PowerCLI

I wrote a little PowerShell script that lists all the virtual hard disk files (and their paths) who are in snapshot mode. It’s nothing fancy really, just gives a little insight in how to retrieve objects.

Get-VIServer "VCSERVER" -User eric -Password sloof 
$Datacenter = Get-Datacenter 
$AllVirtualMachines = Get-VM -Location $Datacenter 
$AllSnapshots = Get-Snapshot $AllVirtualMachines
Get-HardDisk -Snapshot $AllSnapshots | findstr "Filename"

I wrote a PowerShell script that takes a few samples of your VM CPU MHZ average. The script uses the VMware PowerShell snap-in, the output is piped to the Out-String cmdlet. The Out-String cmdlet converts the objects that Windows PowerShell manages into an array of strings. By default, Out-String accumulates the strings and returns them as a single string, but you can use the stream parameter to direct Out-String to return one string at a time. This cmdlet lets you search and manipulate string output as you would in traditional shells when object manipulation is less convenient.

This evening I had the chance to play some more with the PowerGadgets tool. I want to use VMware PowerShell Snap-in to collect statistics about my VM and display the data in a nice chart. The following three lines produce the chart in the image. Isn’t it great ;-). Btw if you have problems with connecting to your Virtual Center server and you are receiving the following error message “Get-VIServer : Unexpected Error. ID Core_GetViServer_NewClient_Nullclient At Line:1 char:13�? you should check your locales setting and make sure you put it on English (credits to Bas).

PowerGadgets is a revolutionary new data visualization product that utilizes Windows PowerShell, Microsoft’s new scripting shell, to allow the creation of Gadgets in Windows. PowerGadgets requires no complex development environments, servers or browsers to run real-time Gadget components such as charts, gauges and maps on your desktop or in the Windows Sidebar. With just two lines of code you can present the outcome of your VMware PowerShell scripts into a PowerGadget. The image shows all my virtual machines presented in a chart by using the following code.

$vc = Get-VIServer -Server "VCServer" -User Eric -Password Sloof
Get-VM |out-chart -View3D_Enabled true

Out-chart: PowerGadgets provides a powerful charting engine providing over 60 chart types and a wealth of aesthetical and functional features. A chart plots data in the form of series and points with each series containing one or more points. Out-gauge: In addition to charts, PowerGadgets provides an out-gauge cmdlet to display single variable graphical objects. Single variable analysis is very powerful when combined with PowerGadgets’ flexible real-time capabilities.

Brian over at “Quick and Dirty Scripting�? a blog that focuses on automating system administration tasks for Linux, Windows, and VMware ESX is (like me) a VMware PowerShell pioneer. He created a script that creates a new virtual machine. He also tried to create a new VM from a template, but he continually got an error while doing so. I guess this just goes to show that VMware is still developing this code and it has some ways to go.

Workflow Studio is a new platform that enables simple yet enterprise-scale data center and business process automation through the power of Windows PowerShell and the flexibility of workflow.  Through a graphical workflow designer, you can build full automation of your business and/or IT processes including user account management, server and application provisioning, security enforcement and automation, disaster recovery automation, and routine and emergency maintenance on data center resources. You can integrate all these features with the VMware PowerShell command let’s and  automate and provision VMware’s virtual machines. The image shows a simple tryout. Within the hour I created a workflow that creates a CSV file with all the virtual machines registered at a Virtual Center Server. The trail period is 30 days so I got 29 days of fun left. ;-)

Several months ago I created a Visual Basic program named VMCDConnected. This application checks if one of your virtual machines is connected to an ISO image. When you have created a DRS cluster the virtual machines in this cluster are automatically migrated to the least busy ESX host. These migrations depend on VMotion. The most common show stopper for VMotion is a connected CD that’s not on shared storage. With one click of a button all the CD’s are disconnected. This weekend I had the change to try out the VMware Infrastructure Toolkit for Windows. It provides a core set of Windows PowerShell cmdlets for managing VI. Within minutes I created a script with the same features as my Visual Basic application. The difference is that creating the Visual basic program took me over a month. One other big difference is that the PowerShell script only counts five lines of code. The image shows a glimpse of the Visual Basic Object Browser investigating the Toolkit’s classes and properties. Building Visual Basic application on top of the Toolkit will also become a lot easier.
For the creation of the five-liner I used the script editor from PowerGui and the VMworld presentation “Managing VMware Infrastructure with Windows PowerShell�? presented by Antonio Dias and Danny Kim. VMware is preparing a technology preview of the PowerShell.  If you'd be interested in receiving an early version of that software and you'd be willing to try it out and send them feedback, please send email to vi_tk_4win-admin@vmware.com.

Add-PSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core

Get-VIServer vcserver.local

$vms = Get-VM

$CDConnected = Get-CDDrive $vms | where {$_.ISOPath -like "*.ISO*"}

Set-CDDrive -connected 0 $CDConnected