Creating and Connecting a Virtual Network with VBScript

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Okay - so this week I have a little VBScript to create and connect a virtual network under Virtual Server.  This script asks for the name of the new virtual network, then asks the user to select a physical network adapter to connect the virtual network to, and finally creates and configures the virtual network.

 Option Explicit 

  

 dim vs, newVNetName, counter, hostNics, hostNic, hostNicNumber, newVNet

  

 'Connect to Virtual Server

 Set vs = CreateObject("VirtualServer.Application")

  

 'Get name for new virtual network

 wscript.echo "Please enter the name of the new virtual network to create:"

 newVNetName = wscript.StdIn.ReadLine

 wscript.echo 

  

 'Display list of network adapters on the host

 wscript.echo "Available physical network adapters:"

 wscript.echo "===================================="

  

 hostNics = vs.HostInfo.NetworkAdapters

 counter = 0

  

 for each hostNic in hostNics

    wscript.echo cstr(counter) + ": " + hostNic

    counter = counter + 1

 next

  

 wscript.echo cstr(counter) + ": No host connection"

 wscript.echo 

  

 'Get a physical network adapter

 wscript.echo "Please enter the number for the physical network adapter to use:"

 hostNicNumber = wscript.StdIn.ReadLine

 wscript.echo 

  

 'Check for valid input

 if (cint(hostNicNumber) < 0) or (cint(hostNicNumber) > counter) then

    wscript.echo "Invalid number specified"

    wscript.quit

 end if

  

 'Create new virtual network in default location

 set newVNet = vs.CreateVirtualNetwork(newVNetName, vs.DefaultVNConfigurationPath)

  

 'Connect new virtual network if appropriate

 if cint(hostNicNumber) < counter then

    newVNet.HostAdapter = hostNics(hostNicNumber)

 end if

  

 wscript.echo "A new virtual network has been created"

A couple of interesting things to notice about this script:

  • When attaching a virtual network to a physical network adapter, you need to be able to provide the identification string for the network card.  This is a bit annoying, but you can get this information from vs.HostInfo.NetworkAdapters (which returns a collection of strings).  If you want you can also just use vs.HostInfo.NetworkAdapters(0) to connect to the first physical network adapter in the computer (yes, the collection is 0 indexed). 
  • You can't specify anything when creating a virtual network, so you need to configure the virtual network after creating it.
  • When creating a new virtual network you need to specify the path for the new virtual network.  This is kind of odd - as all virtual networks are created in the same location, and there is no way for you to change this default location - but you can grab this path from vs.DefaultVNConfigurationPath

Cheers,
Ben