• Remote activation of Windows Server Licensing via PowerShell (sort of)

    Commentated script providing a means of batch activating Virtual Machines and Physical servers using PowerShell and SCHTASKS.exe, circumventing the limitations of Invoke-Command when calling SLMGR.vbs. This script could easily be extended to work with other data-sources (Active Directory) or Hypervisors (vSphere via PowerCLI)

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  • List SCVMM allocated IP addresses via PowerShell

    An easily understood PowerShell pipeline for listing IP addresses allocated from SCVMM managed pools

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  • MMS 2012 related post: Powershell & SCVMM 2012 – an applied example

    I decided to skip an MMS 2012 session on VMM to get some insight on how one would deploy App-V 5.0 as a current App-V 4.6 user.

    That said – I can tell you now PoSH makes everything better, including VMM! On the flight back, I ‘ll type up a walk-through about, and even a refined version of, the generalized VMM & AD 2008R2 PoSH script I have uploaded and used in anger.

    This script deploys a service template into a cloud the user defines, customizing the name of the guests to follow a convention, and moves the resultant associated AD Computer objects into target OU’s to allow appropriate Group Policy to take effect.

    Why not define the naming convention in the service template using the BLAH## syntax you say? Well, we were deploying multiple instances of this service template in different geographies, so the naming convention had to be regionalised every time. Rather than having multiple different service template versions for each of the naming conventions (meaning we couldn’t perform vHW service changes through a single point, leading to more complex version control), I felt it was easier (longer term) just to define the names at the point of dropping a template in. Same applied for Tags, and descriptions which may need to be translated into the language of the region etc.

    Script v0.1 on SkyDrive. A more gentle introduction to the script will follow.

    https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?cid=9059457923d3101c&resid=9059457923D3101C!401&parid=9059457923D3101C!359

  • Customizing OS on Server Core Guest VM’s

    System Center VMM 2012 RTM does not allow addition of roles to Server Core virtual machines via OS profiles. This post outlines how the VMM 2012 Application Profile feature can be used to workaround this issue.

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