HyperV tips

• Never save state on a Domain Controller doing so can cause domain synchronisation issues.
• Never pause a Domain Controller, this can cause replication issues.
• Do not take Snapshots of Domain Controllers.
• Use Fixed size disks, this will improve performance, and help reduce disk fragmentation.
• Always defragment a physical disk before creating a virtual hard disk.
• Be mindful of the integration services affect on a Domain Controller. If you provide the time synchronisation service to a Domain Controller, you can cause time synchronisation issues in your domain.
• Don't expand the Virtual Hard Disk if you have snapshots which haven't merged with the main VHD. This will make it impossible to remerge them.
• If you cannot merge your snapshot (avhd) files back into the main VHD. You can attempt to use WinImage (http://www.winimage.com) to retrieve the data from within the snapshot file. To do this simply rename the snapshot file from string.avhd to string.vhd then open with winimage.
• Remember to uninstall the VM Additions before migrating Virtual Machines from Virtual PC or Virtual Server 2005 R2, otherwise you will receive the following error when you try to uninstall them from inside Hyper-V:
• You can install Virtual Machine Additions only on a virtual machine that is running a supported guest operating system