Benp's Guide to Stuff : Virtual Server

Scripting Virtual Server with PowerShell - Create-ChildVM.ps1

benp — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 14:40:00 GMT

Hello

I hate writing up scripts. Writing the scripts themselves is great, it’s just explaining them after which is really boring J

Here is the second demo script I used last week, Create-ChildVM.ps1. This script is invaluable if you need to quickly deploy machines in a test lab. I say test lab rather than production because this script uses differencing disks, which do not perform as well as fixed disk. They are great to use when you have disk space constraints, but on a beefy production system I would use fixed disks. A differencing disk has a read-only parent disk which can be used to store the operating system. Then any changes made to the disk are actually stored in the differencing disk. In this example my parent disk is a Windows 2003 SP2 sysprepped disk. The child then holds any differences. Multiple children can point to the same parent and parent disks can be chained together.

This script takes no parameters, and provides a menu system. The VM is created in seconds and the machine is up running in a matter of minutes.

I won’t explain the whole script, but just shout if you have any questions. There is no error checking in this script. Version 2 will have some error checking built in – I promise J

Thanks go to Steven Adler who's code I plagiarised for some (most) of the sections.

Cheers

BenP

Scripting Virtual Server with PowerShell - CAP-ISO.ps1

benp — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 16:05:00 GMT

Hello Everyone

As promised, attached is the first fo the demo scripts that I used at the “Scripting Virtual Server with PowerShell” session I ran. I`m not going to go through the whole script but here is an over view and bit more detail on a few key sections.

Script Synopsis

CAP-ISO.ps1 stands for CreateAndPresent-ISO.ps1. This script can be used to create an ISO file comprising of a given set of files. This iso is then presented to a guest VM. I find this particularly useful to run on my laptop with Virtual Server installed. Essentially this is a quick way of getting files from a host to a guest without having to worry about the network setup.

Interesting Bits

I should probably give this section a more descriptive title, but you get the idea. Here’s some of the more interesting sections of the script.

Firstly, this script just wraps around an existing command line tool to create the ISO. This tool is called OSCDIMG.EXE and ships with the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK). You will need to download the tool, and modify the script to point to its install location. The WAIK can be downloaded here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C7D4BC6D-15F3-4284-9123-679830D629F2&displaylang=en

Let’s look at some code. I don’t want to duplicate what Virtual PC Guy, Ben Armstrong has already written so for a basic guide to scripting Virtual Server with PowerShell go here: http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2006/06/13/630165.aspx

So, as Ben Armstrong discussed, you must first have the dll somewhere on the system, and then must reference it from the script. You also need to be running as admin (and elevated if in Vista). Here is how to reference the dll.

$result = [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFrom(“$profdir\VSWrapperForPSH.dll”)

$profdir is a variable I have created in my profile that points the variable to my profile directory.

I then create a Virtual Server Com Instance like this:

$vs = new-object -com VirtualServer.Application -Strict

The next essential part is to set the security on the object. I do this using a function called setsecurity which can be called anytime. Here’s the function and an example call to it:

function setsecurity($Object)

{

$result = [Microsoft.VirtualServer.Interop.PowerShell]::SetSecurity($Object)

}

$result = SetSecurity $VS

I then have to call this function every time I create a new Virtual Server based object. Whether it’s a VM object, DVD Drive, Hard Disk or any other object I have to set the security once I have created the object.

Have a look through the script and if you have any questions, just post them in the comment section.

For more information on scripting Virtual Server with PowerShell check out Ben Armstrong’s most excellent book, Professional Microsoft Virtual Server 2005, Wrox Publishing. Check out Ben’s blog for more information on the book:

http://mumblingtomyself.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!64FFB030F5637A64!128.entry

Enjoy!

BenP

Scripting Virtual Server with PowerShell

benp — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 12:25:00 GMT

Bonjour Bonjour

Last night I was kindly invited to speak at the PowerShell UK User Group meeting. The subject I delivered was "Scripting Virtual Server with PowerShell". I was asked if I could post my slide deck, so here it is in both pptx and ppt format (I got burned for using just the new office format before :) )

The slide deck is not very verbose, so might not make the most sense if you didn't attend the session, but could still be useful. I will publish the demo scripts that I used somtime next week. I just need to clean them up a little bit before I show them to the world.

Enjoy

Ben