Thursday, December 11. 2008
Eric Siebert's Top 10 PowerShell scripts
Wednesday, December 10. 2008
PeetersOnline | Get VMware Disk Usage with Powershell
Hugo Peeters over at PeetersOnline.nl created a really cool PowerShell script which checks how much disk space youâre wasting inside your VMâs but also on your VMFS. Iâm going to edit my PowerShell presentation (the one for next Friday) for the last :-) time and try to fit in a page with this script.
Using VMware seriously requires a lot of (shared) storage. This kind of storage (on a SAN for instance) is quite expensive. So you might want to check if you are wasting a lot of this space. When you look at the storage in VMware, it consists of multiple abstraction layers. A virtual machine has one or more Logical Disks, which are indicated by driveletters. You can use WMI to determine the amount of used and free space (Win32_LogicalDisk). One or more logical disks are contained in a partition. One or more partitions reside on a physical disk. That physical disk is really a virtual disk, a vmdk file to be precise. One or more vmdk files reside in a Datastore, which can be found on a LUN on your SAN.
Tuesday, December 9. 2008
New version of the VI toolkit extensions
Carter Chanklin, Product Manager at VMware's End User Enablement, recently released a new version of the VI toolkit extensions. Here are the improvements in build 44249.
Fixes to Get-TkeSnapshotExtended:
1. Fixed to work on both VirtualCenter and when directly connected to ESX
2. Fixed the "Int32" problem, hopefully for good this time.
Also added some more storage-related cmdlets:
1. Get-TkeAvailableDisk returns disks that are available creating VMFS partitions.
2. Format-TkeDisk takes the output of Get-TkeAvailableDisk and puts a VMFS3Â filesystem on the disk.
Hereâs a short âhow toâ use the extensions:
Upgrade to Windows PowerShell 2.0 Community Technology Preview (CTP2).
Download Download the VI Toolkit (for Windows) 1.0.
Download the viToolkitExtension.psm1 module at Codeplex and place it somewhere on your local disk.
Use Add-Module "C:\Temp\viToolkitExtensions.psm1" in your PowerShell script
Thursday, December 4. 2008
My top five PowerShell tools
When youâre a PowerShell fanatic you probably installed the latest PowerShell update and youâre running your scripts on Windows PowerShell V2 Community Technology Preview 2 (CTP2). This version contains two shellâs, besides the PowerShell.exe your can also use the (Graphical PowerShell) GPowerShell.exe. Working with the standard shell is great but there are a lot of tools out there which can enrich your life as a scripter. At the 12th of December Iâll present the âManaging VMware VI3 with PowerShellâ session at the Dutch VMUG event in Nieuwegein. This presentation contains some live demos of the following tools.
Hereâs my PowerShell top five, hope to see you next week.
1.   PowerGUI
2.   PrimalFormsÂ
3.   PowerGadgetsÂ
4.   AdminScriptEditorÂ
5.   PowerShellPlus
Wednesday, December 3. 2008
PowerShell VMRC Remote Connector
Patrick Schneider created a new version of the PowerShell Remote Connector which can be used to call the VMware Remote Console (VMware VMRC). The user interface is a bit challenging especially when youâre running a lot of virtual machines. If you can think of any improvements or you have a few tips for Patrick your can reach him at s.patrick1982(nospam)@gmail.com. The new VMware Remote Console (VMware VMRC) allows accessing the virtual machine consoles independent of the Web-based management interface. In order to access VMware virtual machines, install VMware the VMRC application from VMware Virtual Server web interface or download VMware VMRC application for Windows from the Minicom web site.
You can download Patrickâs PowerShell script here, verbinden is German for Connect ;-)