Todd's World: Configure Hyper-V Remote Management in seconds

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Configure Hyper-V Remote Management in seconds

Configure Hyper-V Remote Management in seconds

It has been a little quiet on the blog front, but sometimes, at least in this case, I hope I've come up with something worth waiting for. Announcing "HVRemote"...., a tool to "automagically" configure Hyper-V Remote Management. (Amazing what can be done with a few days vacation to kill before you lose them at the end of the year....).

I'm not going into the gory detail here as I've created a PDF containing the documentation, and a site on http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/HVRemote where you can download the tool and the documentation. All I ask, is that if you find the tool useful, drop me an email or a comment. Thanks!

What does the tool do: It reduces the manual configuration steps needed for Hyper-V Remote Management that I blogged about back in March this year 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 down to one or two commands.

It can configure Full installations and Server Core Installations of Windows Server 2008 with the Hyper-V role enabled, plus configure Microsoft Hyper-V Server. It runs across all locales (I've tested English and Japanese) and it doesn't matter if the server is domain or workgroup joined.

It can configure Vista SP1 and Server 2008 configured with the Hyper-V Remote Management tools. Again, doesn't matter if the client is domain or workgroup joined.

Quick how-to:

1. Server: To give or remove a user access permissions:
       hvremote /add:domain\user                  or
       hvremote /remove:domain\user

2. Server & Client: Display current settings (server or client): (Screenshot is client side)
       hvremote /show

The other useful options are:

3. Find out all the command line options: hvremote /help or hvremote /?

and a couple of client side options:
4. Client: Add firewall exception for MMC: hvremote /mmc:enable
5. Client: Allow anonymous access to Distributed COM: hvremote /AnonDCOM:grant

I've tried this out with a a lot of test "guinea pigs" internally at Microsoft, and using the script literally dropped their remote configuration time down to seconds. Hopefully it will do the same for you.

But I must also point you to the disclaimer on my blog, the disclaimer in the documentation, and the license conditions at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/HVRemote before use:

HVRemote and the associated documentation are provided "as-is". You bear the risk of using it. No express warranties, guarantees or conditions are provided. It is not supported or endorsed by Microsoft Corporation and should be used at your own risk.

Cheers,
John.