I had a great time chatting with my vNeighbor Rich Brambley, Marc Farley, and Scott Herold on the Virtumania podcast the other day. Please go check out VIRTUMANIA 20 and be sure to download their other episodes.

From the blog post:

“This week’s discussion focuses on using Powershell in virtual environments instead of a GUI, compares learning scripting to learning the verbs and nouns of a new language such as Latin, and highlights several Powershell sites and tools that every administrator should check out.”

Need to determine what the uplink policy is for your DVSwitches? Here is a quick PowerCLI snippet to do that. I’d go into more detail but I don’t have time this moment. Consider this longer than a tweet, but shorter than my normal blog post.

Here is the corresponding screen in the vSphere Client (pardon the font issues, I’m running blind-person-size-font) with the relevant portion highlighted:

And the code:

PS> $pgName = 'Name of your DV port group'
PS> $pg = Get-View -ViewType DistributedVirtualPortgroup -Filter @{ Name = $pgName }
PS> $pg.Config.DefaultPortConfig.UplinkTeamingPolicy.UplinkPortOrder

ActiveUplinkPort  : {dvUplink1, dvUplink2}
StandbyUplinkPort :
Inherited         : True
DynamicType       :
DynamicProperty   :

I thought I’d share another slide with you tonight. This is also from my upcoming Train Signal vSphere Pro video. Before tackling a set of PowerCLI cmdlets, I like to give you a good base understanding of the concepts.

As evidenced by the slide I’m working on at the moment for the upcoming TrainSignal vSphere Pro Series lesson titled “Performance with PowerCLI”.

I really wanted to use stars for the difficulty level and make them vibrate like they do in the game, but I was spending too much time on this slide as it was.

If you are in the Southeast US, you may be interested in the upcoming Codestock event coming up in June in Knoxville, TN. It seems to be heavily slanted towards developers, but they are doing IT Pro and Entrepeneur tracks this year as well. I have submitted one session for my Managing VMware with PowerShell thing. If you have a minute, please go over to the site to register and vote my session up.

I’ve never been to Codestock before, but it looks like fun. In fact, it looks like a lot more fun than your typical canned vendor convention. I don’t plan on doing many speaker engagements this year aside from the occasional SMUG or APUG meeting here in Atlanta, but I thought going to Knoxville might be a neat excuse to get out an d see a new city. The drive to Knoxville from Atlanta is pretty nice if you go through Chattahoochee and Nantahala national forests, so we are looking forward to that.

(credit tfdavis on flickr)

This email arrived in my inbox today:

Just finished your book for the second time.  Man, have I learned a lot!  I am way ahead of the PowerShell curve for admins in general.  No one at my work can touch me!  SQl, AD, VMware, IIS, Group Policy, log extraction, etc…  I do it all with PowerShell.

A lot of people say, you can do all this stuff in the VMware client.  My reply is simply- no you can’t…  I have at least 30 automated PowerShell scripts that run throughout the week.  I don’t know how I lived without PowerShell. 

Again, your book rocked.  I actually paid for it!  I won’t let anyone borrow it either.  I need it way too much.  I tell them to BUY THEIR OWN!!!

G.B.

I really enjoyed reading it and wanted to share this with everyone. Very cool of him to take the time to send me the note.

When using PowerCLI, the first thing you have to do is to create a connection and authenticate yourself to your vSphere and/or vCenter servers. This is done with the Connect-VIServer cmdlet. Sometimes, this connection can be slow, taking ten or more seconds just to display a password prompt! That gets old pretty quickly.

There is a good reason for the slowness before you are prompted for credentials, and turns out, it’s a feature, not a bug. PowerCLI supports a single-sign-on (SSO) authentication when you attempt a connection to a vCenter server. What happens in the background is that your current Windows credentials are being passed on to the server and that is tried first, before even prompting you for credentials. This is great if you are sitting at the office and have a fast link to the vCenter server, and you happen to be logging into your workstation with a domain accont, and that domain account has vCenter rights. This transparent passing of credentials is definitely a timesaver under those circumstances.

