{"id":3558,"date":"2013-05-28T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-28T00:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/heyscriptingguy\/2013\/05\/28\/use-powershell-to-add-vhds-and-configure-new-virtual-machines\/"},"modified":"2013-05-28T00:01:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-28T00:01:00","slug":"use-powershell-to-add-vhds-and-configure-new-virtual-machines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/use-powershell-to-add-vhds-and-configure-new-virtual-machines\/","title":{"rendered":"Use PowerShell to Add VHDs and Configure New Virtual Machines"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summary<\/strong>: Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, talks about using Windows PowerShell to create and to add new virtual hard disks while configuring new virtual machines on Hyper-V.<\/span>\nMicrosoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. Yesterday was a holiday in the U.S. People in Charlotte, North Carolina were outside cooking hot dogs on their barbeque qrills, and on the north side of the city, it was a NASCAR race weekend. Personally, I thought it was a great time to spend at home and play around with Windows PowerShell. The Scripting Wife<\/a> was also working with Windows PowerShell for her entry for the Scripting Games<\/a>. So, at least around our household, it was a Windows PowerShell holiday.<\/p>\n

Modifying virtual machine storage<\/h2>\n

One of the things that I like to do is to create a small virtual disk and attach it to a newly created virtual machine on Hyper-V. (Luckily, I can do all this on my laptop running Windows 8). In my previous blog post, Use PowerShell to Build Multiple Virtual Machines<\/a>, <\/em>I talked about using New-VM<\/strong>, Set-VMMemory<\/strong>, and Set-VMDvdDrive<\/strong> to perform the initial build of a series of virtual machines.\nToday I am going to use three more cmdlets: New-VHD<\/strong>, Add-VMHardDiskDrive<\/strong>, and Set-VM<\/strong>. I will create a new VHD for my virtual machine to use for storage, add it to the virtual machine, and then while I am playing around, I am going to change the default snapshot storage location and change the smart paging file location. In the end, I will provide a link to my modified Create-VM<\/strong> script in the Scripting Guys Script Repository<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Create a new VHD<\/h3>\n

To create a new VHD, I use the New-VHD<\/strong> cmdlet. I need to specify the path to the VHD (including the name for the newly created VHD, in addition to the size of the disk and if I want it to be a dynamic disk. In my command (because I contain it inside a loop that creates the initial virtual machines), I do not have a specific name for the newly created VHD. I will use the name of the virtual machine, and append disk2.vhdx<\/strong> <\/em>to the end of the file name.\nThe thing that is perhaps a bit cool is the use of the escape ( ` <\/strong>) character to separate the variable name $n<\/strong> from the rest of the text used to create the file name. Here is the command I use:<\/p>\n

New-VHD -Path “F:VM$nVirtual Hard Disks$n`Disk2.vhdx” -Dynamic -SizeBytes 50MB<\/p>\n

Add the newly created VHD to the virtual machine<\/h3>\n

To add the newly created VHD to the previously created virtual machine, I use the Add-VMHardDiskDrive<\/strong> cmdlet. I need to provide it with the name of the virtual machine and the path to the VHD. In reality, it is pretty simple. Here is the command:<\/p>\n

ADD-VMHardDiskDrive -VMName $n -Path “F:VM$nVirtual Hard Disks$n`Disk2.vhdx”<\/p>\n

Configure snapshot and smart paging locations<\/h3>\n

To configure the locations for the snap shot storage and for smart paging, I need to use the Set-VM<\/strong> cmdlet. When I do this, I simply provide the locations for the appropriate parameters as shown here:<\/p>\n

Set-VM -SnapshotFileLocation “F:VM$nSnapshots” –SmartPagingFilePath “F:VM$npaging”<\/p>\n

Finishing up<\/h2>\n

So that is it for the modifications to my Create-VM.ps1 script. Not bad for 30 lines of code, including blank lines for spacing. The completed script is shown here:<\/p>\n

$name = “Client1″,”Server1″,”Server2”<\/p>\n

$name |<\/p>\n

Foreach {<\/p>\n

    new-vm $_ -MemoryStartupBytes 512MB -SwitchName InternalSwitch `<\/p>\n

    -BootDevice cd -NewVHDPath “F:VM$_Virtual Hard Disks$_.vhdx” `<\/p>\n

    -NewVHDSizeBytes 127GB }<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Foreach($n in $name)<\/p>\n

{<\/p>\n

 if($n -match ‘client’)<\/p>\n

    {<\/p>\n

     Set-VMMemory -VMName $n -DynamicMemoryEnabled $true -MinimumBytes 512MB -MaximumBytes 4096MB -StartupBytes 2048MB -Buffer 20<\/p>\n

     Set-VMDvdDrive -VMName $n -Path $((Get-Item F:winblue*client*).fullname)<\/p>\n

     New-VHD -Path “F:VM$nVirtual Hard Disks$n`Disk2.vhdx” -Dynamic -SizeBytes 50MB<\/p>\n

     ADD-VMHardDiskDrive -VMName $n -Path “F:VM$nVirtual Hard Disks$n`Disk2.vhdx”<\/p>\n

     Get-VM -Name $n |<\/p>\n

      Set-VM -SnapshotFileLocation “F:VM$nSnapshots” -SmartPagingFilePath “F:VM$npaging”<\/p>\n

    }<\/p>\n

 if($n -match ‘server’)<\/p>\n

  {<\/p>\n

   Set-VMMemory -VMName $n -DynamicMemoryEnabled $true -MinimumBytes 512MB -MaximumBytes 2048MB -StartupBytes 1024MB -Buffer 20<\/p>\n

   Set-VMDvdDrive -VMName $n -Path $((Get-Item F:winblue*server*).fullname)<\/p>\n

   New-VHD -Path “F:VM$nVirtual Hard Disks$n`Disk2.vhdx” -Dynamic -SizeBytes 50MB<\/p>\n

   ADD-VMHardDiskDrive -VMName $n -Path “F:VM$nVirtual Hard Disks$n`Disk2.vhdx”<\/p>\n

   Get-VM -Name $n |<\/p>\n

    Set-VM -SnapshotFileLocation “F:VM$nSnapshots” -SmartPagingFilePath “F:VM$npaging”<\/p>\n

  }<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

}<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Get-VM $name | Start-VM\nThe complete script is uploaded to the Scripting Guys Script Repository: Create and Configure a New Virtual Machine<\/a>.\nJoin me tomorrow when I will talk about more cool Windows PowerShell stuff.\nI invite you to follow me on Twitter<\/a> and Facebook<\/a>. If you have any questions, send email to me at scripter@microsoft.com<\/a>, or post your questions on the Official Scripting Guys Forum<\/a>. See you tomorrow. Until then, peace.\nEd Wilson, Microsoft Scripting Guy<\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary: Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, talks about using Windows PowerShell to create and to add new virtual hard disks while configuring new virtual machines on Hyper-V. Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. Yesterday was a holiday in the U.S. People in Charlotte, North Carolina were outside cooking hot dogs on their barbeque qrills, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":596,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[271,3,130,45],"class_list":["post-3558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-hyper-v","tag-scripting-guy","tag-servers","tag-windows-powershell"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

Summary: Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, talks about using Windows PowerShell to create and to add new virtual hard disks while configuring new virtual machines on Hyper-V. Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. Yesterday was a holiday in the U.S. People in Charlotte, North Carolina were outside cooking hot dogs on their barbeque qrills, […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}