Some friends here on the Hyper-V team shared a PowerShell 2.0 script for taking a snapshot of your VMs:
# Take a snapshot of a VM param( [string]$vmName = $(throw "Must specify virtual machine name") ) # Get the virtual machine by name $vm = gwmi -namespace root\virtualization Msvm_ComputerSystem -filter "ElementName='$vmName'" # Get the management service and apply the snapshot $vmms = gwmi -namespace root\virtualization Msvm_VirtualSystemManagementService #Create the SnapShot $result = $vmms.CreateVirtualSystemSnapShot($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 $result.ReturnValue
# Take a snapshot of a VM
param( [string]$vmName = $(throw "Must specify virtual machine name") )
# Get the virtual machine by name $vm = gwmi -namespace root\virtualization Msvm_ComputerSystem -filter "ElementName='$vmName'"
# Get the management service and apply the snapshot $vmms = gwmi -namespace root\virtualization Msvm_VirtualSystemManagementService
#Create the SnapShot $result = $vmms.CreateVirtualSystemSnapShot($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 PowerShell Example Scripts.zip-download