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Getting started
Download Jeff’s PSVirtualBox module and place the extracted folder into your PSModulePath:
C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules
Now we’ll invoke Get-Command to see what functionality Jeff added to his module:
Get-Command -Module PSVirtualBox | Select-Object -Property CommandType, Name CommandType Name ----------- ---- Function Get-VBoxMachine Function Get-VBoxProcess Function Get-VirtualBox Function Start-VBoxMachine Function Stop-VBoxMachine Function Suspend-VBoxMachine
I know Jeff. He is not, by his own admission, a .NET programmer. Therefore, Jeff wrote advanced functions to give us the functionality. That fact doesn’t affect us as end users, however, because PowerShell advanced functions behave the same way as C# or VB cmdlets do.
What’s great about Jeff’s use of advanced functions is that he makes the project source code available to us, as shown in the following screen capture:
We can modify the PSVirtualBox source code.
NOTE: Be sure to provide proper attribution if you modify and re-release Jeff’s PSVirtualBox project. Jeff told me a few months ago that he set up a GitHub repository for this project.
Interacting with virtual machines
The Get-VirtualBox command simply echoes a bunch of metadata concerning the VirtualBox COM object. If you’re a developer, then I’m sure your hackles rose a bit at my mention of Component Object Model (COM).
Believe it or not, VirtualBox doesn’t have a .NET Framework–based entry point. Instead, it uses the antiquated COM interface. That fact severely limits the degree to which we can interact with VirtualBox VMs.
Anyway, let’s enumerate our VirtualBox VMs:
Get-VBoxMachine -All ID : b41cc962-ab89-4018-8a71-54dee6ec9ebb Name : devbox Description : MemoryMB : 2048 State : Stopped OS : Windows81_64
Now we’ll start up my devbox Windows 8.1 VM:
Start-VBoxMachine -Name devbox -Verbose
Start-VBoxMachine -Name devbox -Verbose VERBOSE: Starting Start-VBoxMachine VERBOSE: Creating a session object VERBOSE: Ending Start-VBoxMachine
So far, so good! As you can see below, my VM started right up and I’m ready to roll.
Starting a VM with Windows PowerShell
Jeff also added a -Headless switch parameter to Start-VBoxMachine if you don’t need the GUI.
We can take advantage of the PowerShell pipeline to suspend our virtual machine:
Get-VBoxMachine -Name devbox | Suspend-VBoxMachine
Now we see that our VM displays in a Saved state:
Get-VBoxMachine -All ID : b41cc962-ab89-4018-8a71-54dee6ec9ebb Name : devbox Description : MemoryMB : 2048 State : Saved OS : Windows81_64
To bring this full circle, we’ll resume the saved VM:
Start-VBoxMachine -name devbox
Resuming our virtual machine
NOTE: VM names are case sensitive.
Stopping the VM programmatically involves the (surprise, surprise!) Stop-VBoxMachine command:
Stop-VBoxMachine -Name devbox
In keeping with Windows PowerShell development best practices, Jeff documented all the module commands, including examples. So, for instance:
Get-Help -Name Get-VBoxMachine -ShowWindow
You can learn a lot by reading PowerShell documentation.
Next steps
Jeff’s PSVirtualBox module is a fantastic head start, but in my opinion it needs much more work before we can consider it a fully functional project. Here’s what I think we need:
Add more robust VM metadata. I’d like to see all VM properties and settings from PowerShell instead of just the name, OS, and RAM.
Create new VMs. This is perhaps the most obvious omission from the module. Once we can deploy new VirtualBox VMs from PowerShell, we’re really cooking with gas.
Verify networking. As you probably know, hypervisors have software-defined networking (SDN) that can involve Internet access, VM-to-host access, and VM-to-VM access. It would be awesome to do SDN testing from within PowerShell.
The way you can get involved in the PSVirtualBox improvement project is to fork Jeff’s PSVirtualBox repository at GitHub. By doing this, you’ll accomplish the following goals:
- You make valuable contributions to the Windows PowerShell community.
- You get some experience with Git code repositories and GitHub hosting.
- You hone your skills with PowerShell advanced functions.
First thank you so much. Great work.
I have windows 8.1 .Net 4.5
I have about 6 virtual box machines.
Running Get-VBoxMachine -All reports them all but very often reports machines that are running as stopped. Is there anything i can do?
Thanks you