{"id":2729,"date":"2013-10-15T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-15T00:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/heyscriptingguy\/2013\/10\/15\/recovering-virtual-machines-in-hyper-v-server-2012-r2-part-2\/"},"modified":"2013-10-15T00:01:00","modified_gmt":"2013-10-15T00:01:00","slug":"recovering-virtual-machines-in-hyper-v-server-2012-r2-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/recovering-virtual-machines-in-hyper-v-server-2012-r2-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Recovering Virtual Machines in Hyper-V Server 2012 R2: Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summary<\/strong>: Use Hyper-V cmdlets to identify missing network configurations in virtual machines.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Hey, Hey, Scripting Guy! This week we are working on some business continuity and disaster recovery practices. One of the documents we are building involves how to rebuild a Hyper-V virtual machine in our Windows Server 2012 R2 environment. Can you tell me if there is a way to identify the configuration data for Hyper-V, specifically the network names in our virtual switches?<\/p>\n

—BR<\/p>\n

\"Hey, Hello BR,<\/p>\n

Honorary Scripting Guy, Sean Kearney here—filling in for our good friend Ed. He’s still digging around with some old scripts he found in the back room.<\/p>\n

Note<\/strong>  This is the second post in a series. If you missed Part 1, see Recovering Virtual Machines in Hyper-V Server 2012 R2: Part 1<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hyper-V Server 2012 and Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 include possibly the coolest cmdlet ever. It’s called Compare-VM<\/strong>. Compare-VM<\/strong> has a simple task. Look at a virtual machine’s configuration and see what’s missing from the Hyper-V box.<\/p>\n

We used to sing a song like that as a kid when I was in school, “Which of these things is not like the other?” Well, that’s what Compare-VM<\/strong> does.<\/p>\n

So let’s pretend that we spun up a brand new Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 box. We have copied the .xml files, VHDs, and all the configuration files from a previous Hyper-V virtual machine.<\/p>\n

In Windows Server 2008 R2, if you did not export it in advance, you could get away with re-creating the virtual machine and re-attaching the VHD file. But if you didn’t have the network settings, the virtual machine would have to detect the network card, which meant the usual game of:<\/p>\n