Chapter 10: Automating Tasks

In Chapter 9, “Understanding WMI, Scripting, and Hyper-V,” you were introduced to Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and scripting concepts that are important to understanding when effectively automating Hyper-V administrative tasks. The chapter used some relatively simple automation tasks and code examples.

The focus of this chapter is to show you how to accomplish more complex automation tasks for managing a Hyper-V virtualization environment. The examples in this chapter are exclusive to Hyper-V, unlike the Windows PowerShell code generated by (and used with) System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) discussed in Chapter 11, “Using System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008.”

This chapter will discuss common administrative areas as well as automation and scripting examples. Scripting samples are primarily written in Windows PowerShell and rely heavily on a prewritten library of functions available on the Internet.