Migrating an Azure VM to HyperV or VMware

Hi All!

Today, I’ll be showing a brief overview of how I migrated some Azure VMs to an on-premise HyperV and VMware server. This is done in stages and for me, required HyperV as a middle man before moving to VMware.

First, log in to your Azure portal and find the VM that you want to migrate. Open the settings for the VM and go into the ‘Disks’

Click on the blue text that shows the VM disk name. This should open the settings for the VM disk. Head to the ‘Disk Export‘ tab and generate a new URL to download the disk. TIP: download this onto your HyperV server.

Once this has downloaded, we can head to the next step!

The download may leave a file without an extension or with a VHD extension. If needed, add the VHD extension.

We now need to use HyperV to convert the VHD file to a VHDX format. Open HyperV, use the ‘Edit Disk‘ wizard. Find the disk and use the convert option:

Once converted, create a new generation 2 VM with near-enough the same specs as the original Azure VM. Don’t create a disk with this VM. Once the VM has been created, add the new VHDX file to the SCSi controller. Make sure to untick the enable secure boot option in the VM firmware tab:

The VM should now boot as the original Azure VM ?

From here it’s easy to get the VM onto VMware. Just use the VMware converter tool on the HyperV box whilst the VM is shutdown or on the VM whilst it’s running (this method is slower).

Hope this helped someone out ?

Sending Custom HTML Emails via PowerShell

Hi Everyone,

I hope COVID restrictions are starting to ease for you all. Still, don’t want to let your guard down too much, ey! Better safe than sorry.

In this post, I’m showing a simple way to send HTML emails from PowerShell. This includes sending emails that contain local images instead of hosting them on a separate website. I might have done this in the past, but I want to just throw this out there again. Lets hop in!

First of all, HTML shows different on EVERY SINGLE DEVICE. Outlook is particularly bad, completely ignoring the head that might contain styling and CSS. So the only way around this is to put the styling on every single element in the HTML body.

Here is the HTML I used, we will discuss what is happening below:

<!DOCTYPE html>
    <html lang="en" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office">
    
    <head>
        <meta charset="UTF-8">
        <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1">
        <meta name="x-apple-disable-message-reformatting">
        <title></title>
        <!--[if mso]>
          <noscript>
             <xml>
                <o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
                   <o:PixelsPerInch>96</o:PixelsPerInch>
                </o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
             </xml>
          </noscript>
          <![endif]-->
        <style>
            table,
            td,
            div,
            h1,
            p {
                font-family: Arial, sans-serif;
            }
        </style>
    </head>
<body style="margin:0;padding:0;">
        <table role="presentation" style="width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border:0;border-spacing:0">
            <tr>
                <td align="center" style="padding:0;">
                    <table role="presentation"
                        style="width:800px;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:0;text-align:left;">
                        <!--Logo-->
                        <tr>
                            <td align="center" style="padding:40px 0 10px 0">
                                <img src="cid:logo.png" alt="" width="350" style="height:auto;display:block;" />
                            </td>
                        </tr>
                        <tr>
                            <td style="padding:10px 10px 10px 10px;">
                                <table role="presentation"
                                    style="width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border:0;border-spacing:0;">
                                    <!--First chunk-->
                                    <tr>
                                        <td style="padding:0 0 20px 0">
                                            <h1
                                                style="font-size:38px;margin:0 0 20px 0;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;text-align:center;">
                                                Information Technology
                                            </h1>
                                            <p
                                                style="margin:0 0 12px 0;font-size:16px;line-height:24px;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;">
                                                Dear $firstname,
                                            </p>
                                            <h2 style="font-size:22px;margin:0 0 10px 0;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">
                                                Welcome!
                                            </h2>
                                            <p
                                                style="margin:0 0 12px 0;font-size:16px;line-height:24px;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;">
                                                Generic text can go here
                                            </p>
                                            <h2 style="font-size:22px;margin:0 0 10px 0;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">
                                                Your Login Information
                                            </h2>
                                            <p>
                                                style="margin:0 0 12px 0;font-size:16px;line-height:24px;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;">
                                                More generic text
                                           </p>
                                            <p>
                                                style="margin:0;font-size:16px;line-height:24px;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;">
                                            </p>
                                        </td>
                                    </tr>
								</table
							</td>
                        </tr>
                    </table>
                </td>
            </tr>
        </table>
        </td>
        </tr>
        <!--Footer-->
        <tr>
            <td style="padding:30px;background:#272a36;">
                <table role="presentation"
                    style="width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border:0;border-spacing:0;font-size:9px;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;">
                    <tr>
                        <td style="padding:0;width:50%;" align="center">
                            <p style="margin:0;font-size:18px;line-height:16px;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:#ffffff;">
                                For an additional support, or if you have any questions, please
                                send an email to <a href="mailto:help@example.com"
                                    style="color:#d6d6d6;text-decoration:underline;">help@example.com</a>
                            </p>
                        </td>
                    </tr>
                </table>
            </td>
        </tr>
        </table>
        </td>
        </tr>
        </table>
    </body>
</html>
  • Setting the Office product details and pixel density information
  • The logo.png is loaded using the cid: prefix which looks at the loaded images, you can see this below
  • The rest is just generic HTML with inline styling

Next we need to start creating the PowerShell email object.

#Define a valid SMTP server to send your emails through
$smtpServer = 'SERVER HERE' #e.g smtp.local.com
#Define a new SMTP object using the server defined above
$smtpObject = New-Object Net.Mail.SmtpClient($smtpServer)

#Create a new mail message object 
$msg = New-Object Net.Mail.MailMessage
$msg.From = 'DoNotReply@example.com'
$msg.ReplyTo = 'bccemail@example.com'
$msg.BCC.Add('bccemail@example.com')
$msg.To.Add('recipient@example.com')
$msg.subject = 'Example Email Subject'
$msg.IsBodyHtml = $True

$msg.Body = 'HTML FROM ABOVE - This can be a separate variable or right here'

#Provide a path to the photos for the email
$scriptPath = 'C:\example'

#Create a new mail attachment as an image
$logo = New-Object System.Net.Mail.Attachment -ArgumentList "$scriptPath\logo.png"
$logo.ContentDisposition.Inline = $True
$logo.ContentDisposition.DispositionType = "Inline"
$logo.ContentType.MediaType = "image/png"
$logo.ContentId = 'logo.png'

#Add the image attachment to the email, this allows the HTML to use the cid: prefix
$msg.Attachments.Add($logo)

#Try to send the email
try{
    $smptObject.Send($msg)
}catch{
    Write-Host 'Failed to send the email: ' -ForegroundColor Red -NoNewLine
    Write-Host $Error[0] -ForegroundColor Red
}

#Dispose of the image attachments and the email object to avoid memory leaks
#logo.Dispose()
$msg.Dispose()

Hopefully this shows just how easy it is to create and send HTML emails using PowerShell, including images send directly from the script instead of hosting them and suppling a web page URL.

If you have any questions etc, feel free to comment and I’ll help however I can.

Enjoy! ?