Virtual Machine has gained a level

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I just wrote this up for a coworker who asked me how to move a virtual machine from being hosted by Virtual Server to Hyper-V. First off, I'd like to say that I am a big fan of this type of upgrade. The first step to improving your virtualization experience is realizing that your experience could be improved, after all :)

In any case, it should be a fairly trivial move and would function on Virtual PC 2004/2007 machines, as well. The only thing you'll need is the vhd(s) of your current virtual machine.

  1. Uninstall the VM Additions from the VPC prior to uninstalling Virtual Server
  2. Copy the vhd file to your Hyper-V machine
  3. Create a new VM using the VHD and start it
  4. Once it starts up, open the Hyper-V view of the machine from the Hyper-V role in Server Manager
  5. Select the Action menu, Insert Integration Services Disk, and proceed with the installation.

That should basically be it all you need -- everything else should just work. Note that you won’t be able to use external networking with a normal Hyper-V network adaptor until you have the Integration Services installed. If you need network before that you’ll have to shut the virtual machine off and add a Legacy Network Adaptor. For example, you would need this if you have Win2003 prior to SP1 since the Integration Services require SP2.

Enjoy, and happy virtualizing!