What is VHD and How Does it Work?

VHD stands for Virtual Hard Disk. It is a file that acts as a virtual hard disk drive, allowing you to run an operating system and install applications as if it were a physical hard disk drive.

A VHD is a container file that holds a complete, bootable copy of an operating system and its associated files, such as the kernel, device drivers, and application software. The VHD file includes a virtual hard disk that emulates a physical hard disk drive, complete with a file system, partition table, and all the other components you would expect to find on a physical hard disk drive.

VHDs are commonly used in virtualization environments, where they allow multiple virtual machines (VMs) to share the same physical hardware resources, such as CPU, memory, and storage. Each VM is assigned its own VHD, which contains all the files and settings needed to run the VM's operating system and applications.

VHDs can be created and managed using a variety of tools, including Microsoft's Hyper-V and Virtual Machine Manager, as well as third-party tools like VMware Workstation and VirtualBox. They can also be used with cloud computing platforms, such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS), to create and deploy virtual machines in the cloud.