Hyper-V How To: Snapshot a VM using Script

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Some friends here on the Hyper-V team shared a PowerShell 2.0 script for taking a snapshot of your VMs:

# Take a snapshot of a VM

param(
[string]$vmName = $(throw "Must specify virtual machine name")
)

# Get the virtual machine by name
$vm = gwmi -namespace root\virtualization Msvm_ComputerSystem -filter "ElementName='$vmName'"

# Get the management service and apply the snapshot
$vmms = gwmi -namespace root\virtualization Msvm_VirtualSystemManagementService

#Create the SnapShot
$result = $vmms.CreateVirtualSystemSnapShot($vm)

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