Windows Server 2012 : Deploying and configuring virtual machines (part 3) - Configuring virtual machines - Adding virtual disks

You can use the IDE Controller 0, IDE Controller 1, and SCSI Controller pages of the virtual machine settings dialog box in Hyper-V Manager to add new virtual disks to a virtual machine. You can also use subpages of these pages to inspect, browse, or edit an existing virtual hard disk; remove a virtual disk that is attached to the virtual machine; or attach a physical disk on the host’s storage system to the virtual machine.

When you add a virtual disk using the New Virtual Hard Disk Wizard, you have a choice of using either the VHDX or VHD format for the new disk. (The default is VHDX.) The new Virtual Hard Disk Wizard also lets you configure a name for the new disk, the disk type (with the default being dynamically expanding), the maximum size for the disk (with the default being 127 GBs), and whether the new disk should be blank or contain the data on a physical disk on the host or on an existing virtual disk, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Configuring a new virtual disk to copy its data from a physical disk on the host.

You can also use the Add Hardware page of the virtual machine settings dialog box to add additional SCSI controllers to your virtual machine so that you can connect more virtual disks to the virtual machine.

You can also use Windows PowerShell to create new virtual disks and add them to your virtual machines. For example, let’s say you want to create and attach a 500-GB dynamically expanding data disk to virtual machine SRV-A on HOST4. You can begin by using the Get-VHD command to display a list of disks attached to SRV-A as follows:

PS C:\> Get-VM -VMName SRV-A | Select-Object VMId | Get-VHD | `
Format-List Path,VhdFormat,VhdType,Size

Path                 : C:\Users\Public\Documents\Hyper-V\Virtual Hard Disks\SRV-A.vhdx
VhdFormat            : VHDX
VhdType              : Dynamic
Size                 : 536870912000

The preceding command takes advantage of the pipeline capabilities of Windows PowerShell and works like this:

Next you can use the New-VHD cmdlet to create the new data disk as follows:

PS C:\> New-VHD -SizeBytes 500GB `
-Path "C:\Users\Public\Documents\Hyper-V\Virtual Hard Disks\SRV-A-data.vhdx"

ComputerName      : HOST4
Path              : C:\Users\Public\Documents\Hyper-V\Virtual Hard Disks\SRV-A-data.vhdx
VhdFormat         : VHDX
VhdType           : Dynamic
FileSize          : 4194304
Size              : 536870912000
...

Next you can use the Add-VMHardDiskDrive cmdlet to attach the new data disk to location 1 on IDE controller 0 as follows:

PS C:\> Add-VMHardDiskDrive -VMName SRV-A `
-Path "C:\Users\Public\Documents\Hyper-V\Virtual Hard Disks\SRV-A-data.vhdx" `
-ControllerType IDE -ControllerNumber 0 -ControllerLocation 1

You can then use the Get-VHD cmdlet as before to verify the result:

PS C:\> Get-VM -VMName SRV-A | Select-Object VMId | Get-VHD | `
Format-List Path,VhdFormat,VhdType,Size

Path      : C:\Users\Public\Documents\Hyper-V\Virtual Hard Disks\SRV-A.vhdx
VhdFormat : VHDX
VhdType   : Dynamic
Size      : 536870912000

Path      : C:\Users\Public\Documents\Hyper-V\Virtual Hard Disks\SRV-A-data.vhdx
VhdFormat : VHDX
VhdType   : Dynamic
Size      : 536870912000

Alternatively, you can use the Get-VMHardDiskDrive cmdlet to display all disks connected to the IDE controllers on the virtual machine:

PS C:\> Get-VMHardDiskDrive -VMName SRV-A | `
Format-List ControllerNumber,ControllerLocation,Path

ControllerNumber   : 0
ControllerLocation : 0
Path               : C:\Users\Public\Documents\Hyper-V\Virtual Hard Disks\SRV-A.vhdx

ControllerNumber   : 0
ControllerLocation : 1
Path               : C:\Users\Public\Documents\Hyper-V\Virtual Hard Disks\SRV-A-
data.vhdx

Viewing the IDE 0 Controller page and its subpages in the Settings dialog box for the virtual machine also confirms that the procedure was successful.