On Carter’s vSPhere PowerCLI Blog site we learned, just before VMworld, about Project Onyx. The program that will come out of this project will allow users to generate PowerShell code from actions done in the vSphere Client. But while we wait till the program comes in GA, is there an alternative for finding out what API call(s) an action in the vSphere Client generates ? In fact there is. And it’s free ! Read more…
With VMware vCenter you get a feature-rich free product called VMware vCenter Converter. One of the things you can do with the Convertor product is to read disk images created by VMware Consolidated Backup and import them in a vCenter. In the current release the Convertor doesn’t come with any support for the PowerCLI automation tools but that doesn’t mean we can’t use the Convertor from our PowerShell scripts. Read more…
When you attend a conference like VMworld you get lots of goodies pushed your way. With some of these you only realise when you are back home what you were given. The vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide is a good example of such a little gem that came my way during the last VMworld. Read more…
As a follow-up to my My PS toolbelt entry this article gives an overview of my current PowerShell/PowerCLI library. The library is a collection of actual books and Internet links that I reference quite regularly. The order in which books and links are listed does not indicate any preference from my side.
Update August 6th 2011: updated the list of books
Carter Shanklin and his development team are doing a wonderful job with PowerCLI. The number of available cmdlets keeps growing with each new build they publish.
But sometimes one of the PowerCLI cmdlets is missing a parameter you would like to use or has a parameter you don’t want to use in your environment. With the advent of PowerShell v2 you can now customise the PowerCLI cmdlets to your liking with the help of proxy cmdlets.
A question I get quite regularly is what tools and utilities do I use for developing PowerShell and PowerCLI scripts. The following list should shed a bit of light. A warning, this is my personal selection of tools and utilities and it is not my intention to convince anyone to switch to any of the tools mentioned. Read more…
When you are using NIC Teaming you have a number of possible options to define the failover criteria. The failover criteria define when a NIC Team will switch from an active to a standby NIC. When you examine the HostNicFailureCriteria object in the API Reference Guide, you will notice that there are more criteria available than those that are accessible through the vSphere Client. Read more…
With the cluster profile XML file created in TA2650 scripts – Part 1 – Profiling your vSphere environment you can verify the configuration of the nodes against a reference node.
The XML file that can be created with the script from TA2650 scripts – Part 1 – Profiling your vSphere environment can also be used to assist you when you need to use the SDK. Read more…
During VMworld 2009 in San Francisco, Hal Rottenberg and myself presented a session called “TA2650 – Take PowerCLI to the Next Level”. During the session we promised to publish the scripts we showed (and those we did not show due to lack of time).
This is part 1 of these scripts. This script shows and explains how I used PowerShell to export the configuration of my vSphere environment, or part of it, to an XML file. Read more…
