PowerShell has come a long way from a command line interpreter with support of a few commands, to a fully integrated part of every modern Windows OS. Right now, not only is it a cool thing to, but it is also essential in order to achieve better results in Windows tasks’ management, including virtual machine (VM) backup.

This is a two-part article. In the first part, I’m going to talk about PowerShell in general, when you should consider using it for Hyper-V backup and how to get acquainted with PowerShell basics, PowerShell commands (cmdlets) and syntax.

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A little over two years ago, I was at the Microsoft Technology Center in Manhattan, and I noticed that all of the engineers and technical people I was working with that day seemed a little stressed. I took the opportunity over lunch with the chief architect to find out what was going on. Microsoft had decreed that anybody in a technical role had to take and pass the Microsoft Exam 70-533, Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions. I also found out that many had already taken and failed the exam.

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When Windows Server 2016 was released, Microsoft brought us a new feature I personally have been waiting for since I first started with Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 R2. That feature is Virtual Machine Start Ordering. Virtual Machine Start Ordering enables us to make dependencies between VMs or Groups of VMs to make sure that they start in the correct order. Read more

In the past, we had to deal with remote server administration through cumbersome Microsoft Management Console (MMC) based tools, Server Manager, PowerShell remoting, along with various other methods. This has been a real pain point for Windows and especially Hyper-V Administrators. Over the years, VMware has been long ahead of the game with HTML management capabilities of their hypervisor. Until now… I would like to introduce Microsoft’s brand-new Project Honolulu and HTML tool to replace Server Manager. Read more

It's been nearly a year since VMware released vSphere 6.5 which marked the 12^th major release of VMware's hypervisor and hypervisor management product suite. And while VMware has been focusing on more recent products like vSAN and NSX, it shouldn't be forgotten that vSphere still remains at the core of the virtualization platform on top of which all other products are consumed. Veeam has a strong history of working with and supporting vSphere features, and the 6.5 release is no different.

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Let’s have a look at some basics of Hyper-V Storage management about the management of Hyper-V .BIN files and their impact on your environment. Read more

Hey, Veeam fans! Welcome to my blog post series on Hyper-V Management. Today we will look at Hyper-V administration best practices. Now, whenever I am talking with customers and attendees at conferences, best practices are always some of the most popular topics. So, in this blog post, I will give you three of my favorite best practices for Hyper-V administration. Read more

Microsoft pushes Failover Cluster’s abilities every year. Its latest additions with Windows Server 2016 are quite extensive and very exciting! I will take you through these cool new features in this blog post and show you how they will improve your cluster’s functionality. Read more

A few years ago, the file exclusion engine was introduced to Veeam Backup & Replication. This was primarily meant to handle situations such as a large set file data that you didn’t need in an image-based backup. One example I had users liked was a SQL Server (especially before Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server) that had SQL Server DBAs performing SQL Server Agent jobs or SQL Server Maintenance Plans to export flat backups on disk and transaction log exports.

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In the previous article, Mike went over the most exciting new features of Hyper-V 2016 TP4 at the time. However, since its Technical Preview stages it went through some changes and not every feature made it to the GA in its initial form or intended way. Windows Server 2016 has been fully available since the end of 2016 and there were some features left out in the article that are still interesting and quite important. Read more