Add an additional virtual hard disk at different path on System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2

It seems that System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 or later missed an option for administrators to add disks to different path. 

By default, an additional virtual hard disk will be added to the same path of virtual machine files path.

To change the virtual hard disk path, administrators have to add a virtual hard disk first. Then, administrators launch a virtual machine properties again and then select "Browse" to change a new path.

However, there is a problem. If the virtual machine is running, administrators cannot change the virtual hard disk to a new path.

Can we assign a specific path for a new virtual hard disk?

Yes, use PowerShell.

SCVMM perform a couple of cmdlets to create and then assign a new virtual hard disk to a virtual machine. We can modify the cmdlet template and then let it create a new virtual hard disk to a specific path.

Launch the cmdlet template by clicking "View Script".

There cmdlets are applied to create a new virtual hard disk and assign to a virtual machine. I added "-path" parameter at the cmdlet, New-SCvirtualDiskDrive. We can copy these cmdlets and then paste it to "Virtual Machine Manager Command Shell" to perform it.

Remark: "-Path" supports Local path, UNC path, Volume GUID path, VMware ESX path and Citrix XenServer path.

We can use this temporary method to create a virtual hard disk and assign to a specific path for a virtual machine.

More information

New-SCVirtualDiskDrive

This posting is provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confers no rights!