So, after backing up a server over the internet with WHS and Hamachi, why not try and restore it to a Hyper-V virtual machine. I always thought it would work, but had never verified the process first hand.
With this in mind I created a new Hyper-V machine with the proper amount of disk space for the image of the server that I had backed up.
I connect to the machine and boot off the WHS restore disk, I get to the point where it tells me what devices have been detected and it shows several disks but no network devices. Without a network connection there will be no way to restore to the VHD. You can't put drivers on a thumbdrive because the Virtual machine won't be able to find it. Although here is a link on how extract the drivers out of vmguest.iso http://www.windeploy.co.uk/blog/index.php/2009/10/extracting-hyper-v-r2-drivers/ . I tried to add another drive to the machine with the extracted drivers, but it still didn't find them. I searched some posts and found a few where they suggested that you add a legacy network adapter. I tried that, making sure to link it to the adapter connected to the network. I continued with the restore and this time it showed an emulated network adapter. It still would not find the WHS box. I cleared the server name and re-entered it. This time it asked for a password and found the server. I then chose what backup to restore and started restoring the backup of the remote physical machine to my Hyper-V server. I am not sure what kind of throughput I got with the emulated legacy adapter, it wasn't blazing and the connection said 100 meg.
So a couple of hours later, my 30 gig remote server had found a new home as a virtual machine on my Hyper-V box. It booted first try and installed integration components without a hitch.
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