Expand virtual hard disk size with Hyper-V

It is easy to re-size a VHD with Hyper-V:

• First, make sure you have the VM powered off and you do not have any snapshots associated with the machine.  Changing the VHD size will invalidate any snapshots.
• Open the Hyper-V Manager, on the left pane, click on Edit Disk…
• Click Next to continue pas the Before You Begin page
• Browse to the VHD you would like to expand
• Choose what you would like to do the VHD:
  • Compact – Shrink the VHD by removing blank space
  • Convert – Convert a dynamic VHD to a fixed VHD
  • Expand – Adds capacity to the virtual disk (what we are doing here)
• Type in your desired size and click Next
• Click Finish to apply your changes
• Now power on your virtual machine
• You can verify that the space has been added to your disk by checking Disk Management.  You should see unallocated space at the end of your disk
• You can now extend the drive using your favorite method (2003 – diskpart, 2008 – disk management)

Hyper-V Virus Scan Exclusions

I have found that Hyper-V is easily broken by any on access virus scanning software.  To make life easier, if you are running Hyper-V, or plan to.  Put these exclusions in your vurs scanner:

• Default VM configuration directory: C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Windows\Hyper-V
• Custom VM configuration directory
• Default virtual hard disk directory: C:\Users\Public\Documents\Hyper-V\Virtual Hard Disks
• Custom virtual hard disk directories
• Snapshot directories
• C:\Windows\System32\Vmms.exe
• C:\Windows\System32\Vmwp.exe