When you are configuring vCO, one of the requisite steps is to configure LDAP. While vCO has some pretty nifty search buttons, you can still get this info and more using DSquery. Here’s a few examples: Find a Specific Group PS C:\> DSquery OU -name "ProVMware Users" "OU=ProVMware Users,DC=provmware,DC=local" Find a Specific OU PS C:\>
-> Continue reading Using DSquery to Find LDAP Paths – vCO
A few vCO related things happened over the past few days. First is: VMware launched the vCenter Orchestrator Blog! If you’re into vCO, add this to your list of resources. The second, and just as exciting, was the release of the vCO Plug-In for Cisco UCS. the UCS Manager plug-in provides the necessary pieces to
-> Continue reading More vCO Goodness
A few things brought this post together. First is that Glen Sizemore of Get-Admin and I have co-submitted a “vSphere Automation 101 – PowerCLI” session to the VMworld 2011 CFP. We thought it’d be an excellent idea to share some of that content before hand. The second, and just as important, is that I’m Lazy
-> Continue reading Some PowerCLI 101 – Connecting to Multiple vCenters
Why? Because I said so. Perhaps that is a bit too direct. However, if you are like me, you often find yourself with more to do than time to do it in. Or, like my other side, you’re professionally lazy. If you’re the latter, don’t worry, I wont tell anyone. If you are either, vCO
-> Continue reading vSphere Automation 101 – Use vCenter Orchestrator
First and foremost thanks to our three (yes THREE) guest presenters: Paul Richards – Virtualization lead on the Product Engineering team at SunGard Availability Services. His background is in virtualization, storage, and now this cloud stuff. Brian Knudtson – just a simple Systems Engineer trying to make his way through this virtual world he’s found
-> Continue reading VCAP-DCA BrownBag – Section 8 Orchestrator Follow-Up
OK, so every environment has “That Guy”… if you don’t know what I’m on about, take a look at what floated past on Twitter this evening from @vSeanClark: RT @techmute: Some people really make me wish vSphere had the option "take a snapshot when this guy logs in as an admin" <- startup idea? Well…
-> Continue reading Protecting your Virtual Machines From “That Guy”
In trying to get used to ESXi and it’s console-less nature I’ve been forcing myself to use the vCLI or PowerCLI to do things. Along the way I’ve learned that the vCLI is generally really well though out, if different. Here is an example of this: Setting up a vNetwork Standard Switch (vSwitch) using PowerCLI
-> Continue reading Add a vSwitch, PowerCLI vs. vCLI
This came up recently on the VMware Virtualization group on LinkedIn. The question was essentially: “In the event of a host hardware issue, can I VMotion my VMs off the host and send a notification?” The answer is: “Most Certainly!” This can be done by setting up a vSphere vCenter Alarm and corresponding action. Let’s
-> Continue reading vSphere Host Died Abandon Ship! – vSphere vCenter Alarms & Actions
While all of PowerCLI is remarkable in both it’s power and ease of use, there are some cmdlets that do not get as much airtime as they deserve. One of those, is Invoke-VMScript. From Get-Help InvokeVMScript NAME Invoke-VMScript SYNOPSIS Executes the specified PowerShell script in the guest OS of each of the specified
-> Continue reading The Most Awesome PowerCLI Cmdlet You Aren’t Using
Today I needed to disable the VMware tools/console copy & paste functionality… on a lot of VMs (well… more than one is a lot). In doing this, I came across these directions from vmzare: How To disable copy and paste operations between the guest operating system and remote console ? 1. Log on to the
-> Continue reading Disabling Copy Paste – The PowerCLI way
While searching for some snippets of VMware PowerCLI code earlier in the week I came across some awesome resources, both resources I’ve not seen/used before, as well as those that I’ve used, but have not linked prior. Note, that most of these are just the PowerCLI section of an equally awesome blog. VMware PowerCLI Community
-> Continue reading 11 Awesome PowerCLI Resources
I just received my copy of Steve Jin’s “VMware VI and vSphere SDK: Managing the VMware Infrastructure and vSphere ”, As I tech edited the book I’ll not post a long review, other than to say that the book is a good resource, and overall a good book. If you are, or will be programming
-> Continue reading vSphere SDK – The Book!
I told you it was the big feature didn’t I” While I’m a PowerShell man at heart, there is something to be said, for having a cross platform, potentially hypervisor agnostic scripting engine, that is tied not just into your virtual infrastructure, but also into your management platform. Take a look at a few of
-> Continue reading Kodiak LUA Scripting
While great, managing events with the the VI Client can be a pain. No search functionality, old events fall off the list, etc, etc. So what is an admin to do? A resourceful admin will have been playing with the VI Toolkit, and would have found the get-vievent cmdlet. Let’s take a look at how
-> Continue reading Managing Your vCenter Events with PowerShell
Because there is an answer for everything and for everything that answer is PowerShell. Sometimes in your Virtual Infrastructure, you will have a need to answer a question or two. Normally these questions are put to you by vCenter: “Did you copy or move this VM?”, “Is today your birthday?”, “Who shot Kennedy?”. For Example:
-> Continue reading Answering VM Questions With PowerShell
These slides look to have been released after last years VMworld, and provide a great introduction to scripting and automation with the VMware tools. Link! The labs will help you get started with scripting VMware Infrastructure to enable automation, extensibility, and integration with existing tools. When we ran this at VMworld, we had about 600
-> Continue reading VMware – An Introduction To Scripting VI Using Perl or PowerShell
Why? Because it’s awesome, that’s why. Below is an example, complete with syntax and screenshots on how to defragment a windows guest using VMware’s VIX. Here is what it looked like before: Here is the command used from the host where VIX is installed: C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware VIX>vmrun -T esx -h https://vCenter.server.com/sdk – u domain\user -p
-> Continue reading Using VIX to Defrag Windows Guests
This is almost as good as a Peanut butter sandwich with Marshmallow cream. Or at least as good as the four shot “Venti’” mocha I just finished. It seems there is now some third part goodness from the VIX community, that will enable you to use it (VIX That is) with PowerShell. WOOT! The original
-> Continue reading VMware VIX, now with PowerShell
It seems my Automating VMware With Powershell presentation made the first cut. Click on through and vote for me!