But on the other hand, what if you are connecting from home over a slow link? What if you are on your home PC or a local account? What if, due to security policies at your company, your normal user account doesn’t even HAVE admin privileges? Yup, the authentication attempt fails (or simply takes a while), and you are left twiddling your thumbs, waiting for the “real” login prompt to appear.

Resolution

The fix is an easy one. Instead of typing this to connect:

Connect-VIServer vcenter.domain.com

…type something like this:

Connect-VIServer vcenter.domain.com -Credential (Get-Credential)

or the less-recommended, yet still quite functional:

Connect-VIServer vcenter.domain.com -user myuser -password mypass

By using one of these methods, you are instructing Connect-VIServer to explicitly use a set of credentials which you specify. This way, it won’t bother attempting to pass along your current credentials, thus saving you a few seconds and perhaps a gray hair or two.

This is a sample script that I created to show how you might create a relatively complex virtual farm environment. The hypothetical requirements for this farm are:

1. Add 10 ESX servers to a vCenter, one for each customer
2. Create a resource pool for each customer
3. Inside each of these, create a resource pool for each server role, and a specified number of virtual machines, based on previously-created VM templates
   1. 2 x proxy server
   2. 4 x web server
   3. 2 x app server
   4. 2 x database server

I hope you find the script useful!

PowerShell is so cool…

I had no idea how to automate Outlook with COM before today. Took me about 5 minutes to learn how with PowerShell. I knew it could be done with VBS, right? That’s how viruses are made.

This won’t be a long blog unfortunately, but wanted to paste real quick a series of commands which I basically figured out in a shell interactively. I didn’t have to read any docs, Get-Member told me all I needed to know.

I did go back and add some comments. I hope you find it useful.

$ol = New-Object -com Outlook.Application # starts outlook

$ol.Reminders | select caption, nextreminderdate # show reminders

$ol | gm -mem method # show all methods (actions) on the com object

$n = $ol.CreateItem('olNoteItem') # creates a note

$n # display note object

$n.Body = 'test' # set body of note

$n | gm # display object members (methods & properties) of note

$n.Display() # show note

$n.Color # display color value

$n.Color = 4 # set color

1..5 | ForEach-Object { $n.Color = $_; sleep 1 } # change color of note 5 times

$m = $ol.CreateItem('olMailItem') # create mail object

$m # display mail object

$m | gm -mem property # show mail properties

$m.Subject = 'test' # set subject

$m.Body = 'test' # set body

$m.To = 'email@domain.com' # set to address

$m.Display() # display mail item on screen 

$m.Send() # send mail item

$ol # display outlook object

$ol | gm # display outlook methods

David at the Holy VM! blog just put up an article with a script showing you how to create port groups using PowerCLI. He was kind enough to reference my book as inspiration, so the least I can do in return is link to it.

Be sure to follow David’s blog, I see several interesting posts on there recently about his experiences with vSphere.

If you were waiting for me to post the demo scripts from TA2650: Taking PowerCLI to the Next Level, then you wait is over! My co-presenter Luc Dekens actually buckled under the pressure and started his own blog.  He’s got four posts on it already, and they are:

• TA2650 scripts – Part 1 – Profiling your vSphere environment
• TA2650 scripts – Part 2 – Using the profile XML file for SDK programming
• TA2650 scripts – Part 3 – Checking cluster node configurations
• TA2650 scripts – Part 4 – NIC Teaming – “hidden” failure criteria

Enjoy!

