VHD Install Guide for ‘Longhorn’ - Enterprise vs Core

I was writing a ‘Longhorn’ install guide for TechTalk Blogs, hence odd updates for posts such as “where did my Virtual Machine Additions come from“.  But I’ve just found out that TechNet Blogger, Dave Northey has beat me to it (again).   Thanks Dave! :)

You can read more in his post “Windows Server Code Name ‘Longhorn’ - Beta3, Now What” and a snippet is below:

..‘Longhorn’ reached the Beta 3 which means that we’ve finished adding features.

My intention in this article is to get you ‘playing’ with Longhorn quickly and without the need for those physical servers (you will need a PC with a minimum of 1Gb of memory though).

The quickest and easiest method is to use Virtualisation and the quickest and easiest route to that (assuming you aren’t already using something else) is with Virtual PC. Virtual PC 2007 is the only version that will work well with Longhorn,

My suggestion is to download the 32-bit Enterprise Edition & run it in a Virtual PC. 32-bit because Virtual PC 2007 only emulates 32-bit hardware. Enterprise Edition because it has more functionality that Standard or Web and the same functionality as Datacenter (apart from support for lots of CPUs – something you haven’t got in a Virtual PC).

….

I’ve run through this process for both Enterprise and Enterprise Core. My laptop is pretty powerful and I have Hardware Virtualisation enabled, so my install times were quite quick. Yours will/may differ, but here are mine for your information (time to go and have a cup of tea):

  • Enterprise Edition  Start - 11:53; Finished - 12:16 (23 minutes)
  • Enterprise Core Start - 13:39 ; Finished - 13:48 (9 minutes)

The Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) for the full install is nearly six gigabytes (5,971,508), whilst the VHD for Core is just over one and a half (1,645,076).

The above snippet is heavily edited, and there is lots of good information in his article,so you should check it out.  Happy beta testing.