Hyper-V How To: Create a Differencing VHD using Script

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Some friends here on the Hyper-V team shared a PowerShell 2.0 script for creating a diff VHD for your VM:

# Create a differencing VHD

param(
[string]$newPath = $(throw "Must specify full path for new differencing VHD"),
[string]$parentPath = $(throw "Must specify full path of parent VHD")
)

#obtain the Msvm_ImageManagementService class
$ImageMgtService = get-wmiobject -class "Msvm_ImageManagementService" -namespace "root\virtualization"

# Create the fixed VHD
$result = $ImageMgtService.CreateDifferencingVirtualHardDisk($newPath,$parentPath)

if($result.ReturnValue -eq 4096){
# A Job was started, and can be tracked using its Msvm_Job instance
$job = [wmi]$result.Job
# Wait for job to finish
while($job.jobstate -lt 7){$job.get()}
# Return the Job's error code
return $job.ErrorCode
}
# Otherwise, the method completed
return $result.ReturnValue

 

For more info on how to use PS cmdlets see: https://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/topics/msh/cmdlets/index.mspx

See also James O’Neil’s New and improved PowerShell Library for Hyper-V. Now with more functions and... documentation!

For all 35 sample Hyper-V PS1 scripts in a zipfile, go to: Hyper-V PowerShell Example Scripts.zip-download