GHO to VHD in Hyper-V

Question

_{Sunday, August 10, 2008 9:58 AM}

Hey Guys -Thanks for such a Forum! Most of my problems are answered in this.

This is The One now.
We have a lot of GHO images from which we create VM's. Normally we create the VM in VPC using Bart-PE/WINPE and then Port to HY-V. This involves transfer of Image's across half the world.HECK!

Recently I tried to create the Image on HY-V and due to the unavailability of the Mouse in PE Environment the whole thing failed as i was not able to invoke the Ghost.exe using Keyboard. Then I tried to install VPC on the HY-V server to use our Native Method, the VM would take a long a very long time to boot. I suspect the role of HYPERVISOR in this.

Is there a simple way to directly create VM's from .GHO on the HY-V server?

Thanks,
Jagan

All replies (11)

_{Tuesday, August 12, 2008 11:48 AM ✅Answered | 1 vote}

Instead of using BartPE, how about using WinPE? Mike Sterling shows you how to incorporate Integration Services into WinPE in this post: http://blogs.msdn.com/mikester/archive/2008/05/30/using-the-hyper-v-integration-components-in-winpe.aspx

The steps you propose are logically sound.

_{Sunday, August 10, 2008 3:22 PM}

You can create and mount new VHDs on the host without booting a VM.  If Ghost runs on Windows Server 2008 you should be able to restore a GHO directly into a VHD container then attach that VHD to a Hyper-V VM.

_{Sunday, August 10, 2008 7:56 PM}

uhmm... Zunebug! I'm sorry i could not exactly understand wat you said.

_{Sunday, August 10, 2008 9:02 PM}

What you are trying to do is difficult. You have HAL problems and mouse problems when attempting this. I have succeeded in using Ghost without a mouse, both with and without Bart PE. A keyboard should be sufficient for using the older Ghost UI such as in Ghost 8.

Virtual PC and Virtual Server do not play nicely with Hyper-V. If you have Hyper-V enabled, you really shouldn't install VPC or Virtual Server.

What version of Ghost are you using?

_{Monday, August 11, 2008 3:29 PM}

To avoid HAL problems we create images with ACPI uniprocessor and then run change the HAL accordingly. so no issues there.

The problem is mouse doesn't go in and i am not able to invoke the Ghost or any other program with the keyboard.

I only came to know that VPC and VServer have compatiable after trying. :-)

I am using Ghost 8.3, can you please let us know your method of dpeloyment John?

Thanks,
jagan

_{Monday, August 11, 2008 4:57 PM}

Are you directly connected to the Hyper-V server or are you using Remote Desktop Connection?

PS/2 or USB keyboard?

_{Monday, August 11, 2008 5:09 PM}

I have not tried this (I plan to use an imaging tool that supports vhd directly) but I do have to wonder..

Could you create a simple 'dos' virtual machine that has ghost etc and the integration services installed?  would that get you the easy ability to run ghost with a mouse working?  (or create a ISO or virtual floppy with such a setup)..  If you had a stand alone 'dos' vm, could you not attach the VHD to it, use ghost to restore the image file, then detach the vhd and attach it to another VM configured for the OS that's now on that VHD?   

--Chuck

_{Monday, August 11, 2008 5:18 PM}

Chuck vdL said:

I have not tried this (I plan to use an imaging tool that supports vhd directly) but I do have to wonder..

Could you create a simple 'dos' virtual machine that has ghost etc and the integration services installed?  would that get you the easy ability to run ghost with a mouse working?  (or create a ISO or virtual floppy with such a setup)..  If you had a stand alone 'dos' vm, could you not attach the VHD to it, use ghost to restore the image file, then detach the vhd and attach it to another VM configured for the OS that's now on that VHD?   

I'd already thought of this. Integration Services don't work with DOS.

_{Monday, August 11, 2008 6:17 PM}

I'm uning RDP to connect to the server.

_{Tuesday, August 12, 2008 7:18 AM}

Sorry for the Typo's in my posts!

I have this idea of autostarting the Ghost application through a script to initiate the Ghost process without keyboard,

• the machine boots with the Bart-PE ISO,
• auto starts the Ghost,
• automatically point to GHO file and initiate the task,
• reboots and there is Sysprep

i tried the stuff but being new to Bart-PE, its been a tough thing playing with.

What you guys say?

Jagan.

_{Sunday, September 21, 2008 1:33 PM | 1 vote}

Here is a VPC and Virtual Server vmc to Hyper-V settings converter: http://blogs.technet.com/matthts/archive/2008/09/12/vmc-to-hyper-v-import-tool-available.aspx

Here is an interesting post on using Ghost to create functioning Hyper-V virtual machines: http://easterndigitalsoftware.com/p2v/p2v.htm. I am not comfortable using this on a production machine - after all, I have SCVMM 2008 - but I think it would be fine for test and demo machines.