Listing snapshots–via PowerShell [Hyper-V]

After the relatively trick “taking a snapshot” script – today’s snapshot script is quite easy. Listing the snapshots that a virtual machine has:

# Prompt for the Hyper-V Server to use

$HyperVServer = Read-Host "Specify the Hyper-V Server to use (enter '.' for the local computer)"

# Prompt for the virtual machine to use

$VMName = Read-Host "Specify the name of the virtual machine"

# Get the management service

$VMMS = gwmi -namespace root\virtualization Msvm_VirtualSystemManagementService -computername $HyperVServer

# Get the virtual machine object

$VM = gwmi MSVM_ComputerSystem -filter "ElementName='$VMName'" -namespace "root\virtualization" -computername $HyperVServer

# Get snapshot objects associated with the virtual machine

$Snapshots = gwmi -Namespace root\virtualization -Query "Associators Of {$VM} Where AssocClass=Msvm_ElementSettingData ResultClass=Msvm_VirtualSystemSettingData" 

write-host

write-host $VMName "has the following snapshots:" 

# Display a formatted list of snapshots

$Snapshots | sort CreationTime | Format-Table -Property @{n='Snapshot Name';e={$_.ElementName}}

One thing to point out here is that I am using a WMI query that looks at the association class (MSVM_ElementSettingData) as well as the result class (MSVM_VirtualSystemSettingData). The reason why I do this is that if you grab all MSVM_VirtualSystemSettingData classes that are associated with a virtual machine – you will get two extra entries: one for the active virtual machine, and one for the latest snapshot (which results in one of your snapshots being duplicated). The method that I am using here ensures that you only get snapshots, and you do not get any duplicates.

Cheers,
Ben