Virtual Machine Storage

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Three type of Virtual Hard Disk (VHD):

    • Dynamic Disk
    • Fixed Disk
    • Differencing Disk

Pass-Through Disk

image

** Fixed disk and Pass-Through Disk are highly recommended for Production.

** Maximum size of VHD: 2 TB (2040 GB)

There are a total of five actions that can be performed on virtual hard disks as outlined in the following table:

Compact
Available on dynamically expanding and differencing virtual hard disks, this option shrinks the size of the selected .vhd image file by removing unused space left behind after data is deleted from the disk. This option cannot reduce the size of non-NTFS formatted disks unless the unused space is previously filled with zeros.

Convert
Converts virtual hard disks to and from fixed and dynamic expandable types.

Expand
Increases the size of dynamic expandable and fixed virtual hard disks.

Merge
Merges the contents of the selected differencing virtual hard disk into the corresponding parent virtual hard disk. Alternatively, the contents of both the parent and child virtual hard disks may be merged into a new virtual hard disk, thereby leaving the original parent disk image unchanged.

Reconnect
Differencing disks must be associated with a parent virtual hard disk. This option allows a differencing virtual hard disk to be reconnected with a parent disk.