The first step in successful OSD is to have a useful test environment that you can connect to remotely and rebuild quickly. You need a Virtual Machine (VM). VMs allow you to quickly perform testing cycles with OSD. Enter MICROSOFT HYPER-V
.
This may come as a surprise to many, but Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 is actually a free product. Microsoft Hyper-V Server is a free download from Microsoft—to obtain the latest version, use your favourite web search utility to search for hyper-v server free
.
Or if you have an available license for Windows Server 2008 or R2, you can simply install the OS on your server, and enable the Hyper-V role. We'll show you how to use the free Hyper-V offering below to make a VM, but the option for the Hyper-V role is similar.