Have you ever wondered what happens when a Hyper-V VM goes down because of a server crash or reboot when you are not around? You might have a business critical data transaction delayed or even worse, you might lose transactions that are left unprocessed forever.
Vembu not only wants to provide a fool-proof business continuity plan with its backup support for Microsoft Hyper-V, but also wants to make sure you have every precautionary measure set in place to minimize the risk of losing your data. Here is a quick guide on how to auto-start your VMs on Microsoft Hyper-V hosts, in case of an accidental shut-down.
Steps to AutoStart a VM:
- Initial Requisites
- Finding VM count configured for Auto Start
- Configure VM Automatic Start
- Configure Auto Start with Multiple Hyper-V Hosts
- Configure Automatic Start Delay for VM
Initial Requisites:
Starting VMs manually per VM/host via Hyper-V settings is a hectic task and there is an easier way to do it – automatically. In order to do that you need to learn a few powershell commands at the initial level.
- Create and configure VMs in your Hyper-V hosts.
- Now open Windows powershell.
- Make sure administrative privileges are set to ON.
Finding VM Count Configured for Auto Start:
Executing the below powershell command lets you list the VMs configured in a particular host and their respective AutoStart status of VMs. If multiple Hyper-V hosts are configured, then executing the powershell command by default will list the host under which the machine is registered to.
Get-VM –VMname * | Select-Object VMname,AutomaticStartAction
Configure VM Automatic Start:
Executing the below powershell command lets you enable the auto-start option for a particular VM in a particular host.
Get-VM –VMname * | Set-VM –AutomaticStartAction Start
Configure Auto Start with Multiple Hyper-V Hosts:
To enable the auto-start option for VMs in multiple Hyper-V hosts, executing the below powershell command is required which provides the list of running hosts.
Get-VM –computername TestVM, TestVM1 –VMname * | Select-Object VMname,AutomaticStartAction,AutomaticStartDelay
Once the list is generated, filter the required host with following command.
$hosts = @{ComputerName = “TestVM”,”TestVM1″}
Once done selecting the host, list VMs in the specific host and enable auto-start:
Get-VM @hosts –VMname * | Set-VM –AutomaticStartAction start
Configure Automatic Start Delay for VM:
You also have the option to define the time delay to auto-start a VM with the following powershell command.
Get-VM –VMname * | Where-Object –FilterScript {$.VMname –notlike “TestVM*”}
Once done listing VMs, now set the required time delay in seconds.
Get-VM –VMname * | Where-object –FilterScript {$_.vmname –notlike “TestVM*”} | Set-VM –AutomaticStartDelay 240
Have questions? Email vembu-support@vembu.com for answers.
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