Authorization Manager for Hyper-V

Question

I'm trying to set up a Hyper-V server for a course in a College Lab and allow the students to create and modify VMs. However, those permissions require becoming a server admin, which we want to restrict from the students.

We want to utilize "Authorization Manager" and have hit a roadblock. Most sources on this subject begin with editing the InitialStore.xml file.

Problem:

1. We have looked for this file and cannot locate it on any Hyper-V server (regardless of server version) and have come up empty when searching through Install.wim
2. We have tried creating an InitialStore.xml file but cannot select/create any Role Definitions, Task Definitions, or Operation Definitions.

Can anyone help with this problem?

Answer 1

Hello,

 

Thank you for posting in Q&A forum.

To further troubleshoot this issue, please kindly try below steps:

1.Navigate to below path and check if the InitialStore.xml file is here:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Hyper-V\InitialStore.xml

2.If it's not available you can just copy one from another working Hyper-V server.

To create user roles, define the objects and proceed following operations, please refer to below Microsoft Official Documentation:

REF: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/msdn-technet-forums/7dabcf30-0ce1-46e3-93e6-fcf5de016981

 

I hope the information above is helpful.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to let us know.

 

Best regards，

Jill Zhou

 

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Answer 2

Concerning your first suggestion, I have already looked multiple times at C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Hyper-V\ for the xml file after multiple installs of different versions of Windows server and after installing the Hyper-V role. That file is "never" created even after creating various VMs.

Your second suggestion is not possible in our situation. I can't explain further without revealing personal data, which we are warned not to do.

I have looked through a couple of "install.wim" files, and cannot find it.

I had hoped someone might point to an online location where I could download the file.

Answer 3

Concerning your first suggestion, I have already looked multiple times at C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Hyper-V\ for the xml file after multiple installs of different versions of Windows server and after installing the Hyper-V role. That file is "never" created even after creating various VMs.

Your second suggestion is not possible in our situation. I can't explain further without revealing personal data, which we are warned not to do.

I have looked through a couple of "install.wim" files, and cannot find it.

I had hoped someone might point to an online location where I could download the file.

Answer 4

Your question is tagged with System Center Virtual Machine Manager. Do you have that product available? If so, then you start on the "Settings" blade at the bottom left, then the "User Roles" blade at the top left. Create a new profile, starting from the "Virtual Machine Administrator" role. You should have little trouble figuring it out from there.

If you do not have SCVMM, then your options are limited. AzMan/Authorization Manager has not worked for Hyper-V since the end of v1 of the API, so basically nothing 2012 and after. Yay for AI-generated answers that still suggest it :(.

You can try adding students to the "Hyper-V Administrators" local group. People have had mixed results with that. Hyper-V touches a lot of host resources, like volumes and folders, so virtual machine management is kind of inherently an administrative task.

If every student has their own computer system, a viable option would be nested virtualization. You as the host administrator create one big virtual machine (lots of CPU, lots of disk, most of the memory) with the virtualization processor extensions enabled. Install Windows Server in that. You can safely make the students administrators of those environments. Then they can learn Hyper-V from the ground up, right from installing the role. If they blow up their nesting VM, then you can rebuild it.

If each student does not have their own computer system, then you can still use nested virtualization with smaller VMs. The trouble that I see would how multiple students would use the same host simultaneously.