Run, don’t walk to vmware.com/go/powercli to grab the latest version of the world’s best PowerShell snapin. That’s right, v5 is out and you can grab it now! And the coolest part is that while nobody will have vSphere 5 in production on day one (ok, there’s a couple of you out there), PowerCLI v5 is a client-based tool with no dependencies, and it’s downwards-compatible! There is literally no reason for you not to upgrade right this instant! I am using exclamations here, people!

I’ve had beta builds installed for some time, but I didn’t want to do blog posts based on pre-release builds for fear that things would change. Now that it’s out, I’ll start pushing out some posts about what’s new and all that, so stay tuned. For now, some quick stats and info:

There are now FOUR VMware snap-ins installed with PowerCLI v5:

PowerCLI U:\> Get-PSSnapin vmware*

Name        : VMware.VimAutomation.Core
PSVersion   : 2.0
Description : This Windows PowerShell snap-in contains Windows PowerShell cmdlets for managing vSphere.

Name        : VMware.VimAutomation.License
PSVersion   : 2.0
Description : This Windows Powershell snap-in contains cmdlets for managing License components.

Name        : VMware.DeployAutomation
PSVersion   : 2.0
Description : Cmdlets for Rule-Based-Deployment

Name        : VMware.ImageBuilder
PSVersion   : 2.0
Description : This Windows PowerShell snap-in contains VMware ESXi Image Builder cmdlets used to generate custom images.

There are 293 cmdlets in total across these snap-ins. Here they are, grouped by Noun and Verb:

PowerCLI U:\> $c = Get-Command -Module vmware*
PowerCLI U:\> $c.Length
293
PowerCLI U:\> $c | group verb

Count Name                      Group
—– —-                      —–
    6 Add                       {Add-DeployRule, Add-EsxSoftwareDepot, Add-E…
    3 Apply                     {Apply-DrsRecommendation, Apply-ESXImageProf…
    1 Compare                   {Compare-EsxImageProfile}
    1 Connect                   {Connect-VIServer}
    4 Copy                      {Copy-DatastoreItem, Copy-DeployRule, Copy-H…
    1 Disconnect                {Disconnect-VIServer}
    1 Dismount                  {Dismount-Tools}
    3 Export                    {Export-EsxImageProfile, Export-VApp, Export…
    1 Format                    {Format-VMHostDiskPartition}
   95 Get                       {Get-AdvancedSetting, Get-AlarmAction, Get-A…
    2 Import                    {Import-VApp, Import-VMHostProfile}
    1 Install                   {Install-VMHostPatch}
    1 Invoke                    {Invoke-VMScript}
    1 Mount                     {Mount-Tools}
    9 Move                      {Move-Cluster, Move-Datacenter, Move-Folder,…
   37 New                       {New-AdvancedSetting, New-AlarmAction, New-A…
   42 Remove                    {Remove-AdvancedSetting, Remove-AlarmAction,…
    2 Repair                    {Repair-DeployImageCache, Repair-DeployRuleS…
    4 Restart                   {Restart-VM, Restart-VMGuest, Restart-VMHost…
   58 Set                       {Set-AdvancedSetting, Set-AlarmDefinition, S…
    1 Shutdown                  {Shutdown-VMGuest}
    4 Start                     {Start-VApp, Start-VM, Start-VMHost, Start-V…
    5 Stop                      {Stop-Task, Stop-VApp, Stop-VM, Stop-VMHost…}
    3 Suspend                   {Suspend-VM, Suspend-VMGuest, Suspend-VMHost}
    1 Switch                    {Switch-ActiveDeployRuleSet}
    3 Test                      {Test-DeployRuleSetCompliance, Test-VMHostPr…
    1 Update                    {Update-Tools}
    2 Wait                      {Wait-Task, Wait-Tools}

