Here is a tip and some help for you out there who are using Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 for optimizing the hard disk of the virtual machines.

Virtual Server 2005 configuration

First of all make sure that you hard disks are fixed size, that means that they don’t have to expand during runtime.

Then take advantage of the Virtual SCSI adapters, when the Virtual Machine Add-Ons are installed on the virtual server you will have a significant performance increase of up to 20 %.

This is how you change your IDE disks into SCSI ones:

  1. Shut down the Virtual Server
  2. Add a SCSI adapter to your Virtual Server
  3. Start the server and uninstall the Virtual Machine Add-ons
  4. Restart the server and install the Virtual Machine Add-ons (to be sure that the accelerated SCSI drivers are installed)
  5. Shut down the server
  6. Move the hard disk(s) from the IDE interface to the SCSI interface
  7. Start the server and you are done!