Recently I needed to perform an in-place upgrade from Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2, which was running on hyper-V VM .
To perform the upgrade, I wanted to mount the 2008 R2 installation DVD located at a network share, but was faced with the following error:
Error applying DVD Drive changes – Failed to add device ‘Virtual CD/DVD Disk’.
Solution:
There appear to be couple of ways to resolve the issue:
- A simple solution where a temporary one off fix is intended, we could simply save the .iso to the local drive of the Hyper-V host. Re-run the wizard, and replace the unc path to the local path of the newly copied local copy of the installation media, and you’ll see the iso is happily mounted to the vm.
- In case if the SCVMM is deployed in your environment, VMM library could be used to store/ manage all the binaries, and by simply enabling the Hyper-V virtual machines to share the binaries from the VMM library could provide a more permanent and systematic approach.
To configure a virtual machine to share an ISO image:
- In Virtual Machines view of the VMM Administrator Console, right-click the virtual machine, and then click Properties.
- Click the Hardware Configuration tab.
- In the left pane, under Bus Configuration, click IDE devices, and then select the IDE device that is being used to capture the ISO image file.
- Under Capture mode, select Existing image file, and then use the Browse button to select the shared ISO image file in the VMM library that you want to use.
- To share the image file from the VMM library instead of attaching a copy of the image to the virtual machine, select the Share image file instead of copying it check box.
Talha Qamar 