PowerCLI U:\> $c | group noun

Count Name                      Group
—– —-                      —–
    6 DeployRule                {Add-DeployRule, Copy-DeployRule, Get-Deploy…
    2 EsxSoftwareDepot          {Add-EsxSoftwareDepot, Remove-EsxSoftwareDepot}
    3 EsxSoftwarePackage        {Add-EsxSoftwarePackage, Get-EsxSoftwarePack…
    3 PassthroughDevice         {Add-PassthroughDevice, Get-PassthroughDevic…
    9 VMHost                    {Add-VMHost, Get-VMHost, Move-VMHost, Remove…
    3 VmHostNtpServer           {Add-VmHostNtpServer, Get-VMHostNtpServer, R…
    2 DrsRecommendation         {Apply-DrsRecommendation, Get-DrsRecommendat…
    6 ESXImageProfile           {Apply-ESXImageProfile, Compare-EsxImageProf…
    7 VMHostProfile             {Apply-VMHostProfile, Export-VMHostProfile, …
    2 VIServer                  {Connect-VIServer, Disconnect-VIServer}
    1 DatastoreItem             {Copy-DatastoreItem}
    5 HardDisk                  {Copy-HardDisk, Get-HardDisk, New-HardDisk, …
    1 VMGuestFile               {Copy-VMGuestFile}
    4 Tools                     {Dismount-Tools, Mount-Tools, Update-Tools, …
    9 VApp                      {Export-VApp, Get-VApp, Import-VApp, Move-VA…
    2 VMHostDiskPartition       {Format-VMHostDiskPartition, Get-VMHostDiskP…
    4 AdvancedSetting           {Get-AdvancedSetting, New-AdvancedSetting, R…
    3 AlarmAction               {Get-AlarmAction, New-AlarmAction, Remove-Al…
    3 AlarmActionTrigger        {Get-AlarmActionTrigger, New-AlarmActionTrig…
    2 AlarmDefinition           {Get-AlarmDefinition, Set-AlarmDefinition}
    2 Annotation                {Get-Annotation, Set-Annotation}
    4 CDDrive                   {Get-CDDrive, New-CDDrive, Remove-CDDrive, S…
    5 Cluster                   {Get-Cluster, Move-Cluster, New-Cluster, Rem…
    4 CustomAttribute           {Get-CustomAttribute, New-CustomAttribute, R…
    5 Datacenter                {Get-Datacenter, Move-Datacenter, New-Datace…
    4 Datastore                 {Get-Datastore, New-Datastore, Remove-Datast…
    1 DatastoreCluster          {Get-DatastoreCluster}
    2 DeployRuleSet             {Get-DeployRuleSet, Set-DeployRuleSet}
    4 DrsRule                   {Get-DrsRule, New-DrsRule, Remove-DrsRule, S…
    1 ErrorReport               {Get-ErrorReport}
    1 EsxCli                    {Get-EsxCli}
    1 EsxSoftwareChannel        {Get-EsxSoftwareChannel}
    1 EsxTop                    {Get-EsxTop}
    4 FloppyDrive               {Get-FloppyDrive, New-FloppyDrive, Remove-Fl…
    5 Folder                    {Get-Folder, Move-Folder, New-Folder, Remove…
    1 HAPrimaryVMHost           {Get-HAPrimaryVMHost}
    3 Inventory                 {Get-Inventory, Move-Inventory, Remove-Inven…
    4 IScsiHbaTarget            {Get-IScsiHbaTarget, New-IScsiHbaTarget, Rem…
    1 LicenseDataManager        {Get-LicenseDataManager}
    1 Log                       {Get-Log}
    1 LogType                   {Get-LogType}
    4 NetworkAdapter            {Get-NetworkAdapter, New-NetworkAdapter, Rem…
    2 NicTeamingPolicy          {Get-NicTeamingPolicy, Set-NicTeamingPolicy}
    4 OSCustomizationNicMapping {Get-OSCustomizationNicMapping, New-OSCustom…
    4 OSCustomizationSpec       {Get-OSCustomizationSpec, New-OSCustomizatio…
    2 PowerCLIConfiguration     {Get-PowerCLIConfiguration, Set-PowerCLIConf…
    1 PowerCLIVersion           {Get-PowerCLIVersion}
    5 ResourcePool              {Get-ResourcePool, Move-ResourcePool, New-Re…
    3 ScsiController            {Get-ScsiController, New-ScsiController, Set…
    2 ScsiLun                   {Get-ScsiLun, Set-ScsiLun}
    2 ScsiLunPath               {Get-ScsiLunPath, Set-ScsiLunPath}
