![]() ![]() Redmond introduced the ability to manage virtual machines with Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM), which-in addition to having arguably the worst acronym in the IT industry-was announced late in 2007. Microsoft has built up the Microsoft System Center brand into an impressive family of products that help IT pros manage their infrastructures. So what does a harried IT pro need to do to get this explosion of VMs under control? A host of companies have been rushing to get products to market that help get things sorted, with Microsoft and VMware taking the lead with their own unique product approaches. It’s clear that managing a growing virtualized infrastructure can be a beastly task that many IT pros are now finding at the top of their to-do lists. Jekyll into a time-consuming, profligate nightmare that would do Mr. Such is the case with VMs, which can quickly mutate from a cost-reducing Dr. But after a few months of reveling in the ease with which new VMs can be created, copied, and disposed of, the bill comes due: Virtual sprawl has arrived.Īs some wise person once said, nothing is ever truly free. Don’t have the budget to buy new server hardware to run that new app that the marketing folks need? Copy an existing VM and install it there. Need a few extra test environments for development? Create a few VMs. One of the greatest strengths of virtualization is the ease with which IT administrators can use the technology to create new virtual machines (VMs) at a moment’s notice. Vdk open 0 floppy_disk.Editor’s Note: If you’d like to begin subscribing to the Virtualization UPDATE newsletter, please click here. Using a VMWare Disk Image created by QEMU as discussed previously, I can now create a new virtual disk mounted in windows simply by using the following commands: VDK is realiable – I did plenty of different tests mounting and unmounting and it just keeps going (though your Windows Explorer may need a refresh (F5) to keep up).It also helps that it follows conventions with other command line programs (following the DOS conventions of parameters with slashes) VDK has good documentation – I found it really easy to understand what commands to execute to install, remove, mount, unmount, all with different options because both the command line ( vdk.exe help) and the readme.txt had plenty of information and examples. ![]() VDK supports mounting with different options – Including read-only, read-write, and write-block mode.VDK supports VMDK (VMWare Disk) images – Using other tools to generate the files that I want, I can easily use VDK to mount them to a particular drive letter.VDK is fully executable via the command line – This allows me to wrap this in the language of my choice to help automate environment setup as needed for a particular test to run.Although you do need to install VDK, it’s a command line registration that is as simple as: vdk.exe install. VDK doesn’t require running an MSI for installation – In keeping with the principles of starting a new project (checkout and go), I can simply include this file as part of a code repostiory, and know that I’m not forcing every other developer yet another manual step.Here’s some of the features that attracted me to it: After lots of research, I’m in favour of the Virtual Disk Driver program called VDK available from and distributed under the GPL licence. ![]()
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