With the introduction of Windows 2k12 R2, shared VHDX has been added along with VHDX (Virtual Hard disk Extended). VHDX supports higher LUN storage (64 TB) and has better optimization in comparison to VHD.
What are the benefits of shared VHDX?
Shared VHDX on one of the vms is accessible to multiple virtual machines on the same host (Can not map OS on it).
A simple use case can be to setup two exactly similar VMs with shared VHDX shared between the two. Start the copy on one of the VMs and shut it down during the copy operation, the copy will pause for sometime and resume again as if nothing happened. This happens because all the file meta data is tracked continually in VHDX unlike VHD.
Under VHDX all Vms are sending the I/O to the coordinator node. This includes meta data as well as I/O. Coordinator node sends the I/O to the VHDX.
So if there is a VM which is hosted on the coordinator node, it will still send it to the NTFS stack on the same node. Here is how it should look like.
To know more email: marketing@calsoftinc.com
Contributed by: Himanshu Sonkar | CalsoftInc.
