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I creating a Hyper-V home setup.

I have a single Machine (haswell CPU, 16GB ram, and SSD) Storage is attached as DAS (5 Disk USB 3.0 enclosure)

I want that machine to be a Hyper-V host (Windows Std. 2012R2 or the Free Hyper-V Server).

I need to have the following virtual machines (So that I can change the machine the run on): - Windows Server 2012R2 Essentials (Should be a file server SMB 3 for the storage) - Some other VM's for testing and development.

How to I attach the storage, to the host or guest? Are there any performance considerations?

Lyhr007
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1 Answers1

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The down side of installing Hyper-V on the standard edition is that you can only run 2 VMs at a time but you can install as many VMs as you like.

To attach the storage, you will have to connect it to the host by plugging the USB cable and create a share folder. Once you done this, you can access the folder on the guest by opening run command (start\run) and typing \hostcomputername\sharefolder to access the folder.

You can also create a drive map on the guest, which will save by typing the location over again. To create a drive map on the Windows 2012R2, open Windows explorer and right click on Map network drive. A dialog box will open and choose a drive letter and type in the path of the shared folder and click on finish. This will create a drive map.

The performance should be OK if your host machine support usb 3. If it doesn't then copying large data from guest to host will take time however you will not notice this if you're copying small data across.

Sumit
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  • What I wanted was the Guest to use the USB 3.0 Disks directly creating a storage space. So that I can move the guest OS to another machine and plug-in the USB enclosure, and be good to go. – Lyhr007 Oct 09 '14 at 13:57
  • You can add the guest OS in the storage box. If you open hyper-v and click on Hyper-V settings from action menu, you can specify location where you want to store the virtual hard disk and the virtual machines. As you want to access the guest to a different machine, you will need to change the location for both by entering the drive of your storage box. Once you done that, you press OK. When you create the guest, it will save to that storage and you will be able to unplug the box and access to a different machine. – Sumit Oct 09 '14 at 16:25