This is very much a work-in-progress, but I just successfully built an MSI package from PowerShell using WixSharp and the following test code:

$dll = 'C:\Program Files\WixSharp\WixSharp.dll'
$path = "c:\temp\out.msi"
[system.Environment]::CurrentDirectory = ( Split-Path $path )
Add-Type -Path $dll
$project = New-Object wixsharp.Project
$project.Name = "MyApp"
$project.GUID = [system.Guid]'3bb9cf27-5258-4192-b35b-418f0782c7a3'
$project.Id = "MyApp"
$dir = New-Object wixsharp.Dir( "%ProgramFiles%\My Company\My Product" )
$dir.files = @(
	( New-Object wixsharp.File( "C:\temp\ext18866\install.exe" ) ),
	( New-Object wixsharp.File( "c:\temp\ext18866\install.res.dll" ) )
)
$project.Dirs = @( $dir )
[wixsharp.Compiler]::BuildMsi( $project, $path )

Very simple installer, obviously, but it may just solve a problem for me.  I’ll have to write more about my research which led up to Wixsharp, but for now—it’s time to sleep. 

One more thing: this Wixsharp howto was invaluable.

I am very pleased to announce that my book, Managing VMware Infrastructure with Windows PowerShell: TFM is now available to pre-order for $41.99 at SAPIEN’s ScriptingOutput site. Estimated ship date is mid-April. [See update at end about availability at other e-tailers and shipping prices.]

Here’s what the book is about:

VMware is the king when it comes to virtualization. Windows PowerShell has gotten huge accolades as an extremely powerful tool for automation of IT tasks. These two technologies make a lot of sense together, and VMware is now making that happen with the release of their VI Toolkit for Windows.

In “Managing VMware Infrastructure with PowerShell”, you will learn how to perform everything from simple ad-hoc reporting at the command-line (“are any of my virtual machines powered off?”) to complex scripts to automate a massive deployment of hundreds of virtual machines. Simple, yet powerful; concise, yet robust; you will enjoy using this new language to solve your old problems using less code than you thought possible.

If you are a system administrator responsible for managing a VMware Virtual Infrastructure (version 2.0 or above), or a standalone ESX Server (version 3.0 or above), then you need this book. Aimed at scripters of every level, the book starts off with a PowerShell primer and continues well into the internals of virtualization on the VMware platform.

Table of Contents

• Introduction – Why You Need This Book

1. Windows PowerShell Crash Course
2. Getting Started
3. Scripting with Virtual Infrastructure
4. Inventory and Reporting
5. Deployment and Configuration
6. Maintenance and Operations
7. Troubleshooting and Problem Resolution
8. Managing VMWare with PowerGUI

I have two pieces of cool news on my book, Managing VMware Infrastructure with PowerShell: TFM. First, it should be going to print around April 15th! I think it’ll be available on pre-order before then, but I don’t know precisely when that will happen. Second, VMware has partnered with my publisher to make a 10% off coupon available to ISVs and IHVs. If you are currently on VMware’s TAP mailing list, look for that coupon to arrive in the March newsletter which should be in your inbox now.

Got this cool email this morning:

Congratulations! On behalf of VMware, we would like to thank you for all the work you’ve done giving back to the virtualization community and sharing your expertise with others. We are pleased to present you with the VMware vExpert Award for 2009. VMware is giving this award to individuals who have contributed significantly to the community of VMware users over the past year.
VMware vExpert award winners will receive:
* An award certificate and gift
* Access to a private vExpert community
* vExpert logo to display on website or email signature
* Free subscription to conference session materials on VMworld.com
* Access to exclusive online events and other opportunities to participate in activities
* Inclusion in public vExpert directory
The vExpert award duration is one year (through February, 2010).

The vExpert program is new from VMware as of today (Feb 25th, 2009).  I presume they are modeling it after similar programs like Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professional. Looks like I’m one of 300 people chosen for the inaugural award. Pretty neat!

You can read more about the program from its administrator, John Troyer on this VMTN blog post.

I didn’t plan on a big speech, but I will say: thanks, C-Dawg! Time to update my email and forum signatures. 

You can find the full announcement here.  I’ll pull out just a couple of my favorite items from it:

• Includes ability to download scripts from PoshCode
• STA mode support means you can run PowerBoots.
• The current size of the console is overlaid as you resize the window.  Silly little feature, but as it was my idea, you can thank me. 
• PowerShell V2 CTP3 support! This means things like block comments will be interpreted correctly in the editor and console.

