{"id":425,"date":"2017-11-09T13:50:23","date_gmt":"2017-11-09T13:50:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelstoica.com\/?p=425"},"modified":"2017-11-09T13:50:23","modified_gmt":"2017-11-09T13:50:23","slug":"hyper-v-virtual-machine-files","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelstoica.com\/site\/hyper-v-virtual-machine-files\/","title":{"rendered":"Hyper-V virtual machine files"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In this article I would like to talk about the Hyper-V virtual machine files, something that might be useful for people that are coming from the VMware platform. First I&#8217;ll go through the virtual machine files that are used in Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, because this is the most used, and then through the changes implemented in Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V.<\/p>\n<p>So, in Windows Server 2012 we have the following virtual machine files:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>.XML<\/strong> files\u00a0 which contains the virtual machine configuration details. The files can be find where the virtual machine is stored, in\u00a0the <strong>Virtual Machines<\/strong> folder and you&#8217;ll have one for virtual machine and one for each snapshot of the virtual machine.<\/li>\n<li><strong>.BIN<\/strong> files contains the memory of the virtual machine or snapshot that is in a saved state. The files can be find where the virtual machine is stored, in\u00a0the <strong>Virtual Machines<\/strong> folder and it will also be created for each snapshot you take and it will be placed in <strong>virtual machine location\\Snapshots<\/strong> and there you will have a folder named with a <strong>GUID<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>.VSV<\/strong> files contains the saved state from the devices associated with the virtual machine. The files can be find where the virtual machine is stored, in\u00a0the <strong>Virtual Machines<\/strong> folder and it will also be created for each snapshot you take and it will be placed in <strong>virtual machine Location\\Snapshots<\/strong> and there you will have a folder named with a <strong>GUID<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>.VHD<\/strong> files are the virtual machine virtual hard disk files<\/li>\n<li>.<strong>AVHD<\/strong> files\u00a0 are differencing disk files used for the snapshots.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You can find some more details on this blog <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/virtual_pc_guy\/2010\/03\/10\/understanding-where-your-virtual-machine-files-are-hyper-v\/\">post <\/a>by Ben Armstrong.<\/p>\n<p>Now, in Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V the files were changed and we have the followings:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Configuration File (.VMCX)\u00a0<\/strong>&#8211; this replaces the .XML configuration file and contains the virtual machine configuration information in a binary file format.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Runtime State (.VMRS) &#8211;\u00a0<\/strong>virtual machine runtime state information stored in a binary file format.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Virtual Hard Disk (.VHD or .VHDX)<\/strong> &#8211; nothing changed<\/li>\n<li><strong>Automatic virtual hard disk (.AVDX) &#8211;\u00a0<\/strong>these are differencing disk files used for virtual machine checkpoint.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Checkpoint (.VMRS and .VMCX) &#8211;\u00a0<\/strong>for each checkpoint created an\u00a0<strong>.VMCX and .VMRS\u00a0<\/strong>file is created.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this article I would like to talk about the Hyper-V virtual machine files, something that might be useful for people that are coming from&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/michaelstoica.com\/site\/hyper-v-virtual-machine-files\/\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Hyper-V virtual machine files<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,8,9,19],"class_list":["post-425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-hyper-v","tag-virtualization","tag-windows-server","tag-windows-server-2016","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p63Lge-6R","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelstoica.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelstoica.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelstoica.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelstoica.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelstoica.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/michaelstoica.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":430,"href":"https:\/\/michaelstoica.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425\/revisions\/430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelstoica.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelstoica.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelstoica.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}