Back again for another part in my VM Lab series. So far I’ve created the folder structure which we will use to store our ISO files, VHD files [including template VHDs and Unattend.xml files] and VM’s. In order to manipulate the ReadOnly status of various files [such as the template VHD’s and Unattend.xml files], I’ve provided simple functions which will assist us. Now we need to make sure that the final piece of the infrastructure is ready: the Hyper-V VM Switches.

In this next installment of my VM Lab series of posts, I have created a tiny set of tools which basically do exactly as the names imply. While I admit, not quite hard to do, perhaps you’d even prefer to type things manually, but as mentioned in my previous post, for me it’s all about re-usability. RequirementsIn one of the upcoming installments of my VM Lab series, I will create a template VHD file, which will need to be set to Read Only in order to prevent changes to be made accidentally.

Lets get started… First of all, I always prefer my lab to have the same layout and tend to use the same solutions, since they’re either best practice or the most logical approach for me. Now in a Lab environment, this starts at the basics, creating a folder structure to put everything in, from VHDs, VMs to ISO files and templates. RequirementsFor my Lab I always want it to have the same folder structure.

Hey guys, It’s been a bit quiet lately, some holiday time and most importantly a change of jobs! As of July 1st I now work for OSC as an Infrastructure Specialist and will hopefully have more time to expand my knowledge and share this with the community. The last few weeks I’ve been busy playing around with a solution in order to quickly create a Lab with VM’s. While I know how to manually set them up and create machines, I had a somewhat ‘ideal’ method in mind and didn’t really want to stray from that idea.

I’ve recently had some discussions with my colleagues about certifications, experience, knowledge etc. and was asked to share information on how I got to where I am today and what I use to keep furthering up. While I had given those colleagues a direct answer and had thought about writing an email to several of them with some basic information, I thought sharing this information with a larger audience would be handy….

UpdateI’ve optimized the script to now only query each mailbox once and have increased the speed in this customer’s environment for On-premise from 1 minute 49 seconds to 26 seconds. The Office 365 code was optimized similarly and went down from 22 minutes 14 seconds to 7 minutes 21 seconds. The output of the optimized script is identical to the original one. IntroAs the title suggest, I had a customer asking for a list of all email addresses within the company and the accompanying mailbox sizes.