    4 Snapshot                  {Get-Snapshot, New-Snapshot, Remove-Snapshot…
    1 Stat                      {Get-Stat}
    4 StatInterval              {Get-StatInterval, New-StatInterval, Remove-…
    1 StatType                  {Get-StatType}
    3 Task                      {Get-Task, Stop-Task, Wait-Task}
    5 Template                  {Get-Template, Move-Template, New-Template, …
    2 UsbDevice                 {Get-UsbDevice, Remove-UsbDevice}
    1 VIAccount                 {Get-VIAccount}
    3 VICredentialStoreItem     {Get-VICredentialStoreItem, New-VICredential…
    1 VIEvent                   {Get-VIEvent}
    1 View                      {Get-View}
    1 VIObjectByVIView          {Get-VIObjectByVIView}
    4 VIPermission              {Get-VIPermission, New-VIPermission, Remove-…
    1 VIPrivilege               {Get-VIPrivilege}
    3 VIProperty                {Get-VIProperty, New-VIProperty, Remove-VIPr…
    4 VIRole                    {Get-VIRole, New-VIRole, Remove-VIRole, Set-…
    4 VirtualPortGroup          {Get-VirtualPortGroup, New-VirtualPortGroup,…
    4 VirtualSwitch             {Get-VirtualSwitch, New-VirtualSwitch, Remov…
    9 VM                        {Get-VM, Move-VM, New-VM, Remove-VM…}
    4 VMGuest                   {Get-VMGuest, Restart-VMGuest, Shutdown-VMGu…
    2 VMGuestNetworkInterface   {Get-VMGuestNetworkInterface, Set-VMGuestNet…
    3 VMGuestRoute              {Get-VMGuestRoute, New-VMGuestRoute, Remove-…
    4 VMHostAccount             {Get-VMHostAccount, New-VMHostAccount, Remov…
    2 VMHostAdvancedConfigur… {Get-VMHostAdvancedConfiguration, Set-VMHost…
    1 VMHostAttributes          {Get-VMHostAttributes}
    2 VMHostAuthentication      {Get-VMHostAuthentication, Set-VMHostAuthent…
    1 VMHostAvailableTimeZone   {Get-VMHostAvailableTimeZone}
    2 VMHostDiagnosticPartition {Get-VMHostDiagnosticPartition, Set-VMHostDi…
    1 VMHostDisk                {Get-VMHostDisk}
    2 VMHostFirewallDefaultP… {Get-VMHostFirewallDefaultPolicy, Set-VMHost…
    2 VMHostFirewallException   {Get-VMHostFirewallException, Set-VMHostFire…
    2 VMHostFirmware            {Get-VMHostFirmware, Set-VMHostFirmware}
    2 VMHostHba                 {Get-VMHostHba, Set-VMHostHba}
    1 VMHostImageProfile        {Get-VMHostImageProfile}
    1 VMHostMatchingRules       {Get-VMHostMatchingRules}
    2 VMHostModule              {Get-VMHostModule, Set-VMHostModule}
    2 VMHostNetwork             {Get-VMHostNetwork, Set-VMHostNetwork}
    4 VMHostNetworkAdapter      {Get-VMHostNetworkAdapter, New-VMHostNetwork…
    2 VMHostPatch               {Get-VMHostPatch, Install-VMHostPatch}
    1 VMHostProfileRequiredI… {Get-VMHostProfileRequiredInput}
    4 VMHostRoute               {Get-VMHostRoute, New-VMHostRoute, Remove-VM…
    5 VMHostService             {Get-VMHostService, Restart-VMHostService, S…
    3 VMHostSnmp                {Get-VMHostSnmp, Set-VMHostSnmp, Test-VMHost…
    2 VMHostStartPolicy         {Get-VMHostStartPolicy, Set-VMHostStartPolicy}
    2 VMHostStorage             {Get-VMHostStorage, Set-VMHostStorage}
    2 VMHostSysLogServer        {Get-VMHostSysLogServer, Set-VMHostSysLogSer…
    2 VMQuestion                {Get-VMQuestion, Set-VMQuestion}
    2 VMResourceConfiguration   {Get-VMResourceConfiguration, Set-VMResource…
    2 VMStartPolicy             {Get-VMStartPolicy, Set-VMStartPolicy}
    1 VMScript                  {Invoke-VMScript}
    3 CustomField               {New-CustomField, Remove-CustomField, Set-Cu…
    1 DeployImageCache          {Repair-DeployImageCache}
    2 DeployRuleSetCompliance   {Repair-DeployRuleSetCompliance, Test-Deploy…
    1 ActiveDeployRuleSet       {Switch-ActiveDeployRuleSet}
    1 VMHostProfileCompliance   {Test-VMHostProfileCompliance}

