Virtual machines can help you recreate computing environments faster and more easily than by using only physical computers. The following table identifies the basic tasks required to configure a development and test environment.

Task Reference

Determine the networking requirements, including network isolation, of your test environment. Create virtual networks to support these requirements.

For information about planning virtual networks, see Configuring Virtual Networks (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=131362). For instructions about creating or modifying a virtual network, see Manage Virtual Networks.

Create virtual machines to recreate the computing environment you want to test.

Create Virtual Machines

Install the appropriate guest operating system on each virtual machine.

Install a Guest Operating System

As necessary, log on to the virtual machine to interact with the guest operating system.

Connect to a Virtual Machine

Take snapshots of the virtual machines before and after making changes that you want to verify or might need to revert.

For instructions about using snapshots, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=108561. For information about planning for and managing snapshots, see About Virtual Machine Snapshots.

Additional considerations

  • By default, membership in the local Administrators group, or equivalent, is the minimum required to complete this procedure. However, an administrator can use Authorization Manager to modify the authorization policy so that a user or group of users can complete this procedure. For more information, see Using Authorization Manager for Hyper-V Security (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=142886).

  • You can use virtual machine snapshots to capture the state of a virtual machine while it is running. You can take multiple snapshots of a virtual machine and then revert the virtual machine to any of the previous states by applying a snapshot to the virtual machine. This can make it easier to diagnose the cause of errors by reducing the number of times you need to repeat a task or sequence. Use Hyper-V Manager or Virtual Machine Connection to take snapshots.

Additional references