I use disk imaging on my host machine. I save my virtual machines and disks
separate partition so that if I need to restore the system partition, they
will remain. However, it appears that there is no way to load these VMs
into Hyper-V Manager. Is it really true that you have to export them and
then import them? If that's true, this seems crazy to me.

Let's say I have a host machine with two partitions - c:\ and d:\. Windows
2008 is installed on c:\. I create a virtual machine named "foo" in
d:\virtual machines\. I make a couple of snapshots. So now I have a
directory structure like this:

d:\virtual machines\foo\snapshots
d:\virtual machines\foo\virtual machines
d:\virtual machines\foo\foo.vhd

Now let's say I revert my c:\ drive to a state before I set up the virtual
machine. Now Hyper-V Manager doesn't recognize the VM at all. And I cannot
find any way of opening or importing it. I can still use the VHD, but it
seems like the VM has to be recreated, meaning I lose all snapshots (bad)
and who knows what else.

Am I missing something? If not, I don't understand this need for
import/export. Seems like a crazy process compared to simply opening a .vmc
file like in Virtual PC.

-Jeremy

Yirm,

a better place to post Hyper-V questions is here:
http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/...=583&SiteID=17

When you restore your machine to a 'previous state' in which VM's were not
registered, you end up with the situation you describe.
Configuration information no longer exists as file system xml files which
were enumerated. Hyper-V configuration is stored in WMI. When you go back in
time with a different WMI configuration, you lose all changes made after that
point.

VM's cannot simply be added by pointing to their configuration files. The
structure is much more complex and involves many more components. You need to
import VM's which were previously exported.

Matthijs



"Yirm" wrote:

> I use disk imaging on my host machine. I save my virtual machines and disks
> separate partition so that if I need to restore the system partition, they
> will remain. However, it appears that there is no way to load these VMs
> into Hyper-V Manager. Is it really true that you have to export them and
> then import them? If that's true, this seems crazy to me.
>
> Let's say I have a host machine with two partitions - c:\ and d:\. Windows
> 2008 is installed on c:\. I create a virtual machine named "foo" in
> d:\virtual machines\. I make a couple of snapshots. So now I have a
> directory structure like this:
>
> d:\virtual machines\foo\snapshots
> d:\virtual machines\foo\virtual machines
> d:\virtual machines\foo\foo.vhd
>
> Now let's say I revert my c:\ drive to a state before I set up the virtual
> machine. Now Hyper-V Manager doesn't recognize the VM at all. And I cannot
> find any way of opening or importing it. I can still use the VHD, but it
> seems like the VM has to be recreated, meaning I lose all snapshots (bad)
> and who knows what else.
>
> Am I missing something? If not, I don't understand this need for
> import/export. Seems like a crazy process compared to simply opening a .vmc
> file like in Virtual PC.
>
> -Jeremy
>
>

"Matthijs ten Seldam [MSFT]"
<MatthijstenSeldamMSFT@discussions.microsoft.com > wrote in message
news:A19631E7-16B3-4A3E-A650-1F5E76B9C706@microsoft.com...

> a better place to post Hyper-V questions is here:
> http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/...=583&SiteID=17

Thanks for the pointer; I'll post there in the future.

> When you restore your machine to a 'previous state' in which VM's were not
> registered, you end up with the situation you describe.
> Configuration information no longer exists as file system xml files which
> were enumerated. Hyper-V configuration is stored in WMI. When you go back
> in
> time with a different WMI configuration, you lose all changes made after
> that
> point.
>
> VM's cannot simply be added by pointing to their configuration files. The
> structure is much more complex and involves many more components. You need
> to
> import VM's which were previously exported.

Thanks for the answer. I don't like the answer, but I appreciate you giving
me one. . Couldn't the export have been designed so you don't have to
copy the entire .vhd? At least that would make shorter and it wouldn't
require all that disk space. Also, when you import, the VM location is
where the imported files are. It would be nice if you could specify a
different location. The answer is to move the exported VM to the location
you want it to be in the file system before importing. But I only found
that out after the fact. I don't know. Maybe the can be improved in V2.

Thanks again for the response.

-Jeremy