RTFM!

I'm going to be short on this. Microsoft 2008 Server R2 is 64-bit only. So there is no chance installing the beta will work on your 32-bit-guest-pc-only VPC. A pity for the wasted bandwidth...

Installing Windows 7

I’ve installed Windows 7 last week. Unfortunately I hadn’t much time to play with it because we had a serious escalation on my work. The intranet server was performing badly, so I did a crash course performance counters for ASP.NET and now know that the caching service is an essential component for the Tridion Content Management system.

For improving ASP.NET Performance, the following articles helped:

• Improving ASP.NET Performance (for .NET 1.1, but concepts are version independant)
• Performance Counters for ASP.NET

Mount VHD in host OS

Just discovered... mounting a VHD is possible!

• Download the Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1
• Install, uncheck all boxes except VHD Mount
• Edit registry
• Right click VHD
• ???
• Profit ;)

The registry should be edited with:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Virtual.Machine.HD]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Virtual.Machine.HD\shell]
@="Mount"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Virtual.Machine.HD\shell\Dismount]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Virtual.Machine.HD\shell\Dismount\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Virtual Server\\Vhdmount\\vhdmount.exe\" /u \"%1\""

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Virtual.Machine.HD\shell\Mount]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Virtual.Machine.HD\shell\Mount\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Virtual Server\\Vhdmount\\vhdmount.exe\" /p \"%1\""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.vhd]
@="Virtual.Machine.HD"