HyperVMs

This system tray utility will enumerate all your Hyper-V VMs and allow you to start & stop the VMs when necessary. It also has an Open Shell option where you can easily SSH into the selected VM.

Pre-Requisites

• A Windows OS (tested on Windows 10 Pro)
• .NET Framework 4.0 Runtime or higher - Download
• An SSH Client - (Git Bash, Windows built-in SSH, PuTTY, etc.)
• Administrative Privileges in Windows - Required for executing Hyper-V PowerShell Commands

Configuration Options

The settings.json in the same directory as the HyperVMs binary contains all the configuration needed to run it.

• defaultShell - By default this is set to windowsTerminal, and possible values are cmd, powershell, powershellCore & windowsTerminal. You can even setup a completely new shell with correct arguments and use it.
• sshCommand - The ssh client command used to shell into the VM. The default would work if the ssh client has a command ssh available in the PATH variable.
• autorun - Determines if HyperVMs would autorun on windows startup

{
  "shells": {
    "cmd": {
      "command": "cmd.exe",
      "arguments": "/c"
    },
    "powershell": {
      "command": "powershell.exe",
      "arguments": ""
    },
    "powershellCore": {
      "command": "pwsh.exe",
      "arguments": "-c"
    },
    "windowsTerminal": {
      "command": "wt.exe",
      "arguments": ""
    }
  },
  "sshCommand": "ssh",
  "defaultShell": "windowsTerminal",
  "autorun": true,
  "hosts": {}
}

Notes

• Prior to using the Open Shell action, SSH connectivity needs to be setup between host & guest (i.e. Installing SSH Server, setting up private & public keys)

• Preferred shell to open via Open Shell can be configured in Settings (i.e. use Open Settings menu item)

• By default CMD, PowerShell, PowerShell Core & Windows Terminal shells are configured in settings.json, and one can be picked as the default shell

• The user name used to SSH into the VM will asked the 1st time, and will be saved in the settings.json for subsequent uses.

Limitations

• Currently HyperVMs can directly shell into VMs configured with the Hyper-V Default Switch. If an Internal or External Switch is used, then the host records need to be setup in the %WINDIR%/System32/drivers/etc/hosts file.

  If the Hyper-V VM Name is "SomeVM", then the hostname SomeVM.mshome.net would need to be mapped into the corresponding IP manually.

Screenshots

• Context Menu

  

• Managing VMs

  

• SSH Into VM

  

• VM Power On/Off

  

Contributing

.NET Framework 4.0 SDK is needed to build the project - Download.

• Clone the repository
• Open the HyperVMs.sln in Visual Studio to build & run