Hello Gai-jin, Linked ISO images are not supported on Hyper-V virtual machines. Hyper-V does not natively support attaching files to a virtual machine using UNC paths. Therefore, if a file is attached to a Hyper-V virtual machine, the file will get copied. The following thread disscussed a simialr issue: 'Use ISO From Library' Permission Error http://social.technet.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/virtualmachinemanager/thread/5c98ad84-67e6-4912-ae40-76c83947181e/ The following article may help you with a workaround: Using ISOs with SCVMM 2008 http://systemcentertech.wordpress.com/2008/07/28/using-isos-with-scvmm-2008/ Hope it helps,Yog Li -- Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

We recently noticed several of our VM's had an ISO stored in the dir with the .vhd file. After looking at it, it seems that SCE is actually copying the install ISO from the library to the hyperv host when a new vm is being created, and storing it in a directory with the new .vhd for that machine. I'm guessing this is done so that when installing the OS, it's getting the iso from the local drive instead of over the network. Does that really save that much network traffic, copying the entire iso once instead of mounting the iso over the network? More to the point, why does SCE leave the ISO in the directory when it's done? We had multiple copies of the Win2008R2 install iso floating around out there taking up disk space because it copied it for every vm we created with SCE. Even worse, when we deleted a vm from the sce console, it deleted the .vhd, but left the ISO behind.

Okay, I can see where SCE might need to copy the ISO to the hyperv host for that initial install, but copying the ISO over every time and then leaving it there when it's no longer needed seems wasteful. 1) Wouldn't it make more sense to keep a copy of the library folder on each HyperV host, and mount the ISO's from the local copy when necessary? 2) Or, when the VM is created through sce, the OS is installed, and the ISO is no longer needed, shouldn't SCE clean up after itself delete the copied ISO? As it stands now, you could easily end up with 4-5 copies of the same ISO on a server, one for each vm created through SCE.