I experienced firsthand this past week that some backup strategies that are supposed to be simple are not always so. D'oh!

I volunteer to be a guinea pig for our I/T guys, mostly because I like to play with the cool new toys; the toy this time: Server 2008 x64 on my laptop. I have been itching to play with Hyper V for multiple reasons, but mostly because I want to have 64 bit development images for SQL 2005 and 2008 (Virtualization team blog).

Before imaging my machine from Vista x64 to Server 2008, I had taken a Norton Ghost full backup, converted that backup to a virtual disk, and also separately taken a backup of my files.

You would think reasonable safe right? A VHD, a Ghost full drive backup and Norton file backup – only problem with my grand scheme was due to my haste in moving to my new OS: I had backed all up to the same drive!

Luckily it was not a full drive failure (and as one buddy pointed out with the WD Passport drives, he frequently re-formats it to avoid corruption), but it did keep me from doing a nice and easy full restore of my image to Hyper V. Countless hours later……………….

I am back up and loving running my "old" Vista 64 machine as a Hyper V machine -- definitely a lot faster than VM Workstation and loads faster than Virtual Server 2005.

Evaluation VHDs are available for download from Microsoft here. The second link on the page is for a 32-bit version of Server 2008 to run under Virtual Server 2005.

For my particular issue, right clicking on IE and running it as an administrator solved the immediate issue, I was up and running, able to create Virtual Machines and reconnect previous ones -- but that is only part of the story. You might want to follow the steps presented in the blog entry listed below as well, most people know about changing the IE 7 settings on their credentials, however the Virtual Server setting is a little less known.

From the blog:

When you are running Windows Vista, you have the added complexity of having to run the Administration Website in Internet Explorer as administrator when User Account Control (UAC) is enabled. If you are running in an isolated test environment, you can avoid this additional step by disabling UAC. Otherwise, follow these steps to grant your user account full administrative privilege in Virtual Server and eliminate the need for UAC:

• Right-click the Internet Explorer icon in the Quick Launch section of the task bar, and choose Run As Administrator from the menu.
• In the User Access Control dialog box, click Allow.
• In the Internet Explorer address bar, type in the URL to the Administration Website.
• In the Virtual Server navigation menu, click Server Properties.
• Missing Step for VS 2005 R2: Click Virtual Server Security link located in content pane
• Click the Add Entry button.
• In the new Permission Entry, type in your account name in the User Or Group text box.
• In Permissions, select the Full check box to give your account full control.
• Click OK.

Full Blog post:

http://vscommunity.com/blogs/virtualzone/archive/2007/11/28/virtual-server-2005-r2-common-issues-and-tips-always-prompted-for-credentials.aspx

I had several posts planned for this past week, however Christmas Eve I fell ill from food poisoning and all that was planned went out the window. It's been a very slow week in recovering, but I'll be back on track soon and have my planned items posted soon.  I hope everyone had a good holiday season and I personally am looking forward to a great year in 2008 -- so best of luck to everyone out there for the coming year!

For those of you who like podcasts, here is something published by SQLServercentral.com: http://sqlservercentral.podshow.com/

I'm not going to get into what platform is better for virtualization, but rather talk about a common issue for those of us using virtual machines to test and develop. I personally run Virtual Server 2005 R2 on my laptop, mostly because it's free, but also because it is a decent platform for what I do. 

Running out of virtual hard disk space can be a pain, and I dislike attaching more virtual drives to a particular machine because I do not want the complexity -- the virtual machines are for testing and developing, not production. So what to do when you have accidentally set the virtual hard disk size too small for your needs? Here is where this awesome tool I found comes in handy: http://vmtoolkit.com/files/folders/converters/entry87.aspx

It's called VhdResizer; it simply makes a bit for bit copy of the image you have and resets the hard drive size to your new requirement. Pretty simple.

After installing, launch the app -- it straight away goes to a file dialogue box. Be sure to have stopped the virtual machine you are resizing:

Here is the main action screen. Choose a new name for the file, new size and go!

It will copy and create your new file:

Detach the old image from your VM and attach the newly created one. When you log back in, you will need to configure the disk, but the extra space is now there:

I'm re-purposing my Dell Dimension E510 and trying it out as a full media center machine using Windows Vista Ultimate. I have Vista Business on my work laptop currently (mixed reviews in using development tools and VPN connections). I'll post how the work goes and what issues I run into in making it work for recording shows, using surround sound, T.V. and general media use.

I noticed that the current site template for my blog has some quirks if you are using Internet Explorer 6.0 -- mostly related to the column formatting and width settings (posts look a little squeezed). Mozilla 2.0 seems to work just fine, but I'll play with the CSS to see if I can make it a little backwards compatible for those using IE 6.0.

Thanks!