Workflow-PowerCLI

5 Comments

    Pavlik

    I just found this very interesting article.
    I’m working on a way to register a large number of VM 300 1000 on the Disaster recovery vCenter and my tought goes to start-job PowerCli command.
    But may be a workflow would be a better solution !?
    I see that in the workflow construct you pass the session id to the parallelized process. Is it possible to do the same for the start-job or is mandatory that a new session to the vCenter has to be established ?
    The number of sessions can impact the vCenter or the client performances ? I mean: Can I execute 300 parallel sessions to register 300 VM or (the way I think to proceed)is better to start a new job each 50 ones ?

    Thanks

    Pavlik

      LucD

      Hi,
      The PowerShell Workflow feature isn’t really being promoted by MSFT anymore I’m afraid.

      To introduce parallelism, the Start-Job option is currently the better option.
      And yes, you can use the same concept of passing the SessionId.
      See my Running a background job dive.

        Pavlik

        Thanks LucD,

        your answers come always really fast and always very usefull.

        Have a nice day.

        Pavlik

          Pavlik

          I’m trying to use start-job but I receive these errors:

          The Windows PowerShell snap-in ‘VMware.VimAutomation.Core’ is not installed on this computer.
          + CategoryInfo : InvalidArgument: (VMware.VimAutomation.Core:String) [Add-PSSnapin], PSArgumentException
          + FullyQualifiedErrorId : AddPSSnapInRead,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.AddPSSnapinCommand
          + PSComputerName : localhost

          The term ‘connect-viserver’ is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or
          + CategoryInfo : ObjectNotFound: (connect-viserver:String) [], CommandNotFoundException
          + FullyQualifiedErrorId : CommandNotFoundException
          + PSComputerName : localhost

          The term ‘Get-VMHostStorage’ is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, o
          + CategoryInfo : ObjectNotFound: (Get-VMHostStorage:String) [], CommandNotFoundException
          + FullyQualifiedErrorId : CommandNotFoundException
          + PSComputerName : localhost

          But I’m inside the PowerCLI and the connect-viserver cmdlet works fine in the main session. May be I have to specify the location where the pssnapin are installed ?

          This is the code:

          do {

          start-job -ScriptBlock {
          param($vc,$c,$v)
          Add-PSSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core
          connect-viserver $vCenter -session $c
          $v | Get-VMHostStorage -Refresh
          } -RunAs32 -ArgumentList $vCenter,$global:DefaultVIServer.SessionSecret,$ListaVM[$cont..($cont + $delta – 1)]

          I tried to omit the add-pssnapin line, to substitute it with the import-module command, executing it from a PowerCLI window and from a Powershell windows ( here I had to import-module for PowerCLI cmdlet working, but I have always the same error ( omitting the add-pssnapin I start with the connect-viserver error ).

          Do you have an svice for me ?

          Thanks

          Pavlik

            LucD

            Hi,
            Depending on which PowerSHell version you use, it should find the modules automatically.
            Check what folders are listed when you do

            $env:PSModulePath.Split(';')

            Is the folder where the PowerCLI modules are installed in that list?

            When you are using a recent PowerCLI version (6.5.1 or higher, preferably 12.0), there are no PSSnapin anymore.

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