Some friends here on the Hyper-V team shared a PowerShell 2.0 script for deleting a VM:
# Delete a VM param( [string]$VMName = $(throw "Must specify name of virtual machine to delete") ) #Obtain the VM object that we are going to destroy $query = "SELECT * FROM Msvm_ComputerSystem WHERE ElementName='" + $VMName + "'" $VM = gwmi -query $query -namespace "root\virtualization" #obtain the VirtualSystemManagementService class $VSMgtService = get-wmiobject -class "Msvm_VirtualSystemManagementService" -namespace "root\virtualization" #Destroy the virtual computer system. $result = $VSMgtService.DestroyVirtualSystem($VM) 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 $result.ReturnValue
# Delete a VM
param( [string]$VMName = $(throw "Must specify name of virtual machine to delete") ) #Obtain the VM object that we are going to destroy $query = "SELECT * FROM Msvm_ComputerSystem WHERE ElementName='" + $VMName + "'" $VM = gwmi -query $query -namespace "root\virtualization" #obtain the VirtualSystemManagementService class $VSMgtService = get-wmiobject -class "Msvm_VirtualSystemManagementService" -namespace "root\virtualization" #Destroy the virtual computer system. $result = $VSMgtService.DestroyVirtualSystem($VM)
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%20PowerShell%20Example%20Scripts.zip-download