Improved VM import

The process used for importing VMs onto Hyper-V hosts has been improved in Windows
Server 2012. The goal of these improvements is to help prevent configuration problems from
happening that can prevent the import process from completing successfully.
In Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 R2, when you imported a VM onto a host, the VM and all its files were copied to the host, but they weren’t checked for possible configuration problems. However, Hyper-V on Windows Server 2012 now validates the configuration of VM files when they are imported to identify potential problems and, if possible, resolve them.An additional enhancement to the process of importing VMs in Hyper-V on Windows Server 2012 is that now you can import a VM after manually copying the VM’s files to the host. In other words, you don’t have to export a VM from one host before you can import it into another host—you can simply copy the files from the first host to the second one and then initiate the import process.

Importing of VMs

indows Server 2012 has improved the VM import process. This new process

helps you resolve configuration problems that would otherwise have prevented you from importing the VM. The Windows Server 2012 improvements to importing a VM also have improved the reliability of importing VMs to other Hyper-V host computers.

The new wizard detects and fixes potential problems, such as hardware or file differences, that might exist when a VM is moved to another host. The import

Increase scalability and performance Chapter 2 71

wizard detects and fixes more than 40 types of incompatibilities. This new wizard also creates a temporary copy of the VM configuration file as an added safety step.

With Windows Server 2008 R2 to import a VM to a different host, you first needed to export it. To export the VM, you first needed to turn it off. This caused administrators to schedule downtime prior to exporting the VM. Now, with Windows Server 2012, you can simply copy the VM’s files manually to the new

host, and then, on the new Windows Server 2012 host, just run through the Import

Virtual Machine wizard, point to the newly copied VM, and voila! You have imported it.

In conclusion, the Windows Server 2012 Import wizard is a simpler, better way to import or copy VMs between Hyper-V hosts.

VHDX disk format

VHDX is the new default format for VHDs in Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012. This new
format is designed to replace the older VHD format and has advanced capabilities that make it the ideal virtual disk format going forward for virtualized workloads. Some of the features of this new format include the following:

■ It supports virtual disks up to 64 TB in size, so you’ll be able to use it to virtualize even the largest database workloads and move them into the cloud.

■ It aligns to megabyte boundaries to support large sector disks (4 KB sector disks), so you can take advantage of new low-cost commodity storage options.

■ It uses large block sizes to provide better performance than the old format could provide.

■ It includes a new log to protect from corruption due to power failure, which means the new format has much greater resiliency than the old format.

■ You can embed custom user-defined metadata into VHDX files; for example,

information about the service pack level of the guest operating system on the VM.

Learn more

For more information about the new VHDX format in Windows Server 2012, see the article titled “Hyper-V Virtual Hard Disk Format Overview” in the TechNet Library at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831446.aspx.

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