Disabling the BIN save state file on Hyper-V

This is a follow-up to my post: http://itproctology.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-forgotten-bin-element-in-hyper-v.html

Over time I have seen lots of posts from folks wanting to turn this off.

Well, that became possible with Hyper-V 2012. And actually is totally hidden, you might not know you are turning it off.

First, on the previous post I mentioned why the BIN (as I refer to them as the save state file) exist in the first place.

So, what if you turn them off?

Well, you turn them off and you lose the protection they offer. The safety net if you like. Think about that, consider the risk.  I did my job and warned you.

Before we jump in and disable it let's look at the settings option related to it first.

Per this post by Ben Armstrong this is rather simple; http://blogs.msdn.com/b/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2012/03/26/option-to-remove-bin-files-with-hyper-v-in-windows-8.aspx

Set-VM -AutomaticStopAction Save

This is the default and what you get without thinking. The safety net is on.

Set-VM -AutomaticStopAction ShutDown

This will cause Hyper-V to attempt clean shut down of the VM or click it off if it can't

Set-VM -AutomaticStopAction TurnOff

This will just click off your VMs, and give you that wonderful "why did I not shutdown cleanly" dialog later on.

According to Ben’s post; if you set either ShutDown or TurnOff, Hyper-V no longer creates the BIN file as a placeholder.

Now, if you take a snapshot of a running VM, you get one as a part of the snapshot (it is the actual saved memory state, not a placeholder). But it won't be there from the moment you turn on your VM.

In case you didn’t know how to use Set-VM: Get-VM –Name “Foo” | Set-VM –AutomaticStopAction ShutDown

 

Now, what if you want something a bit more useful, or you have bunches of VMs?

If you are using SCVMM:

Import-Module virtualmachinemanager

$prefix = Read-Host "Enter prefix to search on"

$vms = get-scvirtualmachine | where {$_.name -match $Prefix}

foreach ($vm in $vms) {
    # check if its status is clean in VMM, and clear it if not
    if ($vm.Status -eq "UpdateFailed") {Repair-SCVirtualMachine -VM $vm -Dismiss}
    if ($vm.VirtualMachineState -eq "Running") {Stop-SCVirtualMachine -VM $vm -Shutdown}

    # wait for the darn thing to cleanly shut down
    Do {Start-Sleep 30} until ($vm.VirtualMachineState -eq "PowerOff")
    if ($vm.StopAction -ne "ShutdownGuestOS"){Set-SCVirtualMachine -VM $vm -StopAction ShutdownGuestOS}

    if ($vm.StartAction -ne "TurnOnVMIfRunningWhenVSStopped"){Set-SCVirtualMachine -VM $vm -StartAction TurnOnVMIfRunningWhenVSStopped}

}

With the Hyper-V cmdlets the script would be changed very little.

If you are using Hyper-V cmdlets:

$prefix = Read-Host "Enter prefix to search on"

$vms = get-vm | where {$_.name -match $Prefix}

foreach ($vm in $vms) {
    if ($vm.State -eq "Running") {Stop-VM -VM $vm}

    # wait for the darn thing to cleanly shut down
    Do {Start-Sleep 30} until ($vm.State -eq "Off")
    if ($vm.AutomaticStopAction -ne "ShutDown"){vm | set-vm -AutomaticStopAction ShutDown}

    if ($vm.AutomaticStartAction -ne "StartIfRunning"){$vm | set-vm -AutomaticStartAction StartIfRunning}

}