Free PowerShell 2.0 Management Library for Hyper-V R2

PowerShell Management Library for Hyper-V is a rather self-explanatory label for any project, and to little surprise, it delivers just what it promises, namely a PowerShell management library for Microsoft’s hypervisor role in Windows Server. Put together by Microsoft Evangelist James O’Neill, the new PowerShell cmdlets for Hyper-V are designed to allow administrators to implement the resource as a module for PowerShell version 2. PowerShell Management Library for Hyper-V is available free of charge via Microsoft CodePlex, distributed under the company’s Public License (Ms-PL), which is an open source license. The latest version of the library represents an important update from the Release Candidate version.

“This update from the RC version contains more changes than would be normal , hence it is designated as "Gold" rather than "release". I expect there to be corrections to the on-line help text,” O’Neill stated. “This release was produced to exploit PowerShell V2 and as a PowerShell module it will not run on v1 If you are running an R2 server OS, or are doing remote management from Windows 7 then you have PowerShell V2. If you are running on "Classic" 2008, you will need to upgrade the supplied PowerShell V1 to V2 or stick to V1 of the library.”

What this means is that while admins will be able to leverage the original version of the library with PowerShell 2.0, the same is not valid for version 2 of the resource and PowerShell 1.0. As admins undoubtedly know by now, PowerShell 2.0 is an integral part of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, and is being backported to older releases of Windows client and server. In order to install PowerShell 2.0 Management Library for Hyper-V R2, admins will have to copy the contents of the “HyperV_Install” folder (from the ZIP archive) to a new folder “%systemdrive%\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules\HyperV.”

“From any computer which runs PowerShell Version 2, the Module will manage remotely or locally manage "classic" or R2 versions of Hyper-V. It can be installed on servers, and in R2, Core installations and Hyper-V server support PowerShell. Changes for 2: online help; support for localization (only English is provided, but there is a single place to make changes to support other languages); menu system similar to the PowerShell configurator; support for -whatif -confirm -verbose -force switches throughout; improved flexibility with parameters and piping of data; functions use standardized PowerShell verbs with aliases to provide backwards compatibility. Since the RC stage I have added: support for PowerShell remoting and support for clustering,” O’Neill said.