Automation Archives - Page 3 of 3

How to: Create multiple VM’s in Hyper-V within a few seconds

Automation is one of my favorite things. Some actions are just time consuming, so let’s automate these things!! For example, create a demo environment within Hyper-V. This environment needs 8 VM’s. With a few lines of code, this is realy easy to automate, off course with PowerShell.


## Create 8 Gen2 Virtual Machines
## 4 vCPU per VM
## 1 GB per VM
## C: drive 50 GB Dynamic
## D: drive 50 GB Dynamic
## NIC renamed to MGMT
$vSwitchName01 = "NIC - PRI"
$InstallRoot = "E:\DEMO"
$VMName = "HV-0"

## How much VM's 1..8 = 8 VM's
1..4 | % {
New-VHD -Path ($InstallRoot + "\$VMName" + "$_\" + "\$VMName" + "$_" + "_C.vhdx") -SizeBytes 50GB -Dynamic
New-VHD -Path ($InstallRoot + "\$VMName" + "$_\" + "\$VMName" + "$_" + "_D.vhdx") -SizeBytes 50GB -Dynamic
New-VM -VHDPath ($InstallRoot + "\$VMName" + "$_\" + "\$VMName" + "$_" + "_C.vhdx") -Generation 2 -MemoryStartupBytes 1GB -Name ("$VMName" + "$_") -Path $InstallRoot -SwitchName $vSwitchName01

Set-VMProcessor -VMName ("$VMName" + "$_") -Count 4
Set-VM -VMName ("$VMName" + "$_") -AutomaticStopAction ShutDown -AutomaticStartAction StartIfRunning
Enable-VMIntegrationService ("$VMName" + "$_") -Name "Guest Service Interface"

Rename-VMNetworkAdapter -VMName ("$VMName" + "$_") -NewName "MGMT"
Set-VMNetworkAdapter -VMName ("$VMName" + "$_") -Name "MGMT" -DeviceNaming On

Add-VMScsiController -VMName ("$VMName" + "$_")
Add-VMHardDiskDrive -VMName ("$VMName" + "$_") -ControllerType SCSI -ControllerNumber 1 -ControllerLocation 0 -Path ($InstallRoot + "\$VMName" + "$_\" + "\$VMName" + "$_" + "_D.vhdx")

Start-VM -Name ("$VMName" + "$_") | Out-Null
}

Within a few seconds, I’ve 8 VM’s up and running.

/ Happy Automation!

WEBINAR: Troubleshooting Microsoft Hyper-V

If you’ve been in IT for any length of time, you’ve likely gotten that phone call that you never want to get: Everything is broken! It’s the end of the world! The sky is falling! Your Hyper-V Host or Cluster is broken and you are the person to fix it!

Where do you start?

What are the most common things to look for?

These are exactly some of the questions we’ll be covering in our next webinar, on February 25th, 2016 at 4pm CET / 10am EST!

Microsoft Cloud and Datacenter Management MVPs Didier Van Hoye and Andy Syrewicze will be answering these questions, and will also be sharing some tales from the trenches.

In this webinar you’ll learn Hyper-V troubleshooting basics and solutions to common problems. You’ll also see some Hyper-V oddities that were encountered by Didier and Andy and how these issues were ultimately resolved and with what tools.

It’s one thing to setup and run a virtualization solution. It’s another thing to fix it when it’s broken.

Sign up now to join us on February 25th, 2016 at 4pm CET / 10am EST (30-45mins + live Q&A!) for some tales from the trenches!

How to: Initialize, format and label disks during OSD Task Sequence in SCCM 2012 R2

During a task seuence in Microsoft SCCM 2012 R2, the operating system and applications are installed on the C: drive in most situations. But in some deployments, you definitely want to create more disks. For example, you want to create a D: and E: partition for storing some other data. Maybe for Microsoft SQL or Exchange installation, databases, logfiles or just some other data.

The following script will do all these steps for you during the task sequence. The script initialize, format, partition and label the disks for you….fully automated! 🙂

## Set CD-ROM from E: to X:
Set-WmiInstance -InputObject ( Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_volume -Filter "DriveLetter = 'E:'" ) -Arguments @{DriveLetter='X:'}

$disks = Get-Disk | measure
If($disks.Count -eq 2)
{
## Initialize all new disks
Initialize-Disk 1
## Format and rename disks
Get-Disk | where {$_.Number -eq "1"} | New-Partition -UseMaximumSize | Format-Volume -FileSystem NTFS -NewFileSystemLabel Data -Confirm:$false
## Set drive letters (D: - Data, E: - Backup)
Get-Disk | where {$_.Number -eq "1"} | Get-Partition | where {$_.PartitionNumber -eq 2} | Set-Partition -NewDriveLetter D
}
elseif($disks.Count -eq 3)
{
## Initialize all new disks
Initialize-Disk 1
Initialize-Disk 2
## Format and rename disks
Get-Disk | where {$_.Number -eq "1"} | New-Partition -UseMaximumSize | Format-Volume -FileSystem NTFS -NewFileSystemLabel Data -Confirm:$false
Get-Disk | where {$_.Number -eq "2"} | New-Partition -UseMaximumSize | Format-Volume -FileSystem NTFS -NewFileSystemLabel Backup -Confirm:$false
## Set drive letters (D: - Data, E: - Backup)
Get-Disk | where {$_.Number -eq "1"} | Get-Partition | where {$_.PartitionNumber -eq 2} | Set-Partition -NewDriveLetter D
Get-Disk | where {$_.Number -eq "2"} | Get-Partition | where {$_.PartitionNumber -eq 2} | Set-Partition -NewDriveLetter E
}
else
{
exit
}
exit

The script first checks how many disks are attached to the server.
If there is only one disk attached, you’ll have only a C: drive available after the deployment.
If there are 2 disks attached, you’ll have a C: and D: drive avalailable after the deployment.
If there are 3 disks attached, you’ll have a C:, D: and E: drive available after the deployment.

The CD-ROM drive will alse changed from E: to X:.

WEBINAR: Scripting & Automation in Hyper-V without SCVMM

Save the date!!

the 10th of december there is a free webinar about automating tasks in your Hyper-V environment without the user of Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM).

This is realy usefull for that customers who don’t have System Center within their environment! Automation and scripting some tasks can save you a lot of time and money!
MVP Thomas Maurer and Technical Evangelist Andrew Syrewicze will present this webinar!