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I'm running a Physical machine with Windows 7 Ultimate mainly as a file server with 2 hard drives with all the file content stored on D drive with C mainly for OS. This file server is accessible by numerous devices in the network such as IPad, Laptops etc. I'm really interested in turning this physical server as a Hyper V Host on a clean install of Windows 2008 R2 and converting the existing file server as a VHD (using Disk2vhd) and running it as a VM (hope it makes sense so far). I would like to keep the existing file server same as possible including server name because I don't want to reinstall the existing software on it as well as reconfigure the devices which connect to the file server which is stored on drive d. The file server also hosts some websites using IIS.

I assume once I have just converted the C drive into a VHD then I will have to share the D drive of the host to the guest and then setup up the same public shares from the guest VM so the devices can access the file shares without any changes at their end.

If I was to follow the above approach, can I do this using the VM or is it not possible? Let me know if you need more detail.

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  • You certainly can do it that way. But I would look at it as a good chance to move from win 7 to server 2008. Just rebuild and move data over.
    – Grant
    Apr 4, 2013 at 22:37
  • Thanks Grant, that's what I was thinking. I should have just installed W2008 on it in the first place, what was I thinking :)
    – Rubans
    Apr 4, 2013 at 22:42
  • Depending on which version of server 2008 you have you might have some free licenses to be used as vms. I use datacenter...which lets me have as many vms as I want without additional licenses.
    – Grant
    Apr 4, 2013 at 22:46
  • I have the option of using "Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter and Itanium" (not sure if this covers 64bit) or "Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard and Enterprise" I assume for the physical machine I shall be converting to Virtual, it should be covered by it's existing Win 7 licence anyway.
    – Rubans
    Apr 4, 2013 at 22:55
  • If its an oem win7 license possibly not. But I'm not a licencing expert.
    – Grant
    Apr 5, 2013 at 2:24

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