So one of the things that did happen whilst I was away, and that does bear repeating (as it’s not marketing fluff) is the Virtualization Eco Shell Initiative and their beta release landing (Thanks Virtua-al). The goal of the Vizioncore Virtualization EcoShell is to provide a freeware desktop application for novice and expert IT administrators
-> Continue reading The Turtles Are Upon Us – The VESI
While glancing over at PoSH today (the tiny turtle) I was inspired to do a bit of thinking and talking about using PoSH. Specifically the VI Toolkit, it really wouldn’t be blog worth otherwise would it? What I got thinking on, and what someone on irc clued me into, was storing credentials. Why store credentials?
-> Continue reading PoSH Article of the Week! – Secure Credential Storage
From the VI Toolkit blog. Can you spot the difference between this code: 1: foreach ($vm in (get-vm)) { 2: $disks = Get-HardDisk -vm $vm 3: foreach ($disk in $disks) { 4: Write-Host $disk.CapacityKB 5: } 6: } And this code: 1: foreach ($vm in (get-vm)) { 2: $disks = Get-HardDisk -vm $vm.name 3: foreach
-> Continue reading Go Go PowerShell Speed Racer! – Speeding up PowerShell scripts.
What we have today, was brought up on #ESX on EfNet. They were looking for a script to generate output similar to what you get by clicking on “Hosts and Clusters”, selecting “File > Export > Export List…” Like this: What I came up with is not quite as pretty, but, it works, and you
-> Continue reading Chicken Counter Script
Maybe not ‘roids, but with a large helping of awesome, like, vDiagram, shown below. Click on over to virtu-al.net to see the rest.
If like me you couldn’t get to VMworld Europe 2009, this will be great news. They’ve made the VI Toolkit Lab available online. I’ll give this a run through later tonight.
I wasn’t there, but had a few other folks on Twitter point out to me that I got a mention during one of Carters presentations on automating VMware with PowerShell. Startled and amazed by this, I asked for some proof, and well… got it: Woo! For those that didn’t know I’ll be doing a similar
-> Continue reading ProfessionalVMware @ VMWorld Europe 2009
It’s 7PM, do you know where your VMware Tools are? Rather, do you know if all your VM’s have them installed and running? Here is a one-liner to check that with PowerShell: get-vm | where { $_.PowerState -eq "PoweredOn" } | Get-VMGuest | where { $_.State -ne "Running" } | select vmName, State What this
-> Continue reading Where Did I Put My Tools? Are They In Sync? – Checking the VMware Tools with PowerShell
When your network engineer, or other random folks are looking for some assistance in updating their vlan map Visio, or are generally trying to make their work yours (who doesn’t love to delegate) you can bash out this one liner against your VI, and instantly have a list of what VM is on what VLAN.
-> Continue reading What VLAN is that VM On? Ask PowerShell!
Things break. They always do. Chaos is inevitable. So how do you get insight into some of the chaos that was occurring in your Virtual Center when disaster strikes? Turns out, the VI Client makes this quite easy. After you get your Virtual Center service running again, connect using the VI Client. Once connected… well
-> Continue reading Log Bundles, of the Virtual Center Variety
First let me explain exactly what I’m talking about. In virtual center, when you select a host, you get a “Summary” page. On this page there are some statistics… A picture perhaps will make this easier: Better? I think so. So first for those resources on top: PS C:\> get-vmhost | get-view | %{ $_.Summary.QuickStats
-> Continue reading Getting Virtual Center “Summary” Stats With the VI Toolkit
Yes, that is what it is! You can get it from here. As listed on the page, it requires the PowerShell 2.0 CTP 3 available from here. You’ll also want to grab the VMware Remote Console from here (It is optional however). Installation: After you pull down the .7z file, extract it anywhere you like.
-> Continue reading psVIC – PowerShell Virtual Infrastructure Client
Microsoft has released CTP (Community Technology Preview) 3 of PowerShell 2.0. You can grab it here. After having tossed it on a VM, I found that it now includes a pretty script editor of it’s own: Cute, no? When you create a “WindowsPowerShell\profile.ps1” containing: “add-PSSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core” It’ll include all your VI cmdlets too. Nice!
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
I’ve found a few situations in which snapshots get stuck, like glue, to a running VM, and despite your best effort to delete them, they wont go away. Like in-laws, they stick around, a bit longer than is pleasant. If a snapshot has not been removed cleanly on the first try, you may want to
-> Continue reading Removing VMware Snapshots – With a Bat (PowerShell, CLI, rCLI… and Perl)
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
As of today, ProfessionalVMware.com (or at least me, on behalf of ProfessionalVMware.com) is a member of the VI Toolkit (for Windows) VIP Community! What does this mean? It means: As a selected member of our VIP Community you will receive several benefits: 1. Early access to the VI Toolkit. 2. Insight into our product roadmap.
-> Continue reading Now a Member of: VI Toolkit (for Windows) VIP Community Wewt!