Use Powershell to add virtual machines to Virtual Server

tmintner — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 09:20:00 GMT

Back to a topic that I know I won't get dinged on. :)

I was playing arround with the list of available COM ProgID's by using the command in Jeffrey Snover's blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/archive/2006/06/29/650913.aspx

I ran this command to see the available Program ID's:

dir REGISTRY::HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID -include PROGID -recurse | foreach {$_.GetValue("")} | out-file progids.txt

After looking through the file I noticed a very interesting ID called VirtualServer.Application. That sounded promising so I quickly ran the command:

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

I then ran the command $vs to see what I could see...Well the command turned up a bunch of blank properties. So I thought I might have to do some more digging so I did a quick Live Search on VirtualServer.Application and came up with two great blog entries for managing Virtual Server with Powershell:

http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2006/06/13/630165.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2006/06/15/631857.aspx

After creating my COM wrapper and setting my security as described in the Virtual PC Guy's blog entries, I tried my $vs command again and low and behold I had some actual properties.

At this point I wanted to see what I could do with that object so I typed the following command:

$vs | get-member

I quickly noticed a method called RegisterVirtualMachines. That sounded promising. I often download gigabytes of virtual machines to play with new technology and it is a royal pain to use the Virtual Server Administration Website to register all of those virtual machines. So I did another Live Search to see what the parameters were for the RegisterVirtualMachines method and found this reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/msvs/msvs/ivmvirtualserver_createvirtualmachine.asp

As you can see there are only two required parameters, the name of the VMC file and the path to the VMC file like this RegisterVirtualMachines("Testmachine.vmc","c:\vms\")

Now I was getting somewhere! I went ahead and went for the gold and tried this command:

dir . -include *.vmc -Recurse | foreach-object {$vs.RegisterVirtualMachine($_.name,$_.directoryname)}

Boom! All of my virtual machine's were now registered inside of Virtual Server!

As you can see with a little bit of research you can take advantage of any COM progID and in a short amount of time start to use it to solve problems.

New Pricing Model with Virtual Server 2005 R2

tmintner — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 23:24:00 GMT

In response to our valued customers who are excited about the prospects of virtualizing workloads, we are doing even more to reduce the barriers to adopting Microsoft Virtual Server. The new pricing takes effect December 1^st, 2005. Please feel free to share this news!

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/nov05/11-15ITForum05UmbrellaPR.mspx

As part of its broad strategy to help customers realize the benefits of virtualization and progress toward self-managing dynamic systems, Microsoft has released to manufacturing (RTM) Virtual Server 2005 R2, which will be available in volume licensing and retail the first week of December. Virtual Server 2005 R2 delivers improved performance, availability and scalability for server consolidation, legacy application migration, disaster recovery, and software testing and development. Microsoft will be offering Virtual Server R2 Standard Edition for $99 (U.S.) estimated retail price and Virtual Server R2 Enterprise Edition for $199 (U.S.) estimated retail price. This new pricing represents Microsoft’s commitment to making server virtualization more accessible to customers at the lowest price point.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/11/15/HNms64bitplans_1.html

Muglia's speech heralded two products, both of which are interim upgrades: Windows Server 2003 R2 and Virtual Server 2005 R2. Virtual Server 2005 R2 has gone to manufacturing and will be released in December. Windows Server 2003 R2 will be released to manufacturing before the end of the year and available early next year.

Microsoft has priced the Standard Edition of Virtual Server 2005 R2 at $99, Muglia said. It was previously $499.

Muglia reiterated the company's intent to alter its licensing model from one focused solely on software installs, which he said no longer makes sense in a virtualized environment. For the Enterprise Edition of Virtual Server 2005 R2, "your license applies to a device," Muglia said. Microsoft has reduced the price for that from $999 to $199. The new pricing takes effect Dec. 1.

The company also recently changed the licensing for Windows Server. Now, for example, those who are running Virtual Server 2005 R2 can run four virtual instances of Windows Server at no additional license cost.

Tim Mintner : Virtual Server and Virtual PC

Use Powershell to add virtual machines to Virtual Server

New Pricing Model with Virtual Server 2005 R2