I’ve been looking into Hyper-V Server 2012 recently, as it has some very nice Enterprise-grade capabilities for free; and the zero cost makes it very attractive for Labs that simply don’t have the budget for VMware. The only downsides I can see currently are that remote management is a pain from Windows 7.

Remote Management from Windows 7

Here’s the situation:

• Much of the management of Hyper-V Server 2012 is via PowerShell 3.0 Hyper-V cmdlets, or the Hyper-V Manager GUI available in Windows 8/Server 2012.
• PowerShell 3.0 can be installed on Windows 7, but it does not include the Hyper-V cmdlets that would enable you to manage Hyper-V remotely
• The general consensus is to “Use Windows 8 or Server 2012” to manage Hyper-V Server 2012 remotely, as they include the Hyper-V cmdlets. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work in all scenarios and organisations.

Hello, PowerShell Remoting

A potential solution I found is to leverage PowerShell Remoting. You can use Enter-PSSession to “jump onto” the Hyper-V server from Windows 7, and then interact with PowerShell as though you were directly on the remote Hyper-V host.

Here’s an example:

Enter-PSSession -ComputerName hyperv-server-01

To get a list of available Hyper-V cmdlets:

Get-Command -Module Hyper-V

Admittedly, this might make scripting a bit more difficult, but I imagine it’s possible to do if you really can’t use Windows 8 or Server 2012.

Hope this is useful! 🙂