Last updated by Thomas Maurer at April 18, 2013.

Apr182013April 18, 2013April 18, 201314 Commentsby Thomas Maurer

Cannot remove Hyper-V Host from SCVMM

Posted in Cloud, Hyper-V, IT, Microsoft, Powershell, Private Cloud, System Center, Virtual Machine Manager, Virtualization, Windows Server, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Work

System Center Logo

Today I run in to the problem where I could not remove a Hyper-V Hosts from System Center Virtual Machine Manager. The Hyper-V host was reinstalled before he was removed from SCVMM and the host was showing has HOSTNAME (pending) in the SCVMM Management Console. If you did a right click to remove the host, the Remove option was greyed out.

But don’t worry Windows PowerShell came to the rescue, with the following command you can remove the Hyper-V host from Virtual Machine Manager.

Get-SCVMHost &lt;HOSTNAME&gt; | Remove-SCVMHost -force

1	Get-SCVMHost <HOSTNAME> \| Remove-SCVMHost -force

Nov072012November 7, 2012November 7, 20123 Commentsby Thomas Maurer

SCVMM 2012: Add Logical Network to all Hyper-V Hosts in HostGroup via PowerShell

Posted in Hyper-V, IT, Microsoft, Powershell, System Center, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012, Virtual Machine Manager, Virtualization, Windows Server, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Work

System Center Logo

To use the Logical Networks in System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 on a specific Hyper-V Host or Hyper-V Cluster you have to add the Logical Network to the network interface which the logical network is available. In the GUI you can do this in the properties of the Hyper-V host under Hardware.

if you have a lot of Hyper-V hosts this can take some time. This Windows PowerShell script will help you. It will add the logical network on each Hyper-V host. It chooses the network adapter based on the network adapter name which is given on the Hyper-V host.

Import-Module virtualmachinemanager
$LogicalNetworkName = "LogicalNetwork"
$vmHostGroup = Get-VMHostGroup "HostGroupName"
$HostNetworkAdapterName = "Network Adapter Name"
$vmHosts = $vmHostGroup.AllChildHosts

foreach ($vmHost in $vmHosts) {

$guid = [guid]::NewGuid()
$logicalNetwork = Get-SCLogicalNetwork -Name $LogicalNetworkName
$vmHostNetworkAdapter = Get-SCVMHostNetworkAdapter -VMHost $vmHost | where-object {$_.ConnectionName -eq $HostNetworkAdapterName }

Set-SCVMHostNetworkAdapter -VMHostNetworkAdapter $vmHostNetworkAdapter -AddOrSetLogicalNetwork $logicalNetwork -JobGroup $guid
Set-SCVMHostNetworkAdapter -VMHostNetworkAdapter $vmHostNetworkAdapter -Description "" -JobGroup $guid -VLanMode "Trunk" -AvailableForPlacement $true -UsedForManagement $false

Set-SCVMHost -VMHost $vmHost -JobGroup $guid -RunAsynchronously

}

Import-Module virtualmachinemanager

$LogicalNetworkName = "LogicalNetwork"

$vmHostGroup = Get-VMHostGroup "HostGroupName"

$HostNetworkAdapterName = "Network Adapter Name"

$vmHosts = $vmHostGroup.AllChildHosts

foreach ($vmHost in $vmHosts) {

$guid = [guid]::NewGuid()

$logicalNetwork = Get-SCLogicalNetwork -Name $LogicalNetworkName

$vmHostNetworkAdapter = Get-SCVMHostNetworkAdapter -VMHost $vmHost | where-object {$_.ConnectionName -eq $HostNetworkAdapterName }

Set-SCVMHostNetworkAdapter -VMHostNetworkAdapter $vmHostNetworkAdapter -AddOrSetLogicalNetwork $logicalNetwork -JobGroup $guid

Set-SCVMHostNetworkAdapter -VMHostNetworkAdapter $vmHostNetworkAdapter -Description "" -JobGroup $guid -VLanMode "Trunk" -AvailableForPlacement $true -UsedForManagement $false

Set-SCVMHost -VMHost $vmHost -JobGroup $guid -RunAsynchronously

}

With the release of Service Pack 1 for System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager this is gone if you use the Logical Switch.

Jul162012July 16, 2012July 16, 20120 Commentby Thomas Maurer

Hyper-V vs. VMware vSphere – Host Deployment

Posted in Hardware, Hyper-V, IT, Microsoft, Private Cloud, Server Core, System Center, Virtual Machine Manager, Virtualization, VMware, Web, Windows Server, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Work

Windows Server 2012 RC Logo

VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus offers a solution for centralized deployment of VMware Hypervisor hosts on physical hardware.

How does the deployment of Microsoft Hyper-V Server work? Microsoft Hyper-V can be deployed as Windows Server role or as Microsoft Hyper-V Server. Both setups are based on the normal Windows setups and you can use the same deployment processes.

DVD
USB
Windows Deployment Services (WDS)
Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT)
System Center Configurations Manager

or my favorite deployment method: Bare-Metal Deployment with System Center Virtual Machine Manager. Blogger and Microsoft Consultant Michel Lüscher wrote a great blog post about how you can use the bare-metal deployment feature in SCVMM.

Jun162012June 16, 2012June 16, 20122 Commentsby Thomas Maurer

System Center 2012 SP1 CTP2 – Virtual Machine Manager Improvements #1

Posted in Hyper-V, IT, Microsoft, Private Cloud, System Center, Virtual Machine Manager, Virtualization, Web, Windows Server, Windows Server 2012, Work

Microsoft System Center Logo

I cloud not resist to install the CTP2 of System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager. First I have to say the CTP2 of Virtual Machine Manager runs unbelievable stable and fast. If you may have worked with other releases of VMM you know what I mean.

I had not much time to check for everything which is new but I found two interesting things which are in my opinion great improvements.

Hyper-V Host Hardware – Logical network connectivity

In my opinion the new design of network adapter pages with the logical network selection is a great usability improvement, and makes much more sense now.

System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager without Service Pack 1 (Screenshot from Hyper-V.nu):

System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager Service Pack 1 CTP2:

Hyper-V Host Hardware – Storage

System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager Service Pack 1 CTP2:

This things will maybe change until RTM of System Center 2012 SP1 but at the moment they look pretty good. I am sure there is a lot more in CTP2.

Aug272011August 27, 2011August 27, 201136 Commentsby Thomas Maurer

Enable SSH on ESXi 5 via vSphere Client

Posted in IT, Software, Virtualization, VMware, Work

In the first post I wrote how you can enable SSH on the ESXi 5.0 host. In this post I show you how you can enable or activate SSH on the ESXi 5.0 hosts via the vSphere Client.

First start the vSphere Client
Select the ESXi host in the configurations tab
Select Security Profile
Click on Properties in the upper right corner and you will get the a popup with all the services on this ESXi 5.0 hosts. Select the SSH service and press the Options button.
Now you can start the services and set the startup options
press okay and you are done..