The Atlanta VMUG is gearing up for its huge annual event at the Georgia World Congress Center this October 24th! You can register for the one-day event at myvmug.org. They have not yet posted the agenda, but one thing that I know they will be have there is me talking about PowerCLI. I haven’t yet come up with a topic, but you can assume that:

• I’ll talk about PowerCLI
• I won’t bore you

Beyond that is anyone’s guess, but suggestions are welcome. Leave your ideas in the comments below! I’m sure I’ll have a copy or two of some books or training videos to give away, so if nothing else, just show up for a chance at that.

But seriously folks—this will be a huge event. The VMUG leaders are telling me to expect more than 1,000 attendees. Don’t miss it, register now!

Just wanted to vent a bit of frustration with System Center Operations Manager this morning. As you can see from the task manager shot below, SCOM (showing its Microsoft Operations Manager roots with the process name) likes to eat memory. I left it running over the weekend on my work PC. Bad idea.

P.S. Mom, this has nothing to do with you, I promise!

If you have a server that needs to have the same Windows Server features and roles as another system, here’s an easy way to quickly get that done using PowerShell. I did this logged into each server locally, but you could easily use PowerShell remoting to do the same thing.

Step 1: Run PowerShell with ServerManager module:

Step 2: Export list of currently installed features to XML

Get-WindowsFeature | ? { $_.installed } | Export-Clixml \\server\share\features.xml

Step 3: On second server, run PowerShell and import XML

$f = Import-Clixml \\server\share\features.xml

Step 4: Pipe that bad boy into Add-WindowsFeature!

$f | Add-WindowsFeature

Step 5: Restart, if needed

Restart-Computer

That’s it!

I’m not speaking this year, but I was really impressed when I spoke at TM Orlando a couple of years ago. You should check it out, and here’s a discount!

You’re not too late for TechMentor Orlando (http://www.techmentorevents.com/orlando2011), March 14 – 18, 2011 at Disney’s Yacht Club.
TechMentor is offering you the best discount so far – $400 discount off the 5 Day Best Value Conference Pass (discount applies to the Standard rate and new registrations only)! Register at http://bit.ly/TMReg with the code UGTM10 for the discount.
If you’ve never attended it, TechMentor is 5 intensive and informative days of immediately-applicable training on today’s critical IT topics – everything from Active Directory to Virtualization – with a specific track and several sessions on PowerShell. Go to http://bit.ly/TMPwrShl if you want to know more about sessions and speakers.

That’s right, I’m going to go there—with PowerCLI! The topic of how to kill a stuck or hung VM has been done to death using SSH and a few arcane shell commands, or a long-running support script. But did you know you can do the same thing using PowerCLI? I’ll be teaching you how in my latest PowerCLI training video from TrainSignal. If I get the time, I’ll put put up a detailed blog post detailing how its done. For now though—just a tease.

Well, technically, it’s not uptime, it’s “last boot time”, but you know what I mean. I think this is much more useful than the number of seconds since the last boot anyway…

$LastBootProp = @{
  Name = 'LastBootTime'
    Expression = {
      ( Get-Date ) - ( New-TimeSpan -Seconds $_.Summary.QuickStats.UptimeSeconds )
	}
}
Get-VM | Get-View | select Name, $LastBootProp

In case you are curious, a “quick tip” means that I don’t have time to write a longer post. Hey, it’s better than not sharing!

