Digging around in the powershell module for Hyper-V have given me some ideas on what you can do.

Have you ever wondered about if you have a VM that is not connected to any network?

First you use the script part I showed in an earlier post, how to find Hyper-V servers in your AD :

$VMhosts = Get-ADObject -Filter 'Name -like "*Hyper-V"' | %{$_.DistinguishedName.Split(",")[1].replace("CN=","") }

And then you can run the following to list all VM´s that are not connected to any virtual network

$VMhosts | %{ Get-VM -ComputerName $_ | Get-VMNetworkAdapter | where SwitchName -eq $null}

In this little screendump you can see for all my Hyper-V hosts what VM´s without a network connection, you can also easily change the -eq $null to a switch name and then get what VM´s are connected to that particular virtual switch on all your hosts

good luck 🙂

Inspired by Indiana Jones, I have made a little Powershell function to search cluster nodes for VM´s that has not been cluster enabled. If you create a VM in the Hyper-V manager or the Hyper-V powershell cmdlets, the VM is not highly available by default, even if you added it to a SMB share.

What do I do then, I only use one parameter and that is the cluster name, from this I get the HA – enabled VM´s and then check them for all VM´s registered on the hosts. After this I do a comparison and get a list of the VM´s objects that are not Cluster enabled, this can be pipelined to Add-VMToCluster cmdlet (an alias for Add-ClusterVirtualMachineRole) and you are home safe :-). Of course there might be situations where you want a VM to reside only on one cluster node and not be highly available, Guest Clustering is one case where this might be a reason to not add them to a cluster. And if the VM has the configuration and storage locally you wont be able to add it to the cluster anyway

I can easily with PowerShell get the VM´s that are already HA enabled, but with this command I do not get the other VM´s on the cluster nodes.

Get-VM -ClusterObject (Get-ClusterResource -Cluster hypcl30 | where ResourceType -eq "Virtual Machine")

So if I want to get only the VM´s not cluster enabled, here is the function

<#
.Synopsis
   This function search the hosts for VMs tha are not HA enabled
.DESCRIPTION
   This function lets you find what VM´s that is running on your hosts and not activated on the virtual machine role on the cluster
.EXAMPLE
   Get-VMNotInCluster -Cluster HVCL30
.Link
vniklas.djungeln.se

.Notes
    Author: Niklas Akerlund /20121004
#>
function Get-VMNotInCluster
{
    [CmdletBinding()]
    [OutputType([int])]
    Param
    (
        # Name of the Cluster
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
                   ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true,
                   Position=0)]
        $Cluster
    )
    Process
    {
        $ClusterNodes = Get-ClusterNode -Cluster $Cluster
        $VMsInCluster = Get-VM -ClusterObject (Get-ClusterResource -Cluster $Cluster | where ResourceType -eq "Virtual Machine")
        $VMsTotal = Get-VM -ComputerName (Get-ClusterNode -Cluster $Cluster).Name
        $VMsNotInCluster =@()
       
        foreach ($VM in $VMsTotal){
                if($VMsInCluster -notcontains $VM){
                    $VMsNotInCluster += $VM
                }
        }
        $VMsNotInCluster
    }
}

And here is a screendump of it running

And here is when I enable so that all VM´s are Highly Available

Now I do not have so many VM´s in my test environment but in a production environment maybe you can see the potential of knowing that all VM´s on all Clustered nodes are made HA enabled.

I have tested a bit with the WinServ first in the early version 8 and then RC and now RTM, and what I thought was a bug that MS would fix before RTM seems to be still there.

What am I talking about then, well when you do a live or cold storage migration of a VM from for example your local storage to a SMB share either with the gui or preferebly with PowerShell, the built-in function leaves folders behind. And you can see where this is leading when moving a lot of VM´s, several VM´s folders retain with nothing inside and causing confusion!

As you can see on the screendump, the VM 2012 has been moved to another place but the folder still resides with no data in it, the subfolders are there but no disk files. And of course if I use the parameter -RetainVhdCopiesOnSource the folders should stay and also the configuration, vhd files 🙂

So I have done a modified Move-VMStorage function that actually removes the source folder also after moving the VM.

Here is the powershell function and a screendump how it actually deletes the folder also, And as you can see, I check if the VM resides on a share or locally on a hyper-v host and then I use Invoke-Command to delete the folder on the host´s local volume. The script can run on any machine that has RSAT-Hyper-V Powershell tools installed and with an account that has rights to delete folders on the shares/hosts.

<#
.Synopsis
   An updated Move-VMStorage function
.DESCRIPTION
   To also remove the folder where the VM was residing this function also deletes the folder after moving the VM
.EXAMPLE
   Move-VMStorage2 -VM test -ComputerName HV02 -Path \\SMB-srv01\VMs\test
.NOTES
Author: Niklas Akerlund 20120926
#>
function Move-VMStorage2
{
    [CmdletBinding()]
    [OutputType([int])]
    Param
    (
        # A name of a VM or a VM object
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
                   ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true,
                   Position=0)]
        $VM,
        # The name of the Hyper-V host
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
                   ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true,
                   Position=0)]
        $ComputerName,
        # The path where the VM is going to be relocated to.
        [string]
        $Path
    )

        # Lets move and tidy the source folder
        $VM = Get-VM $VM -ComputerName $ComputerName
        Move-VMStorage -VM $VM -DestinationStoragePath $Path
        $VMOldPath = $VM.Path
        if ($VMOldPath.StartsWith("\\")) {
           Remove-Item -Path $VMOldPath -Recurse -Force
        }else{
            Invoke-Command -ComputerName $VM.ComputerName -ScriptBlock {Remove-Item -Path $Using:VMOldPath -Recurse -Force}
        }
        
}

Make sure that you always add the VM´s name to the path otherwise you will put the VM´s folders and files in the SMB folder directly and that will cause a mess and when you run my function it will try to clean that folder and all subfolders wich means all VM´s not running in that folder. Maybe I will add the control that It checks that the path to delete includes the VM name in a future update 😛

Yesterday I upgraded a Hyper-V node in a cluster from RC to RTM, Now I want to live migrate VM´s from the RC node to the RTM and then upgrade that.

As you can see on this screendump I have one node with build number 8400 (RC) and one with 9200 (RTM)

As you can see on this next image I have two VM´s running on my old node and I want to migrate them. The VM´s reside on a SMB 3.0 share and the cluster have a quorum share

And how do I move the VM´s to the other node, yes with powershell also, what you can see is that the Move-ClusterVirtualMachineRole can take the VMid from the VM objects as pipelined input, and that is really nice.

So now I have live migrated over the VM´s from the old RC to the RTM server and I can continue to upgrade that node.

I get an error if I try to live migrate them back to the old node, the only way I can do that is when the VM´s are powered off.