Windows Server Automation with PowerShell Cookbook

Powerful ways to automate and manage Windows administrative tasks, 4th Edition

Thomas Lee

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2021
• Edition: 4
• eBook ISBN:
  9781800569690
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Operating Systems
• Index: Computer Science

Develop a holistic understanding of Windows Server with over 100 PowerShell recipes

Key Features

• Updated with new recipes on the.NET Framework, enterprise server security, and managing Windows Server with WMI
• Learn PowerShell best practices to automate common tasks and manage AD, enterprise security, Azure, and.NET 5
• Discover new ways to optimize your PowerShell code by working through easy-to-follow recipes

Book Description

With a foreword from PowerShell creator Jeffrey Snover, this heavily updated edition is designed to help you learn how to use PowerShell 7.1 effectively and manage the core roles, features, and services of Windows Server in an enterprise setting. All scripts are compatible with both Window Server 2022 and 2019.

This latest edition equips you with over 100 recipes you'll need in day-to-day work, covering a wide range of fundamental and more advanced use cases. We look at how to install and configure PowerShell 7.1, along with useful new features and optimizations, and how the PowerShell compatibility solution bridges the gap to older versions of PowerShell. Topics include using PowerShell to manage networking and DHCP in Windows Server, objects in Active Directory, Hyper-V, and Azure. Debugging is crucial, so the book shows you how to use some powerful tools to diagnose and resolve issues with Windows Server.

What you will learn

• Perform key admin tasks on Windows Server
• Keep your organization secure with JEA, group policies, logs, and Windows Defender
• Use the.NET Framework for administrative scripting
• Manage data and storage on Windows, including disks, volumes, and filesystems
• Create and configure Hyper-V VMs, implementing storage replication and checkpoints
• Set up virtual machines, websites, and shared files on Azure
• Report system performance using built-in cmdlets and WMI to obtain single measurements
• Apply the right tools and modules to troubleshoot and debug Windows Server

Who this book is for

This book is for systems administrators, software architects, developers, or engineers working with Windows Server seeking to automate tasks more effectively with PowerShell 7.1. Basic knowledge of PowerShell is expected.

12

Managing Hyper-V

In this chapter, we cover the following recipes:

• Installing Hyper-V inside Windows Server
• Creating a Hyper-V VM
• Using PowerShell Direct
• Using Hyper-V VM groups
• Configuring VM hardware
• Configuring VM networking
• Implementing nested virtualization
• Managing VM state
• Managing VM and storage movement
• Managing VM replication
• Managing VM checkpoints

Introduction

Hyper-V is Microsoft's virtual machine (VM) hypervisor. Both Windows Server 2022 and Windows 10 include Hyper-V as an option you can install, on all versions of Windows Server 2022, and the Enterprise, Professional, and Education editions of Windows 10.

Microsoft first released Hyper-V with Server 2008 and has improved it significantly with each successive version of Windows Server. Improvements include additional features, support for the latest hardware, and significantly increased scalability.

Hyper-V supports nested virtualization, the ability to run Hyper-V inside a Hyper-V VM. Nested virtualization has some good use cases, such as in training – for instance, giving each student a VM on a large blade containing the VMs needed for the course labs. Nested virtualization provides an additional layer of security that might be useful in multi-tenant scenarios.

Microsoft also ships a free version of Hyper-V, the Microsoft Hyper-V Server. The Hyper-V Server runs VMs with no GUI. You configure and manage remotely using recipes like the ones in this chapter.

This chapter focuses solely on Hyper-V inside Windows Server 2022, although you can manage Hyper-V Server using the tools used in this chapter's recipes. References to your Hyper-V servers refer to your Windows 2022 servers that have the Hyper-V feature added. Hyper-V's management tools enable you to configure and manage both the Hyper-V service and the VMs running on your Hyper-V servers.

This chapter starts with installing and configuring the Hyper-V feature. After installing Hyper-V, you go on to create a VM, PSDirect, which requires you to download an ISO image of Windows Server from the internet.

After you create the PSDirect VM, you use the VM. You use PowerShell Direct to use a remoting session into the VM without using a network connection. You also configure the VM's hardware and networking capability. You then use PowerShell cmdlets to manage the state of the VM.

Hyper-V allows you to move a VM and/or a VM's storage between Hyper-V hosts. For disaster recovery, you can replicate a running VM (and use that replica should the primary VM fail).

You can take snapshots, or checkpoints, of a VM to save a VM's state and restore your VM to that point, as you can see in the Managing VM checkpoints recipe.

Installing Hyper-V inside Windows Server

Installing Hyper-V on Windows Server 2022 is straightforward, as this recipe demonstrates. Once you have installed it, you can configure the feature.

Getting ready

This recipe uses SRV2, a recently added workgroup host. By default, this host is a DHCP client. You also need two Windows Server instances, HV1 and HV2, online and must have at least one domain controller in the domain up and running. This recipe demonstrates the remote installation and configuration of your Hyper-V servers.

How to do it...

1. Installing the Hyper-V feature on HV1, HV2

   $SB = { Install-WindowsFeature -Name Hyper-V -IncludeManagementTools } Invoke-Command -ComputerName HV1, HV2 -ScriptBlock $Sb 

2. Rebooting the servers to complete the installation

   Restart-Computer -ComputerName HV2 -Force Restart-Computer -ComputerName HV1 -Force 

3. Creating a PSSession with both HV servers (after reboot)

   $S = New-PSSession HV1, HV2 

4. Creating and setting the location for VMs and VHDs on HV1 and HV2

   $SB = { New-Item -Path C:\VM -ItemType Directory -Force | Out-Null New-Item -Path C:\VM\VHDs -ItemType Directory -Force | Out-Null New-Item -Path C:\VM\VMs -ItemType Directory -force | Out-Null} Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock $SB -Session $S | Out-Null 

5. Setting the default paths for Hyper-V VM disk/config information

   $SB = { $VMs = 'C:\VM\VMs' $VHDs = 'C:\VM\VHDs' Set-VMHost -ComputerName Localhost -VirtualHardDiskPath $VHDs Set-VMHost -ComputerName Localhost -VirtualMachinePath $VHDs } Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock $SB -Session $S 

6. Setting NUMA spa...

Table of contents

• Preface
• Installing and Configuring PowerShell 7
• Introducing PowerShell 7
• Exploring Compatibility with Windows PowerShell
• Using PowerShell 7 in the Enterprise
• Exploring .NET
• Managing Active Directory
• Managing Networking in the Enterprise
• Implementing Enterprise Security
• Managing Storage
• Managing Shared Data
• Managing Printing
• Managing Hyper-V
• Managing Azure
• Troubleshooting with PowerShell
• Managing with Windows Management Instrumentation
• Other Books You May Enjoy
• Index