Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Hyper-V: Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) with Hyper-V Virtual Switch

I'm running Hyper-V on a new machine with Windows 8.1 Update 1 and updated with the latest patches. I'm running in to issues sharing internet access from my wireless network with my VM's. This post describes a solution which worked in my case.

Internet access for Hyper-V virtual machine

To give your VM's access to the internet through your computer there are multiple options

  1. Create an external switch and let the guest system connect to the actual network
  2. Create an internal switch and share your internet connection with that Virtual Switch

I prefer option 2 and therefore created a Virtual Switch and shared my Wifi connection with that Virtual Switch.

But for some reason the guest system did not get access to the internet, but did get a DHCP lease from the interface I shared with the Virtual Switch to which the VM was connected.

Searching through the internet only resulted either in sharing your internet with an hosted network on WiFi (adhoc) or describing setting up Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) as it was supposed to work.

Troubleshooting

The Wi-Fi Hosted Network brought my to the idea that infact the hosted network was also a way to let incoming connection route through the cabled interface of the host.

The command (elevated) to see whether your WLAN driver supports Hosted Network is:
netsh wlan show driver


So what if this command also worked to show details about the LAN interface?
Nope...that command is not supported.

But what DOES work is showing the available LAN interfaces with the command:
netsh ip show interfaces

This showed no information about LAN interfaces, but a statement about the Wired AutoConfig Service.
Aha, currently i'm not connected to a LAN. Actually I always use Wifi whenever possible.

Enable the Wired AutoConfig service through services.msc


After enabling this service, I got some results back from netsh.


WLAN/Wi-Fi ICS with Virtual Switch - another try

Now let's try that second method again to share internet access. (By the way, this also solved another issue on my Hyper-V host when  i want to create Virtual Switches in the first case.)

Follow the steps:
  1. Create an internal virtual switch through the Virtual Switch Manager (give it a descriptive name like vSwitch - Shared)
  2. Share your active internet connection with that vSwitch

  1. Add a network adapter to your VM which connect to that vSwitch
  2. Verify internet access on the guest OS. Yeeh!

Cause?

What's the cause of this? I think it's maybe because the Wired AutoConfig Service is possibly triggered when using a physical interface and I use a WiFi connection. Haven't tested this yet though.

But after changing the Windows display language from Dutch to English (US) it also seems to be working. Hhmm?
Maybe this is caused by a specific configuration on my system, but if this post works for you, than I'm glad I shared this.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Powershell: Searching for special characters? Get them all!

Today I wanted to see if I could add a checkbox like character to a custom table from Powershell.

Because of the nature of a command line script, I wanted to see if there were any interesting character codes to do this.
In Powershell you can use specific characters with the command [char]#.

You can use this command line to output all characters from a specific range (default is 0-10000). Have fun!
for($i=0;$i -le 10000;$i++){Write-Host -NoNewLine "$i $([char]$i) "; $k++ ; if($k -ge 15){Write-Host "";$k=0}}

Output looks like this:
9819 ♛ 9820 ♜ 9821 ♝ 9822 ♞ 9823 ♟ 9824 ♠ 9825 ♡ 9826 ♢ 9827 ♣ 9828 ♤ 9829 ♥ 9830 ♦ 9831 ♧ 9832 ♨ 9833 ♩ 
9834 ♪ 9835 ♫ 9836 ♬ 9837 ♭ 9838 ♮ 9839 ♯ 9840 ♰ 9841 ♱ 9842 ♲ 9843 ♳ 9844 ♴ 9845 ♵ 9846 ♶ 9847 ♷ 9848 ♸ 
9849 ♹ 9850 ♺ 9851 ♻ 9852 ♼ 9853 ♽ 9854 ♾ 9855 ♿ 9856 ⚀ 9857 ⚁ 9858 ⚂ 9859 ⚃ 9860 ⚄ 9861 ⚅ 9862 ⚆ 9863 ⚇ 
9864 ⚈ 9865 ⚉ 9866 ⚊ 9867 ⚋ 9868 ⚌ 9869 ⚍ 9870 ⚎ 9871 ⚏ 9872 ⚐ 9873 ⚑ 9874 ⚒ 9875 ⚓ 9876 ⚔ 9877 ⚕ 9878 ⚖ 
9879 ⚗ 9880 ⚘ 9881 ⚙ 9882 ⚚ 9883 ⚛ 9884 ⚜ 9885 ⚝ 9886 ⚞ 9887 ⚟ 9888 ⚠ 9889 ⚡ 9890 ⚢ 9891 ⚣ 9892 ⚤ 9893 ⚥ 
9894 ⚦ 9895 ⚧ 9896 ⚨ 9897 ⚩ 9898 ⚪ 9899 ⚫ 9900 ⚬ 9901 ⚭ 9902 ⚮ 9903 ⚯ 9904 ⚰ 9905 ⚱ 9906 ⚲ 9907 ⚳ 9908 ⚴ 
9909 ⚵ 9910 ⚶ 9911 ⚷ 9912 ⚸ 9913 ⚹ 9914 ⚺ 9915 ⚻ 9916 ⚼ 9917 ⚽ 9918 ⚾ 9919 ⚿ 9920 ⛀ 9921 ⛁ 9922 ⛂ 9923 ⛃ 
9924 ⛄ 9925 ⛅ 9926 ⛆ 9927 ⛇ 9928 ⛈ 9929 ⛉ 9930 ⛊ 9931 ⛋ 9932 ⛌ 9933 ⛍ 9934 ⛎ 9935 ⛏ 9936 ⛐ 9937 ⛑ 9938 ⛒ 
9939 ⛓ 9940 ⛔ 9941 ⛕ 9942 ⛖ 9943 ⛗ 9944 ⛘ 9945 ⛙ 9946 ⛚ 9947 ⛛ 9948 ⛜ 9949 ⛝ 9950 ⛞ 9951 ⛟ 9952 ⛠ 9953 ⛡ 
9954 ⛢ 9955 ⛣ 9956 ⛤ 9957 ⛥ 9958 ⛦ 9959 ⛧ 9960 ⛨ 9961 ⛩ 9962 ⛪ 9963 ⛫ 9964 ⛬ 9965 ⛭ 9966 ⛮ 9967 ⛯ 9968 ⛰ 
9969 ⛱ 9970 ⛲ 9971 ⛳ 9972 ⛴ 9973 ⛵ 9974 ⛶ 9975 ⛷ 9976 ⛸ 9977 ⛹ 9978 ⛺ 9979 ⛻ 9980 ⛼ 9981 ⛽ 9982 ⛾ 9983 ⛿ 
9984 ✀ 9985 ✁ 9986 ✂ 9987 ✃ 9988 ✄ 9989 ✅ 9990 ✆ 9991 ✇ 9992 ✈ 9993 ✉ 9994 ✊ 9995 ✋ 9996 ✌ 9997 ✍ 9998 ✎ 
9999 ✏ 10000 ✐

