Datasheet
26
Chapter 1
Planning for the Installation of Windows 7
Direct Connection vs. Brokered Connection
In the context of VDI, connections can either be direct or brokered. Direct would be
directly within a virtual machine, and brokered would be indirectly through the virtual
machine.
Direct connection The user launches the virtual machine from within the host system,
logs on to the virtual machine, and starts the application within the virtual machine.
Brokered connection The user launches the application directly from the host machine.
Even though it’s running within the virtual machine, this is transparent to the user.
Windows XP Mode (shown later in this chapter) uses a brokered connection, and this can
be used with other virtual machines.
Imagine a user needs to launch an instance of an older application named LegacyApp.
She can launch this in a direct connection or a brokered connection. In both instances, the
application would be installed on a virtual machine, but the difference is in how it’s deliv-
ered to the user. Brokered connections are easier for end users.
Determining a VHD Strategy
A cool feature available with Windows 7 is the ability to boot to a virtual hard drive
(VHD). The VHD format has been used with Virtual PC for many years, but the abilities
have been expanded significantly. This can be done only with Windows 7 or Windows
Server 2008 R2, but it can be a useful feature.
Dual-boot environments allow you to boot to different operating systems. One of the
challenges with traditional dual-boot environments is that you needed to ensure each operat-
ing system was installed on its own partition. If not, one OS could (and usually did) corrupt
the other OS.
Now you can have multiple operating systems available on a single machine with a single
partition. When you’ve finished with the operating system, simply delete the VHD file.
You’ll see how to create a bootable VHD later in this chapter.
The process creates a VHD file (with an extension of
.vhd) at the root of C:. You can
name the file whatever you want (the following exercise names it
Windows7.vhd). The size
of the file should be at least 20 GB and is expressed in MB. You can make it larger to accom-
modate more data and files: 10 GB is 10240, so 20 GB would be 20480, 30 GB 30720,
and so on.
You can have the
.vhd file either fixed or expandable. A 20GB fixed size will always take
up 20 GB of space, while a 20GB expandable file will start at less than 100 MB and expand
as data is added to the file. The fixed size is quicker since it doesn’t need to expand dynami-
cally, while the expandable size consumes only the space needed.
Exercise 1.4 shows how you can configure a system to boot to a virtual hard drive host-
ing Windows 7. In the exercise, the host system is running 64-bit Windows Vista and the
installation DVD is 64-bit Windows 7.
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