Renaming a Hyper-V Virtual Machine

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Moving on we come to a sample script for changing a setting on a virtual machine - in this case I am changing the virtual machines name.

VBScript:

 Option Explicit

  

 Dim WMIService

 Dim VM

 Dim VMManagementService

 Dim VMSystemSettingData

 Dim VMName

 Dim NewVMName

 Dim Result

  

 'Setup variables for the VM we are looking for, and the new name

 VMName = "Windows Server 2003"

 NewVMName = "Windows Server 2003 - new"

  

 'Get an instance of the WMI Service in the virtualization namespace.

 Set WMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\.\root\virtualization")

  

 'Get a VMManagementService object

 Set VMManagementService = WMIService.ExecQuery("SELECT * FROM Msvm_VirtualSystemManagementService").ItemIndex(0)

  

 'Get the VM object that we want to modify

 Set VM = (WMIService.ExecQuery("SELECT * FROM Msvm_ComputerSystem WHERE ElementName='" & VMName & "'")).ItemIndex(0)

  

 'Get the VirtualSystemSettingsData of the VM we want to modify

 Set VMSystemSettingData = (VM.Associators_("MSVM_SettingsDefineState", "MSVM_VirtualSystemSettingData")).ItemIndex(0) 

  

 'Change the ElementName property

 VMSystemSettingData.ElementName = NewVMName

  

 'Update the VM with ModifyVirtualSystem

 Result = VMManagementService.ModifyVirtualSystem(VM.Path_.Path, VMSystemSettingData.GetText_(1))

PowerShell:

 #Setup variables for the VM we are looking for, and the new name

 $VMName = "Windows Server 2003"

 $NewVMName = "Windows Server 2003 - new"

  

 #Get a VMManagementService object

 $VMManagementService = gwmi -class "Msvm_VirtualSystemManagementService" -namespace "root\virtualization" -computername "."

  

 #Get the VM object that we want to modify

 $query = "SELECT * FROM Msvm_ComputerSystem WHERE ElementName='" + $VMName + "'"

 $VM = gwmi -query $query -namespace "root\virtualization" -computername "."

  

 #Get the VirtualSystemSettingsData of the VM we want to modify

 $query = "Associators of {$VM} WHERE AssocClass=MSVM_SettingsDefineState"

 $VMSystemSettingData = gwmi -query $query -namespace "root\virtualization" -computername "."

  

 #Change the ElementName property

 $VMSystemSettingData.ElementName = $NewVMName

  

 #Update the VM with ModifyVirtualSystem

 $Result = $VMManagementService.ModifyVirtualSystem($VM.__PATH,$VMSystemSettingData.psbase.GetText(1))

To change a setting on a virtual machine you do not just get the virtual machine object and change the property there.  What you need to do is to:

  1. Get the MSVM_VirtualSystemSettingData associated with the virtual machine (there is only one associated with each virtual machine).
  2. Modify the setting you want to change on the MSVM_VirtualSystemSettingData object.
  3. Get an instance MSVM_VirtualSystemManagementService.
  4. Call the ModifyVirtualSystem method on the MSVM_VirtualSystemManagementService and pass it the path of the virtual machine object and text serialization of the modified MSVM_VirtualSystemSettingData object.

As you can see this is a bit counter-intuitive but once you get your head around it, it is fairly easy to do.

Cheers,

Ben