Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past five years you’ve run a virtual machine. Yes, we all love them. They save hardware, energy, time, and even our butts in the event of a rollback. As a developer or administrator I think it’s best to understand the structure and have many tools available. Our creativity is our single best long term tool to solve problems.
If you run Hyper-V I still recommend you install Virtual Server 2005.
Why?
- Great utilities like VHDMOUNT. Amazing tool that lets you modify VHD files directly without booting anything. Partition resize, modify contents, etc.
- Backwards compatibility with older systems (i.e. Virtual PC 2007 on Win XP)
- Run older VM without upgrading them to Hyper-V.
- Original source Virtual Machine Additions install media (ISO, VFD)
Keep your options open. You might need them one day. Also, don’t forget about Disk2vhd which lets you convert P2V (physical to virtual) by creating a .VHD from a live physical disk.
