Sunday, September 26, 2010

NeoSmart - EasyBCD

BootVHD

  • So, the final tweaks are under way. I created a P2V VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) of my existing boot OS, using the System Internals Disk2VHD utility. I then updated the boot configuration data using the GUI based EasyBCD utility from NeoSmart
  • Next I plan to see if I can mount the same .VHD under hypervisor on my server, though I suspect it won’t mount properly. My plan is to boot natively to a clean VHD I normally use for demos and have my main OS hosted under Hyper-V on my server and remote into that. I will then strip down the old file based OS and expand the local boot VHD to be my primary OS, keeping differencing files for tests
  • The main aim is to see how fast VHD’s are in the cloud/server when accessed via terminal services, or on external drives whilst also providing backup and instant restore scenarios
  • Ultimately I’m looking for a way to have a image based ‘locked-down’ instant restore capability, were, no matter what happens I can always get back to a stable OS
  • Updates, patches etc. always lead to an unstable OS that ends up bloated unreliable and difficult to troubleshoot

NeoSmart EasyBCD