To download the beta you will need to register. It’s worth it.

You can be one of the first to receive a copy of my book when it comes out (not long, I swear!), for free!  Be sure to listen to Episode 57 for details.

And let me give you a tip.  Last time I looked, we had around 1,800 subscribers who listen to the recorded show.  We typically have between 15 and 40 people show up to the live show on our Ustream channel. We’ll give away a book or two live, and save some for the “regular podcast”.  Odds are a bit better if you show up tonight for the live show. 

I hate this window! And it really isn’t much better on Vista. I spent several minutes looking for a single app (old version of PowerShell) this morning so that I could uninstall it and install CTP3. I really want a list that I can filter by partial string. And it takes so long to open!

I know there’s third-party several replacements for it, but I’ve not tried any. Do you have any that you use?

I just wanted to make a quick post to show you how to connect to a VMware Server (version 2 required) with the VI Toolkit.  As Server uses a different default port than VirtualCenter (which uses 443), you must specify it to the Connect-VIServer cmdlet.

PS > $vi = Connect-VIServer magneto -Port 8333
There were one or more problems with the server certificate:

* A certification chain processed correctly, but terminated in a root certificate which isn't trus
ted by the trust provider.

PS > Get-VM
PS > New-VM -Name testvm -MemoryMB 256 -DiskMB 10 -RunAsync

Name                           State      % Complete Start Time   Finish Time
----                           -----      ---------- ----------   -----------
CreateVM_Task                  Running             0 02:07:41 PM

PS > Get-Datastore

Name                               FreeSpaceMB      CapacityMB
----                               -----------      ----------
standard                                 67208           76308

Update – read to the end, I just got some news on some…limitations.

Update #2 – All API restrictions have been removed with v3.5U3!

Update #3 – false alarm According to Mike D, this was an accident and it’ll be turned off in U4.

Have you checked out VMware’s free ESXi hypervisor yet?  It’s some pretty neat stuff, taking most of the high perf features we know and love from its big brother and wrapping them in a tiny package. It’s a great tool which I’ve started to get into lately (we have an existing VI3 ESX shop).

One thing you cannot do with the free version however, is connect to and manage multiple host systems at the same time.  The VI Client is great, but it’s scope is limited to a single server.  If you happen to have a VirtualCenter, you’ll find that you can’t add an ESXi server to your farm—it fails due to a missing license.

Not all is lost!  Late in the dev cycle of VMware’s VI Toolkit (for Windows), they added a Server parameter to every cmdlet. Let me show you how you can use it to control multiple ESXi servers at once—for free.  You can’t beat free.

PS > $esxi = Connect-VIServer 192.168.0.51,192.168.0.55 -Credential (Get-Credential)

cmdlet Get-Credential at command pipeline position 1
Supply values for the following parameters:
Credential
PS > $esxi

Name                           Port                           User
----                           ----                           ----
192.168.0.51                   443                            root
192.168.0.55                   443                            root

PS > $DefaultVIServer

Name                           Port                           User
----                           ----                           ----
192.168.0.55                   443                            root

PS > (Get-VM | Measure-Object).Count
7
PS > (Get-VM -Server $esxi | Measure-Object).Count
10

Note that if you leave off the Server param, the cmdlets will operate on the most recently-connected server, which will be stored automatically in the $DefaultVIServer variable.

Limitations to Management API in ESXi

I just learned from the product group that most of the objects exposed by the VI API in the free edition are read-only.  This is pretty harsh.  This means your reporting scenarios will still work well, but you can forget about ongoing maintenance. I’ll probably post a follow up to this article once I have a better handle on what you can and can’t do.  Stay tuned.

Update @ 12/14/08 – With version 3.5U3, VMware has thankfuilly decided to remove all API restrictions. See this article.