How to schedule VMs to startup and shutdown

Question

I'm running several VMs (Mainly windows XP) on a 2008 server under Hyper-V. I'd like to automatically schedule some of these machines to startup and shutdown according to a schedule. To limit availability to the times when people are supposed to be in the office to log into them.
How can this be achieved??

Answer 1

So basically it is pretty easy with PowerShell

1. Install PS
2. Get the library written for managing VMs http://www.codeplex.com/PSHyperv

3. Write your PS script which looks like something like this:

   . c:\whatever\hyperv.ps1

   Stop-VM XXX

   Start-VM XXX

4. Schedule it http://ss64.com/nt/schtasks.html

HTH