Handy Hyper-V Tools

  

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This week we have been building a new Microsoft Hyper-V server for a client. For this installation, I decided to use a couple of tools that really helped to speed up the process.

Hvremote is a handy script written by John Howard who is a senior program manager on the Hyper-V team at Microsoft. This script compiles the multiple strings of commands used for diagnosing and configuring the Windows firewall, WMI and DCOM permissions in order to control a Hyper-V server from a remote client MMC regardless of the domain or workgroup association of either computer. This was once an extremely lengthy task that can now be completed in just 3 or 4 commands using the hvremote tool.

VHDtool was another big help. I needed to create a rather large 450GB fixed-size VHD. Personally this is the largest virtual hard disk that I have ever created and I was quite surprised at how long the process was taking through the manager. After several hours I decided to employ VHDtool.exe which is a nifty command line tool that allows you to instantly create large fixed-size VHDs. My 450GB VHD was created in approximately one second! This tool also provides the ability to extend drives, convert RAW disk images to VHD and repair broken Hyper-V snapshot chains.

I will definitely be keeping both of these time savers in my Hyper-V arsenal! If you need help configuring a Hyper-V server for your company feel free to Contact Us and an engineer will be glad to assist!

Adam Jones - Systems Engineer