Friday, June 09, 2006
Vmount
Vmount is a free GUI wrapper for command line tool vmware-mount.exe
The user manual for the vmware-mount describes the utility in the following way:
“The VMware DiskMount Utility allows you to mount an unused virtual disk in a
Windows host file system as a separate drive without needing to connect to the virtual disk from within a virtual machine. You can mount specific volumes of a virtual disk if the virtual disk is partitioned.” Read more on http://www.vmware.com
The production network under my control is entirely virtualized and is based on the free vmware server (RC1 stage as of the day of writing). The virtual infrastructure includes Microsoft Domain Controllers, Exchange server, SQL server and other services running on a single physical box. Virtualization allows to reduce both hardware and licensing costs when running Microsoft Windows infrastructure (recent changes in Microsoft licensing policy allows to run up to 4 Windows 2003 R2 servers on a single box without need for additional licenses).
Another great benefit of having virtual infrastructure is greatly simplified backup. The backup procedure I’m using is storing offline replicas of all the machines in a dedicated 200 Gig USB drive attached to my desktop.
I often use mounting offline virtual disks to verify the backup integrity. It’s great to be able to check NTFS drives, look at the fragmentation level, do offline Exchange database integrity checks and much more. All without touching the production servers!
This is why I created the vmount utility – the GUI based tool that uses native vmware-mount.exe to simplify virtual drives mapping management. The utility is written in C# and requires .Net runtime 2.0. If .Net 2.0 is not installed, the setup will detect this and will automatically download it from Microsoft site. The setup will also establish association between vmdk files and the utility. Double-clicking a vmdk file from Windows explorer will automatically mount the drive.
The path to the native vmware-mount is configurable through the Settings dialog. The drive letters pool can also be configured.
Limitations: There is not much error handling in this version. If you think it’s important to better handle errors, support snapshots or have other suggestions for new functionality, please leave a comment in this blog.
Read more about the vmount on abinsight.com
Download Vmmount
The user manual for the vmware-mount describes the utility in the following way:
“The VMware DiskMount Utility allows you to mount an unused virtual disk in a
Windows host file system as a separate drive without needing to connect to the virtual disk from within a virtual machine. You can mount specific volumes of a virtual disk if the virtual disk is partitioned.” Read more on http://www.vmware.com
The production network under my control is entirely virtualized and is based on the free vmware server (RC1 stage as of the day of writing). The virtual infrastructure includes Microsoft Domain Controllers, Exchange server, SQL server and other services running on a single physical box. Virtualization allows to reduce both hardware and licensing costs when running Microsoft Windows infrastructure (recent changes in Microsoft licensing policy allows to run up to 4 Windows 2003 R2 servers on a single box without need for additional licenses).
Another great benefit of having virtual infrastructure is greatly simplified backup. The backup procedure I’m using is storing offline replicas of all the machines in a dedicated 200 Gig USB drive attached to my desktop.
I often use mounting offline virtual disks to verify the backup integrity. It’s great to be able to check NTFS drives, look at the fragmentation level, do offline Exchange database integrity checks and much more. All without touching the production servers!
This is why I created the vmount utility – the GUI based tool that uses native vmware-mount.exe to simplify virtual drives mapping management. The utility is written in C# and requires .Net runtime 2.0. If .Net 2.0 is not installed, the setup will detect this and will automatically download it from Microsoft site. The setup will also establish association between vmdk files and the utility. Double-clicking a vmdk file from Windows explorer will automatically mount the drive.
The path to the native vmware-mount is configurable through the Settings dialog. The drive letters pool can also be configured.
Limitations: There is not much error handling in this version. If you think it’s important to better handle errors, support snapshots or have other suggestions for new functionality, please leave a comment in this blog.
Read more about the vmount on abinsight.com
Download Vmmount
# posted by Andrei Baronov @ 5:59 AM 
Comments:
this is a very nice tool indeed! Can I just "file a bug"? The first mounted volume often does not appear in the menu, you have to restart the gui to make it appear. From 2nd drive on it works ok. Thanks again!
This tool is great. I'm working with vmware disks for some time, and before vmount I've written some scripts which I call via context menue. Vmount is much more elegant. The only thing I still use my scripts is for unmounting a drive on the drive button context menu in explorer or tc.
My wish is to have a possibility to mount a couple of drives at once on specific drive letters. It should be possible to mount them automatically on startup.
That you for this life-reliefing utility.
It would be nice if there will be an option to open a snapshot'ed Vmware images (/y switch ?)
And since saw this Vista comment - Wished it'll work with Vista (As long as the GUI related compatibility)
Addition to my previous post: It works GREAT in vista! No worries about Vista (My Vista=Vista Ultimate 64 bits)
Your Vmount is great, but can you release a new version that support more than 1 partions in 1 vmdk file? Because in my virtual PC, i partioned 2 drives C:\ and D:\ and once i mount the vmdk, it only show the C:\
Is there any development ?
The new vmware-mount doesn't support /y. Is there some workaround to get it to work again ?
The solution to "/y" problem is to open vmount.exe in hex editor, search for the Unicode string (2F 00 79 00) and replace it with spaces (20 00 20 00).
On Vista 64 after choosing "mount" from tray icon menu, the program hangs.
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this is a very nice tool indeed! Can I just "file a bug"? The first mounted volume often does not appear in the menu, you have to restart the gui to make it appear. From 2nd drive on it works ok. Thanks again!
This tool is great. I'm working with vmware disks for some time, and before vmount I've written some scripts which I call via context menue. Vmount is much more elegant. The only thing I still use my scripts is for unmounting a drive on the drive button context menu in explorer or tc.
My wish is to have a possibility to mount a couple of drives at once on specific drive letters. It should be possible to mount them automatically on startup.
# posted by 
: August 31, 2007
: August 31, 2007 That you for this life-reliefing utility.
It would be nice if there will be an option to open a snapshot'ed Vmware images (/y switch ?)
And since saw this Vista comment - Wished it'll work with Vista (As long as the GUI related compatibility)
# posted by : January 22, 2008
: January 22, 2008 Addition to my previous post: It works GREAT in vista! No worries about Vista (My Vista=Vista Ultimate 64 bits)
Your Vmount is great, but can you release a new version that support more than 1 partions in 1 vmdk file? Because in my virtual PC, i partioned 2 drives C:\ and D:\ and once i mount the vmdk, it only show the C:\
# posted by : June 05, 2008
: June 05, 2008 Is there any development ?
The new vmware-mount doesn't support /y. Is there some workaround to get it to work again ?
# posted by : August 12, 2008
: August 12, 2008 The solution to "/y" problem is to open vmount.exe in hex editor, search for the Unicode string (2F 00 79 00) and replace it with spaces (20 00 20 00).
On Vista 64 after choosing "mount" from tray icon menu, the program hangs.
# posted by : November 09, 2008
: November 09, 2008 << Home
