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I have a Hyper-V host machine with a number of guests. One of the guests is a Linux VM running a vendor app that isn't exactly the most robust piece of software in the world. About once per week, maybe once every other week, the app just locks up and becomes unresponsive.

When the app locks up, I can login in to the Linux server and restart a service to fix everything. Obviously, rebooting the server has much the same effect, though it takes a couple minutes longer. I'd like to cut IT out of the process, and give the staff in the office that use the app the ability to restart the server themselves. That would be faster, since they'd cut out the part where they wait for IT to see and respond to the ticket, it would take some occasional work off our plate, and it would make the staff happier, since they'd feel they have more control of the situation.

How can I do this?

Powershell comes to mind, but I don't want to give them admin access to either the host or the guest. I also wouldn't want to leave the server name in a script somewhere in a way that's easy to find. These are some very non-technical staff, but any idiot can find and change a server name in a block of text. Maybe a powershell script that just kicks of a scheduled job setup with a user that does have the appropriate rights? All ideas welcome.

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  • Which version of Hyper-V? But regardless, you can delegate those permissions (tasks) in Hyper-V such as restarting a VM to their AD account and then just give them something simple like Restart-Computer -ComputerName (and then wait for them to just type Restart-Computer and have their local computer reboot. :)
    – TheCleaner
    Dec 16, 2014 at 21:40
  • It's an older Hyper-V, running on Server 2008 R2
    – Joel Coel
    Dec 16, 2014 at 21:41
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    Every time the app has a hiccup or a user "thinks" it's hung up they're going to be rebooting the VM. Joe is using the app while Mary reboots it because she thinks it's hung up, etc. I'm imagining your support calls increasing if you give them this level of access to the VM.
    – joeqwerty
    Dec 17, 2014 at 1:45
  • Is there any way to monitor the app for a hang then reboot when it detects its unresponsive?
    – Jim B
    Dec 17, 2014 at 5:05
  • @JimB That may be possible, but it wouldn't be very straight-forward. Considering the amount of time I'd need to invest to make that work vs how often this happens, the script is likely easier.
    – Joel Coel
    Dec 17, 2014 at 20:48

1 Answer 1

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Yes- you can use RBAC to assign the linux VM to a scope, and then apply the necessary roles to the office staff for that scope.

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