re: System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2012 RC - now available for download

Sam Bulka — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 19:16:07 GMT

Dear Keith,

Since you're deeply involved in MS Virtualization strategy and applications, could you suggest the best way to keep Native Boot VHDs up-to-date. Combination of Base and Differencing VHDs presents a very effective solution for using several conflicting applications, requiring different hardware drivers. The main problem is, each Differencing VHD must be regularly updated, when the desired solution would involve updating only Base VHD with Win and generic app updates, and propagating these changes to all Dif VHDs, so that they don't need to be recreated again and again. Only the apps installed onto a Dif VHD, would be updated on it. See System & Differencing VHDs sync and update strategy (http://reboot.pro/15406/) for more details.

Could VMM be used to keep Base and its Dif VHDs up-to-date, and deliver the updates in optimal way? Or, would you suggest another approach to hit both goals: update the Base, and avoid recreating existing Difs or time consuming duplicate updates of each Dif with the staff that belongs on the Base?

You can reply in that forum too, its extremely popular, and will promote MS virtualization efforts.