Compacting a Dynamic VHD image

One of the nicest features of using Dynamic VHDs on Virtual Server 2005 is that they grow as needed, so system administrators can optimize the disk space usage between several VMs. Dynamic VHDs grow automatically, but they don’t shrink automatically. In order to shrink them, you need to run several tools both inside and outside of the virtual machine.

In order to compact the VHD image to only use the xxx GB which it is actually using, we need to follow this procedure:

• Defragment the VHD you are going to compact: You can do this from within the Virtual Machine.
• Precompact the disk: Once the defragmentation is completed, you need to run Virtual Server’s Precompactor. you can do this by shutting down your virtual machine and mount the Precompact.iso on the virtual machine.

On VirtualServer admin screen go to configuration of the machine and under CD/DVD change the Capture to "Known image files" and select Precompact.iso. Click OK

• Compress the disk: From the VS Admin screen menu, click Inspect and find your VHD and click Inspect.

Thats it, sit back and relax :-) after a couple of minutes(or hours) based on the VHD size, you would find that the VHD is compresses to use the same amount of space as seen from withing the virtual machine.

Virtual Server administration website produces a “Page cannot be found error”

I have installed and used Virtual server on both Windows server and Windows XP platforms for a while now. I have come across this issue a couple of times now where in Virtual server installation works fine for a few days and suddenly after installing some security updates, the Virtual Server administration website gives you a “Page cannot be found error”.

I tried to un-install and re-install virtual server software hoping some setting would now be set with the new installation, but that did not work.

I actually rebuilt the operating system and then installed virtual server and bingo it worked. After installing all security patches and services packs, I again got the same “Page cannot be found error”, this basically proved to me that it had to do with some security update, that is causing this issue.

Last week, I read something about a related issue where in a windows security update that restricts access to sites running under default site(port 80) when the files are not under “wwwroot” folder.

I could not create this problem consistently, but definitely solve this problem consistently by doing the following steps:

• Virtual Server by default installs the content to C:\Program files\Microsoft Virtual Server\WebSite\VirtualServer and creates a virtual folder “VirtualServer” under default site.
  
• COPY(not move) the folder: VirtualServer from “C:\Program files\Microsoft Virtual Server\WebSite\VirtualServer” and paste it under “C:\inetpub\wwwroot\”.
  
• Now add a new virtual folder with a different alias(say VS) and point it to this folder which you just copied “C:\inetpub\wwwroot\VirtualServer”
  
• Now try accessing your original Virtual Server administration site or the new one you created and watch it work :-)

One other reason you could be getting the same error would be when you have Virtual server installed and then Virtual PC installed. For some wierd reason these 2 pieces of software donot play well together. In this case, I would suggest uninstalling Virtual PC and see if that helps.