After Windows server 2008 R2 was installed on Hyper-V VM “VM-2008R2″, a few challenges were resolved with some efforts so they are worth noting down here:

• Internet connection from VM:
  1. Created a Virtual Network Switch first; in order to allow VM to go to internet independently, must create an External Switch. Use “Virtual Switch Manager” of the Hyper-V Manager to accomplish
  2. There are three types of Virtual Switch, “External”, “Internal” and “Private”. Refer to this reference here at http://lennytech.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/setting-up-a-virtual-switch-for-a-hyper-v-network/ for more detail explanations about the differences.
  3. When I needed to RDP into the VM, I needed to create an “Internal Switch”
  4. Once the Virtual Switches are created, go to “Settings” under the “VM-2008R2″ and associate the Network Adapter with a Virtual Switch selected from the “Virtual Switch” drop-down list; In my case, I have created 3 switches so they are shown here: 1) ExternalWireless – this uses Intel Centrino wireless network card for wireless connection so the VM can access Internet without connecting a CAT-5 cable 2) ExternalSwitch – this uses Intel’s Gigabit network card on the laptop and requires a network cable to connect to a wireless or wired router 3) InternalSwitch – using this switch will render the VM no direct internet access but this is the only option if I want to remote desktop connect to my VM and share resources between physical and virtual machine such as Copy and Paste files, etc.
• Access USB drive from VM Basic concept is that you need to un-mount USB drive from physical machine first and then it can be picked up and mounted onto VM. In my case, these steps were taken to get my WD Passport drive to become accessible from VM:
  1. On physical machine, plugged in WD Passport, then opened Disk Manager (Windows Control Panel/Administraive Tools/Computer Management/Disk Mnagement), clicked on the Drive letter (Drive 3) in this case for WD Passport and right click->Selected Offline
  2. Logged in to VM-2008R2 and clicked on “Settings”, then SCSI Controller under Hardware section; highlighted Hard Drive and clicked on “Add” button
  3. Selected “Physical hard disk:” and there it was, “Disk 3 232.89GB Bus 0 Lun 0 Target 0″ which was the WD Passport I just took offline from the local host machine. Clicked OK, and immediately I could hear a click sound from the WD Passport connected to USB port of the physical machine. and Back to the Disk Management console on the VM, I can now see the WD Passport listed.
  4. Credited most to this reference at http://blogs.technet.com/b/hollis/archive/2012/02/21/accessing-usb-drives-in-a-hyper-v-vm.aspx to help me get here.