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Microsoft Azure Automation preview!

This is just great! Automation on-premise is what we already know and on which we are currently are automatizing our processes. Yet, as we are busy doing just that, Microsoft is working on automation in the Azure cloud! Earlier this week they made a public preview of Azure Automation available.

Read this blog from Keith Mayer to follow a step-by-step approach getting started with Azure Automation. Furthermore, in the future they will publish information about using other products like Chef with Windows Azure.

Quote from Keith's blog:
Note: this week, we also announced support for Puppet and Chef for automated provisioning and configuration management of Microsoft Azure cloud resources. If you're currently using these tools as part of your DevOps strategy, be sure to look for upcoming articles that focus on these alternatives for cloud automation.
Link to article: http://blogs.technet.com/b/keithmayer/archive/2014/04/04/step-by-step-getting-started-with-windows-azure-automation.aspx

More info on Microsoft Azure Automation: http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/services/automation/

Have fun! I know I will...

Friday, January 24, 2014

Powershell: Divide text file lines between two files (req.)

This week I received a question about a Powershell script I wrote to split large text files to multiple files.
So I decided to answer that with blog post in which a similar script divides lines of a text files between two text files. Nothing fancy, it's rather basic script :)

This script just checks whether the line count increment is either odd or even. Based on that outcome, the results goes to output file 1 or 2.

#Script initialization
$linecount = 0
$sourcefilename = Read-Host "What is the full path and name of the log file from which you want to divide the lines? (e.g. D:\mylogfiles\mylog.txt) "
$destinationfolderpath = Split-Path $sourcefilename -parent

$srcfile = gci $sourcefilename
$filebasename = $srcfile.BaseName
$fileext = $srcfile.Extension

#Functions
Function check-even ($num) {[bool]!($num%2)}

#Main
Get-Content $sourcefilename | Measure-Object | ForEach-Object { $sourcelinecount = $_.Count }

Write-Host "Your current file size is $sourcelinecount lines long"
Write-Host File is $sourcefilename - destination is $destinationfolderpath

$content = get-content $sourcefilename | % {
 $linecount ++
 If(Check-Even($linecount)) {
    Write-Host "Writing part: $destinationfolderpath\$filebasename`_part2$fileext"
    Add-Content $destinationfolderpath\$filebasename`_part2$fileext "$_"
 } else {
    Write-Host "Writing part: $destinationfolderpath\$filebasename`_part1$fileext"
    Add-Content $destinationfolderpath\$filebasename`_part1$fileext "$_"
  }
}

SCOM: Great start of new year - New MP Authoring Tool

This year started awesome with the introduction of a new MP authoring tool for SCOM, released by Silect.
It has a very descriptive name :),  MP Author.

I really hope this will enable more people to create useable monitoring functionality in Operations Manager.

While I still don't understand why Microsoft has not solved the issue in which the Authoring role within OpsMgr can't use the Monitoring Templates (startingpoint for authoring?), this tool could be a solution for those who do not feel comfortable with the current Authoring Pane or VSAE.

Read about it at: http://blogs.technet.com/b/momteam/archive/2014/01/13/mp-blog-the-right-tool-for-the-right-job.aspx

(The SCOM 2012 Operations Console is a prerequisite for installing MP Author)