May as well just VPN or RDC into a 2008r2 box and do the work over there on a HVM's VM. Having to convert several a day would not be viable. What I really want to do is take my MacBook to work out what problems are on the VHD in VMware Fusion, at my local coffee shop or the beach. And Boot Camp is certainly not an option. The steps I read for (in this forum) VHD to VMDK conversion are ad-hoc, slow, and sounds unreliable. These are not 'data only' VHD's.Ĭonverting the file from VHD to VMDK is not an option, since the VHD files range in size from 20 GB to 1 TB (but typically in the 20-30 GB range, the 1 TB size is atypical). In this scenario, these are VHD's with an OS on them, which I need to boot. Awesome! That sounds like the critical feature for me! Props & kudos to Microsoft!įrom what I understand, VMware supports native (i.e., not converting foo.vhd to foo.vmdk) VHD in their VMware ESX Server product, and their VMware Workstation product. Microsoft's VHD file format is an open format, covered by MOSP (Microsoft Open Specification Promise). A VHD can be booted in a VM, and can also be booted native. The VHD file format is used by Windows Virtual PC, Microsoft Hyper-V, Microsoft Complete PC Backup. The VHD file format is the virtual hard drive format used by Windows Server 2008 R2's Hyper-V Manager. We have thousands of machines, running Windows Server 2008 R2, each of which runs dozens-to-hundreds of Hyper-V Manager virtual machines, and suffering the indignities of Chaos Monkey. I work on a server farm in a billion dollar data center. Can I use a bootable VHD as the boot OS on VMware Fusion?

Vmware esxi vdi