Hyper-V How To: Create a VM using Script

Some friends here on the Hyper-V team shared a PowerShell 2.0 script for creating a VM:

# Create a VM

param(
    [string]$vmName = $(throw "Must supply a virtual machine name")
)

# Get a new instance of Msvm_VirtualSystemGlobalSettingData
$vsgsdClass = [wmiclass]"root\virtualization:Msvm_VirtualSystemGlobalSettingData"
$vsgsd = $vsgsdClass.CreateInstance()
$vsgsd.ElementName = $vmName

# Get the managment service and define the system from the embedded instance
$vmms = gwmi -namespace root\virtualization Msvm_VirtualSystemManagementService

$result = $vmms.DefineVirtualSystem($vsgsd.GetText(1))

if($result.ReturnValue -eq 4096){
    # A Job was started, and can be tracked using its Msvm_Job instance
    $job = [wmi]$result.Job
    # Wait for job to finish
    while($job.jobstate -lt 7){$job.get()}
    # Return the Job's error code
    return $job.ErrorCode
}
# Otherwise, the method completed
return $result.ReturnValue

 

For more info on how to use PS cmdlets see: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/topics/msh/cmdlets/index.mspx

See also James O’Neil’s New and improved PowerShell Library for Hyper-V. Now with more functions and... documentation!

For all 35 sample Hyper-V PS1 scripts in a zipfile, go to: Hyper-V PowerShell Example Scripts.zip-download