PowerCLI - 13

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 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.

More PowerShell Goodness: The SAPIEN Blog includes a complete section on Windows PowerShell news and tips, and the SAPIEN Knowledge Base has a growing list of PowerShell-related articles. You may also enjoy www.ScriptingAnswers.com, which offers discussions, training, and free resources for administrative scripting - including Windows PowerShell.

John Troyer has written a great post on the VMTN Blog about the Windows VI Toolkit based on PowerShell. Besides a link to my articles he summed up everyone who is experimenting with this toolkit.

Well, once Carter spilled the beans, everybody is now waiting with bated breath for VMware to release the beta of our new curiously-named VI Toolkit (for Windows). The toolkit is powered by Windows PowerShell, a shell/scripting technology that Microsoft appears to have gotten very right indeed. The VI SDK, while extremely powerful, is not for the faint of heart. This toolkit takes that power and wraps it up in a very simple syntax which creates a compelling tool for VI admins.

In total there are 102 PowerShell cmdlets in the Beta that cover all aspects of Virtual Infrastructure management. The most important thing is that you can now easily write scripts, tailor made to your problems, that save you time and frustration, whether that means saving you 10 clicks or 100. Once you've had a chance to kick the proverbial tires, don't forget to visit the Community Page to give your feedback or to talk with other Beta testers. Last but not least, congratulations to the VI Toolkit (for Windows) team for all your hard work on this release!

Carter Shanklin added a blog entry to the VI PowerShell Blog and officially announced the beta to be released this month. Besides that the PowerShell team is very surprised by all the enthusiasm for the PowerShell lab at the Vmworld in Cannes.  You can also download the lab manual.

Hope you enjoyed the PowerShell lab at VMworld Europe.

We here on the VI Toolkit (for Windows) team know just how exciting PowerShell is, but sometimes we're surprised to learn just how many people agree. Our PowerShell lab at VMworld Europe was attended by over 250 students. What surprised me most though, was that we noticed at least 3 different people working on the PowerShell lab for over 3 hours each. Considering all the great sessions and other labs offered at VMworld Europe, this is really a testament to how important PowerShell is going to be for system management in the coming years.

I have written a few articles about VMware and the PowerShell command let’s and at the VMworld 2008 EUROPE in Cannes you can explore the  PowerShell interfaces for VMware Infrastructure in the Automating VMware with PowerShell: Hands-On Lab. But the downside of PowerShell is that there isn’t a nice user interface. Wouldn’t it be great to use the PowerShell .net library’s and connect to your Virtual Centre server with Visual Basic Express 2008. It isn’t documented but I have found a way to connect to VC using the following code :

Public Class Form1

Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click

        Dim Config As New VMware.VimAutomation.Client20.VimClient

        Config.ConnectivityService.Login("https", "VC.NTPRO.LOCAL", "443", "Admin", "vmware")

        MsgBox(Config.ConnectivityService.IsConnected)

        MsgBox(Config.ConnectivityService.GetApiInfo.ApiVersion)

    End Sub

End Class

If everything goes well you will receive two message boxes, the first one will tell you “True�? so you’re connected and the second one will display “2.5�?, this is the version of the API. The remainder of the code is up to you, please let me know if you can stop and start a VM. The beta version of the VI3 Windows Toolkit will be launched in March.

Rajeev over at Firstsource has written a PowerShell (VI-Toolkit) script that creates multiple virtual machines based on a template.

$vc = Get-VIServer -Server <server> -User <username> -Password <passwd> $esx = Get-VMHost -Server $vc -Name <host> $temp = Get-Template -Server $vc | where {$_.name -like "winxp"} $i = 0 $array = "test1","test2"
while ($i -le 1)
{
$vm = New-VM -Name $array[$i] -Template $temp -Host $esx $i++ }

This script creates two virtual machines, the name of the new virtual machine is based on the contents of the array e.g. test1 and test2.

Bas Vinken over at the Kadaster (the Dutch Land Registry Office) has written a PowerShell script with great potential. It first detects and then removes the snapshots from all your virtual machines. This script uses the PowerShell snap-in from the VI-Toolkit. Great work Bas.

Get-VIServer "VCSERVER" -User bas -Password vinken

$AllVirtualMachines = Get-VM

foreach ($VirtualMachine in $AllVirtualMachines)

{$AllSnapshots=Get-Snapshot -VM $VirtualMachine

foreach ($Snapshot in $AllSnapshots)

 {If ($Snapshot.ID -like "VirtualMachineSnapshot-*")

  {Write-Host $VirtualMachine.Name, $Snapshot.Name, $Snapshot.Description

   Remove-Snapshot -snapshot $Snapshot –Confirm Write-Host  } } }

I wrote a little PowerShell script that lists all the virtual hard disk files (and their paths) who are in snapshot mode. It’s nothing fancy really, just gives a little insight in how to retrieve objects.

Get-VIServer "VCSERVER" -User eric -Password sloof 
$Datacenter = Get-Datacenter 
$AllVirtualMachines = Get-VM -Location $Datacenter 
$AllSnapshots = Get-Snapshot $AllVirtualMachines
Get-HardDisk -Snapshot $AllSnapshots | findstr "Filename"

I wrote a PowerShell script that takes a few samples of your VM CPU MHZ average. The script uses the VMware PowerShell snap-in, the output is piped to the Out-String cmdlet. The Out-String cmdlet converts the objects that Windows PowerShell manages into an array of strings. By default, Out-String accumulates the strings and returns them as a single string, but you can use the stream parameter to direct Out-String to return one string at a time. This cmdlet lets you search and manipulate string output as you would in traditional shells when object manipulation is less convenient.

This evening I had the chance to play some more with the PowerGadgets tool. I want to use VMware PowerShell Snap-in to collect statistics about my VM and display the data in a nice chart. The following three lines produce the chart in the image. Isn’t it great ;-). Btw if you have problems with connecting to your Virtual Center server and you are receiving the following error message “Get-VIServer : Unexpected Error. ID Core_GetViServer_NewClient_Nullclient At Line:1 char:13�? you should check your locales setting and make sure you put it on English (credits to Bas).

PowerGadgets is a revolutionary new data visualization product that utilizes Windows PowerShell, Microsoft’s new scripting shell, to allow the creation of Gadgets in Windows. PowerGadgets requires no complex development environments, servers or browsers to run real-time Gadget components such as charts, gauges and maps on your desktop or in the Windows Sidebar. With just two lines of code you can present the outcome of your VMware PowerShell scripts into a PowerGadget. The image shows all my virtual machines presented in a chart by using the following code.

$vc = Get-VIServer -Server "VCServer" -User Eric -Password Sloof
Get-VM |out-chart -View3D_Enabled true

Out-chart: PowerGadgets provides a powerful charting engine providing over 60 chart types and a wealth of aesthetical and functional features. A chart plots data in the form of series and points with each series containing one or more points. Out-gauge: In addition to charts, PowerGadgets provides an out-gauge cmdlet to display single variable graphical objects. Single variable analysis is very powerful when combined with PowerGadgets’ flexible real-time capabilities.