Mastering Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc136850(v=vs.85).aspx

You can create your own custom values within the VM that can be read by the Hyper-
V host by adding string values under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Virtual Machine\Guest. This would be
useful to, for example, populate the type of server in the guest using a custom process,
such as SQLServer or IISServer, which could then be read from the host to ascertain
the type of server running in the VM. There is no PowerShell cmdlet available to read
values set in the guest from the Hyper-V host. Instead, you use WMI. The following
PowerShell script reads the fully qualified domain name from within the guest OS
from the Hyper-V host for VM savdaldc02:

$vmName = "savdaldc02"

$vm = Get-WmiObject -Namespace root\virtualization\v2 -Class Msvm_ComputerSystem
-Filter "ElementName='$vmName'"

$vm.GetRelated("MsvmKvpExchangeComponent").GuestIntrinsicExchangeItems | % {
$GuestExchangeItemXml = ([XML]$).SelectSingleNode(`
"
/INSTANCE/PROPERTY[@NAME='Name']/VALUE[child::text()='FullyQualifiedDomainName']")

            if  ($GuestExchangeItemXml  -ne $null)

            {

        $GuestExchangeItemXml.SelectSingleNode( `

            "/INSTANCE/PROPERTY[@NAME='Data']/VALUE/child::text()").Value

            }

    }

Heartbeat   Allows  Hyper-V to  check   the responsiveness  of  the guest   operating

system  by  a   heartbeat   check.

Backup  (Volume Snapshot)   A   powerful    feature that    I   cover   in  Chapter 6,

“Maintaining    a   Hyper-V Environment;    ”   this    allows  backup  requests    at  the host

level   to  be  passed  to  the guest   operating   system, in  turn    allowing    consistent  file

and application backups to  be  taken   from    the host.

Guest   Services    This    is  a   new Integration Services    component   introduced  in

Windows Server  2012    R2  that    is  disabled    by  default.    Guest   services    enables the

copying of  files   to  a   virtual machine using   WMI APIs    or  using   the new Copy-VMFile

PowerShell  cmdlet.

Microsoft provides Integration Services for the supported operating systems unless it
is already part of the operating system; for example, many modern Linux distributions
have the Hyper-V Integration Services built-in (although Microsoft still releases
updated Linux Integration Services, which are then integrated into newer
distributions of Linux). The full list of the supported guest operating systems can be
found at http://technet.microsoft.com/library/hh831531 for Windows Server 2012 R2
and at https://technet.microsoft.com/library/mt126117.aspx for Windows Server 2016,
but the primary supported operating systems for Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V are as