Windows 7 to add native support for Virtual Hard Disks

By Sam
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Grand Master

Sam

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Out of what little we know of the next version of Windows, this feature might just be the most interesting yet. A team at Microsoft is hiring developers to work on adding native support in Windows 7 for Virtual Hard Disks (VHD) - Microsoft?s semi-proprietary specification for single-file virtual machine hard disks. Their job posting reads,

Do you want to join the team that is bringing virtualization into the mainstream? In Windows 7, our team will be responsible for creating, mounting, performing I/O on, and dismounting VHDs (virtual hard disks) natively. Imagine being able to mount a VHD on any Windows machine, do some offline servicing and then boot from that same VHD. Or perhaps, taking an existing VHD you currently use within Virtual Server and boost performance by booting natively from it.

Do you want to have the opportunity to work on a great Core OS team at the heart of Windows? If you have big ideas and want to implement them, if you love writing code, if you love delving into operating system internals, if you want to work on high visibility projects with direct consumer and customer impact and still work in a very technical environment, then you will feel right at home in this team.

Virtualization technology has been a great success with Virtual Server and Hyper-V. With native OS support on the horizon it will become an even greater hit. Our team is making this a reality in Windows 7. Consider the simplicity of backup using a VHD, or the portability of a virtual disk backed by a single file. These are a few reasons why this technology is poised to be one of the greatest features in Windows 7?come help us achieve this goal.

Whilst ?one of the great features in Windows 7″ might be a bit much, this is right up there with the new multi-line Calculator. No seriously, this has rather interesting implications for IT administrators and even home users.

For example, having an VHD dedicated to gaming with optimized system configurations is entirely feasible then. A dynamic VHD would mean it would only take up as much room as it needs, you could move the file on many system and have the same experience, but best of all, you can still enjoy the maximum native performance at the same time being able to load it as a virtual machine to maintain and configure without rebooting.

Considering how much we don?t know about Windows 7, this is extremely promising.

Update: A few people I?ve talked to have expressed their concern this may not make it to RTM and I think it?s a valid point at any time feature may be cut so I?ll just add that note for everyone else.

Sounds good?

Grand Master

Hurmoth

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This will be a welcomed feature, especially for those IT peeps (like me) who use virtual environments a lot. Hopefully Microsoft will learn from their past mistakes and put some type of hooks in the OS so other companies can easily implement support for their own Virtual HDD (i.e. VMware).

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macf13nd

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would be nice

it would also be nice to have built in support for mounting images (isos etc)

indeed. it seems ridiculous these days to still have to install a 3rd party app to do this. It would be like windows not recognizing a .rar format natively. :rolleyes:

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RealFduch

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indeed. it seems ridiculous these days to still have to install a 3rd party app to do this. It would be like windows not recognizing a .rar format natively. :rolleyes:

They have a tool for mounting ISOs (Of course thy have it! Microsoft releases lots of ISOs). And for making virtual desktops. It's juat that people don't know about it.

Grand Master

+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹

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Quick, lets build the list of "official" features that are supposed to be in Win7. Later, we will be able to know what Microsoft decided to drop from the next release....

Remember the Longhorn/Vista hype?

This is exactly why MS aren't releasing info on Win7's features.

Grand Master

sanctified Veteran

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id love that as well, but then they might get more "monopoly" complaints.

They shouldnt, OS X has this feature and If Im not wrong Linux too.

Just a basic image mounting will do, the rest of the companies can make more advanced solutions.

Grand Master

HawkMan

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They shouldnt, OS X has this feature and If Im not wrong Linux too.

Just a basic image mounting will do, the rest of the companies can make more advanced solutions.

both of those examples also do lots of others things MS have been and would be sued for anti competitive practices for.

when you have the most dominant OS, fair treatment isn't in the vocabulary.

Experienced

Pygmy_Hippo

Posted
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Virtualization is the future!

No it's not - I've talked to my IT department at work and according to them there's no such thing as Virtualization! So there!!! :rolleyes:

PS - Yes I am slightly worried that they earn significantly more than me! :laugh:

Grand Master

markwolfe Veteran

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both of those examples also do lots of others things MS have been and would be sued for anti competitive practices for.

when you have the most dominant OS, fair treatment isn't in the vocabulary.

I don't mind if people whine about Microsoft getting dinged for "anti-competitive" or "monopolistic" practices. But it doesn't make sense to bring Linux into it. In Linux everything is optional, including the whole GUI. Everything outside the kernel is 3rd party. There is only choice and no monopoly.

So, when people point to Linux and say, things like "but they have that ability, why aren't they getting sued for anti-trust" or some such nonsense, I just want to jump in and make that little clarification.

Grand Master

Brandon Live Veteran

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I don't mind if people whine about Microsoft getting dinged for "anti-competitive" or "monopolistic" practices. But it doesn't make sense to bring Linux into it. In Linux everything is optional, including the whole GUI. Everything outside the kernel is 3rd party. There is only choice and no monopoly.

So, when people point to Linux and say, things like "but they have that ability, why aren't they getting sued for anti-trust" or some such nonsense, I just want to jump in and make that little clarification.

I think they're referring to a commercially available boxed Linux distribution. Or at least a packaged distribution like Ubuntu.

Sure, Ubuntu lets you install whatever browser you want. But so does Windows. What these guys seem to be talking about is the default provided when a normal user installs the packaged product.

Grand Master

Glowstick

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The VHD disk driver is already available since god knows when. I think it came with Virtual Server 2005 SP1, which carried it as standalone install package. So it's not like you couldn't already mount them as it is.

And booting from VHDs? What's the point? Windows ****s all over itself if main components like mainboard chipset or CPU change (the emulated environment in a VM is a different one than your real one). Not to mention the funky performance loss on disk IO due to NTFS -> VHD -> NTFS, especially with Windows' ****ty IO scheduler.

Grand Master

markwolfe Veteran

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I think they're referring to a commercially available boxed Linux distribution. Or at least a packaged distribution like Ubuntu.

Sure, Ubuntu lets you install whatever browser you want. But so does Windows. What these guys seem to be talking about is the default provided when a normal user installs the packaged product.

It's much more than that, Brandon.

Ubuntu comes with both Firefox (because it is popular) and Epiphany (because it is a Gnome thing) browsers. Neither are forced to be installed. Neither are made by Ubuntu or by the "Linux" kernel team. Both can be completely removed and replaced with whatever the user wants.

And this extends to more than just web browsers. Every facet, outside the kernel, are separate and replaceable. One can even suggest that you may choose a plain Vanilla kernel, or an alternative. Or if you like KDE, but hate the Linux kernel, use a BSD kernel and run KDE on that.

Attempting to trivialize that point, and make it look like Windows and Linux have similar modularity and customizability, all outside the central true "Linux" developers is disingenuous. It is Microsoft's own past actions (particularly pre-XP) that got them in the legal situation they are in now.

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