Over the last few years I’ve been using and tweaking a PowerShell script that generates an HTML report that provides information about a Hyper-V host and running virtual machines. This is another great use case for a PowerShell control script. The script helps me organize commands like Get-CimInstance, Get-VM and Get-Counter to retrieve pieces of…
Tag: Hyper-V
Extending PowerShell with Custom Property Sets
If you’ve been following along on the blog recently you’ve read about my use of PowerShell type extensions. This is a way of adding new properties to things I use all the time. The goal is to save typing and get what I need with minimal effort. You can also take this a step further…
Extending Hyper-V with PowerShell
Lately I’ve been writing about my use of PowerShell type extensions as a way to get more done quickly. Or at least give me the information I want with minimal effort. I use Hyper-V a great deal and the Hyper-V cmdlets are invaluable. And while a command like Get-VM provides a lot of information, I…
More Power is on the way
For the past several months, I’ve been debating about what to do for the next iteration of my Hyper-V network. I rely on it heavily for my writing, course-ware development, and training. For awhile now I’ve been traveling with a Yoga 2 Pro which runs a few virtual machines, and a Gigabyte Brix unit with…
Adding Some Power to Hyper-V VM Notes
I use they Hyper-V virtual machine note to store system information. Here’s how I get it and set with PowerShell.
What Are You?
Here’s a quick way to tell whether a given machine is real or not: check the Win32_Baseboard class. You can use either Get-WmiObject or Get-CimInstance. Notice the results from a few physical machines. Now see the result when querying a Hyper-V virtual machine: I don’t have any VMware available so I don’t know what kind…
Hyper-V Memory Utilization with PowerShell
I really push the limits of my Hyper-V setup. I know I am constrained by memory and am hoping to expand my network before the end of the year. But in the meantime I have to keep close tabs on memory. I thought I’d share a few commands with you. I am assuming you have…
More Power Scotty!
Many of you have seen my travel with my Yoga 2 Pro laptop and a Gigabyte Brix running Hyper-V with 16GB of RAM and a 240GB msata drive. I use these rigs for demos when traveling and they also provide me with a test domain network. But lately I’ve started feeling some constraints. Even though…
Creating a Hyper-V VM Memory Report
I use Hyper-V to run my lab environment. Since I work at home I don’t have access to a “real” production network so I have to make do with a virtualized environment. Given budgetary constraints I also don’t have a lot of high end hardware with endless amount of RAM and storage. So I often…
VMDK to VHDX PDQ
I have a very old VMware ESXi server that has outlived its useful life. The hardware is at least 5 years old and my VMware license has expired. I can still bring up the server and see the virtual machines, but that’s about it. I still keep the box so I can run the PowerCLI…
The Altaro PowerShell Hyper-V Cookbook
For awhile now I’ve been contributing to the Altaro Hyper-V blog. Many of my articles centered on managing Hyper-V with PowerShell. I’ve gone through my library of management tools and written an eBook around them. All of the PowerShell scripts and functions have been polished up a bit. The eBook briefly discusses how to you…
InfoWorld: Automate Live VM Export
This is kinda cool, but I got published in InfoWorld, in a roundabout manner. J. Peter Bruzzese writes a column for InfoWorld on enterprise Windows. His latest column is about exporting Hyper-V virtual machines using PowerShell. In Windows Server 2012 R2 (and Windows 8.1) you can export a virtual machine even while it is running….
Mini Hyper-V Benchmarks
I’ve received a lot of interest in my mini Hyper-V project. I’m still running preview bits of Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 R2. Once final bits are released I’ll do a clean re-install. But until then I’ve been using it running about 4 virtual machines without a hiccup. I was getting some questions about benchmarks so…
Mini Hyper-V: Operating System
When we left my project, the new mini server had booted up using Windows Hyper-V Server 2012 R2. This is a server core installation intended to only run Hyper-V, which is perfect for my needs. The server booted up with a temporary name and a DHCP assigned IP address. The next step is configure the…
Mini Hyper-V: Setup
Now that hardware has been installed on my mini Hyper-V project, next up is to setup the unit and get software installed. The Brix fires up very quickly and of course since nothing is installed I initially see the no operating system found message. Rebooting, pressing F2 gets me into the BIOS setup. The only…