I think the movie Inception was a pretty good analogy to my home virtual lab. Here’s my latest Visio diagram. All of this is hosted on a single quad-core HP workstation with 8 GB RAM.

First of all—I feel like such a n00b to be posting this. It’s fair to say that I know a bit about PowerShell but, man, the world is so big and I certainly do not know it all. As I always say, if I didn’t learn something today, then I must be dead.

Ok, on to the learning. As you may have heard, I changed jobs recently. I now work at a 500-person insurance company with a 70-person IT staff. By far the smallest company I’ve ever worked for (following MCI, HP, IBM, The Home Depot). In this new job, I have to wear many hats, which should be no surprise to those of you who work in SMB! I think it’s great, actually, because I’m exercising my brain in ways it hasn’t been in ages. For example, I don’t know crap about Active Directory, at least relative to other aspects of Windows considering the amount of time that I’ve called myself a Windows admin. So when it came time for me to do some routine AD cleanup, I certainly had to learn a few things—which is a good thing to me.

The task ahead of me was that there were tons of stale AD computer accounts in our domain. (See, I call it a domain, that’s how old my AD knowledge is.) Normally, this doesn’t hurt anything, but in our case, we have an anti-virus app which allocates licenses automatically based on the computer objects! So we were wasting licenses on computers which didn’t exist, and that needed cleaning up.

Of course, my first thought was to do it with PowerShell. I already had the venerable Quest AD snap-in loaded, so I just ran a quick one-liner to make my list of potential accounts. This was the easy part.

$c = Get-QADComputer -InactiveFor 90

After doing some sanity ping checks to make sure this list was good, I went to delete the first one:

PS> $c[0] | Remove-QADObject

Warning!
Are you sure you want to delete this object: CN=foobar,DC=domain,DC=com?
[Y] Yes  [A] Yes to All  [N] No  [L] No to All  [S] Suspend  [?] Help (default is "Y"):
Remove-QADObject : The directory service can perform the requested operation only on a leaf object.
At line:1 char:25
+ $c[0] | Remove-QADObject <<<<
    + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [Remove-QADObject], DirectoryServicesCOMException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryServicesCOMException,Quest.ActiveRoles.ArsPowerShell
   eObjectCmdlet

Oops, that didn’t work! Well, I did some research and found an old newsgroup post that says that computer objects are really containers and that in order to delete them, you have to use the DeleteTree switch. So, I tried that:

PS> $c[0] | Remove-QADObject –DeleteTree

Warning!
Are you sure you want to delete this object and its children: CN=foobar,DC=domain,DC=com?
[Y] Yes  [A] Yes to All  [N] No  [L] No to All  [S] Suspend  [?] Help (default is "Y"):
Remove-QADObject : Access is denied. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED))
At line:1 char:25
+ $c[0] | Remove-QADObject <<<<  -DeleteTree
    + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [Remove-QADObject], UnauthorizedAccessException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.UnauthorizedAccessException,Quest.ActiveRoles.ArsPowerShellSnapIn.Cmdlets.RemoveO
   bjectCmdlet

Access denied! So, I tried an elevated shell. No help. Back to Google. I searched for “access denied remove-qadobject deletetree” and the third hit looked interesting. It was a section on working with computer objects in the book Active Directory Cookbook (awesome that google books does that). From reading this, I realized that somewhere in the permissions hierarchy, these computer objects had accidental deletion prevention enabled! Luckily, they had some PowerShell code that I quickly adapted to my situation:

PS> $c | Add-QADPermission -Account 'EVERYONE' -Rights 'Delete,DeleteTree' -ApplyTo 'ThisObjectOnly'

Ctrl   Account                                  Rights                              Source           AppliesTo
----   -------                                  ------                              ------           ---------
       Everyone                                 Special                             Not inherited    This object only
       Everyone                                 Special                             Not inherited    This object only
       Everyone                                 Special                             Not inherited    This object only

Plus 507 more lines just like that. And then, I tried again and…

PS> $c = Get-QADComputer -InactiveFor 90
PS> $c
PS> 

Success! I hope that this post that illustrates my learning process helps someone else who comes across the same situation.

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!