Comments on: Important Changes in VMware Toolkit 1.0 http://halr9000.com/article/552 (powershell & other stuff) Thu, 20 Nov 2008 07:18:02 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 By: halr9000 http://halr9000.com/article/552#comment-6819 halr9000 Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:57:40 +0000 http://halr9000.com/article/552#comment-6819 They did make changes to cvi (the alias I made for it) so that it now keeps your connection alive just like VIC. To my knowledge, their plans did not work out 100% with regards to $defaultVIServer. One thing I don't like is that after you use disconnect-viserver, the $defaultVIServer variable still contains a value. They should have nulled it. If you use a function (named disconnect-viserver) to fix this up, then you can use the presence or absence of that variable to determine if there is a connection. Sorta. You can have multiple connections active at once, so that gets confusing. I was never able to enforce scope on the variable, I don't know if that was a bug or by design. It _always_ seemed to be privately scoped, even if you $global'd it. They did make changes to cvi (the alias I made for it) so that it now keeps your connection alive just like VIC.

To my knowledge, their plans did not work out 100% with regards to $defaultVIServer. One thing I don’t like is that after you use disconnect-viserver, the $defaultVIServer variable still contains a value. They should have nulled it. If you use a function (named disconnect-viserver) to fix this up, then you can use the presence or absence of that variable to determine if there is a connection. Sorta. You can have multiple connections active at once, so that gets confusing.

I was never able to enforce scope on the variable, I don’t know if that was a bug or by design. It _always_ seemed to be privately scoped, even if you $global’d it.

]]> By: Glenn http://halr9000.com/article/552#comment-6815 Glenn Tue, 29 Jul 2008 05:34:14 +0000 http://halr9000.com/article/552#comment-6815 I saw the thread you started on VMware Communities about get-view... Holy crap they listened! The fact that they fixed get-view to work in the pipeline just made it infinitely more useful. Especially since, until vmware finishes building up there cmdlet base, Get-View is our only window into some of VI more hidden configuration items. Does the change in Connect-VIServer mean that a powershell session will maintain the same persistent state as VIC? If so what about scripts? I know that get-VIServer was scoped because it stored all the connection information in $defaultVIServer (not at work going off mem). Therefor, before, when connecting in a function that connection was not available to you once you left that function. If I'm reading everything correctly looks like it's time to start treating VI like AD or SQL Connect-> do stuff -> Disconnect. I saw the thread you started on VMware Communities about get-view… Holy crap they listened! The fact that they fixed get-view to work in the pipeline just made it infinitely more useful. Especially since, until vmware finishes building up there cmdlet base, Get-View is our only window into some of VI more hidden configuration items.

Does the change in Connect-VIServer mean that a powershell session will maintain the same persistent state as VIC? If so what about scripts? I know that get-VIServer was scoped because it stored all the connection information in $defaultVIServer (not at work going off mem). Therefor, before, when connecting in a function that connection was not available to you once you left that function.

If I’m reading everything correctly looks like it’s time to start treating VI like AD or SQL Connect-> do stuff -> Disconnect.

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