You can add and configure up to four virtual SCSI adapters to a virtual machine. Use the following procedure to configure a virtual hard disk (VHD).

Before you can convert a fixed virtual hard disk to a dynamic virtual hard disk, the virtual machine must be stopped. However, you can compact or expand a virtual hard disk on a running virtual machine.

Note
In VMM 2008 R2, if a virtual machine is deployed on a host that is using the Hyper-V implementation of the SCSI controller, you can add or remove a virtual hard disk or pass-through disk from the SCSI controller while the virtual machine is running. On all other storage configurations, you must stop the virtual machine before adding or removing a disk.

To configure a virtual hard disk

  1. In the VMM Administrator Console, right-click a virtual machine, click Properties, and then click the Hardware Configuration tab.

  2. Modify the settings as follows:

    1. Under Channel, select a primary or secondary channel to attach to the VHD.

    2. Under Fully qualified path to file:, type a path or browse to the .vhd file.

    3. Select any of the following VHD options:

      • Convert to fixed type virtual hard disk: This selection converts a dynamic VHD to a fixed VHD. During the conversion, all data is retained and the original operating system is not changed.

      • Compact virtual hard disk: This selection reclaims empty disk space and reduces the size of the VHD. Empty disk space is left when previous files in the VHD are deleted. You must defragment the guest operating system before you compact the VHD.

      • Expand virtual hard disk: This selection allows you to expand the size of an existing VHD instead of creating a new VHD and manually migrating the data.


For the most up-to-date Help information, go to the Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Help Online. To find additional Virtual Machine Manager 2008 documentation, go to the Virtual Machine Manager 2008 TechCenter Library.