Using PowerShell to Look at a VM Configuration

I was recently asked to provide a PowerShell sample that would let you see everything inside a virtual machine configuration file - without having to import the virtual machine in question.  Here is what I put together:

Function Expand-VMConfig ($VMConfig) {
    $tempVM = (Compare-VM -Copy -Path $VMConfig -GenerateNewID).VM

    write-host "VM Configuration Data"
    write-host "====================="
    $tempVM | Select *

    write-host "VM Network Adapters"
    write-host "====================="
    $tempVM.NetworkAdapters

    write-host "VM Hard Drives"
    write-host "====================="
    $tempVM.HardDrives

    write-host "VM DVD Drives"
    write-host "====================="
    $tempVM.DVDDrives

    write-host "VM Floppy Drive"
    write-host "====================="
    $tempVM.FloppyDrive

    write-host "VM Fibre Channel"
    write-host "====================="
    $tempVM.FibreChannelHostBusAdapters

    write-host "VM COM1"
    write-host "====================="
    $tempVM.ComPort1

    write-host "VM COM2"
    write-host "====================="
    $tempVM.ComPort2}

If you run this code on a PowerShell prompt you can now use "Expand-VMConfig".  It takes a single parameter of a virtual machine configuration file - and displays you everything you could possibly want to know about it.

Cheers,
Ben