventure. The plan at this point was to virtualize each machine to a different version of Virtual PC (running on different OSes and hardware). In my case, both machines had hard drives much smaller than that, so it wasn’t a problem. One limitation with Virtual PC is that it can only handle 127 GB hard drives. Microsoft still has Virtual PC 2007 available for download, and SP1 added support for machines without virtualization hardware (which is just what I needed). I was a bit apprehensive about the new server Server 2008 isn’t an officially supported platform for the previous version of Virtual PC (“Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 SP1”), but it turned out to work fine. ![]() The new office machine runs Win7 Pro, which is fully supported by the current version of Virtual PC (“Windows Virtual PC”). So, I decided to try using Virtual PC for both virtual machines. :( Furthermore, according to what I’ve read, Hyper-V doesn’t support USB, which IMO is a significant limitation (and a showstopper for the old “server”). It’s running Server 2008 but without Hyper-V… or even CPU virtualization support. The server was the first machine to be replaced, so unfortunately at this point the new server has the most outdated hardware/OS. ) So, I decided to try Hyper-V or Virtual PC, falling back on VirtualBox if necessary (it wasn’t). My budget at Landmark Baptist isn’t comparable to most IT departments. However, I wanted to see if it was possible to virtualize these machines without incurring a licensing cost. I’m most familiar with VMWare products (particularly VMWare Workstation), and I highly recommend them. Due to the way the weekly process is done in the office, the old server would have to be virtualized onto the new server, and the old office machine would have to be virtualized onto the new office machine. The old “server” (XP Home with 192 MB RAM) and the old office machine (XP Home with 256 MB RAM) both needed virtualization. This blog entry is just a “lessons learned” from this adventure. I decided to try to virtualize these machines on Friday (the day after Thanksgiving). I’m working on replacements for the software, but in the meantime, the old machines were just sitting around, taking up space in the church office. It turns out that two of the old machines have some outdated software that’s critical to weekly operations. ![]() Next year I hope to (finally) put in a domain. ![]() The process is almost complete I only have one more machine to replace, and then they will all be 64-bit dual-core 4GB systems running Pro editions of Windows. Over the last few years, I’ve worked with my church to get them out of the dark ages of computing. Like many “computer people,” I do a lot of admin work for friends and familiy. For a limited time, GitHub will match your support. ![]()
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