Chapter 1 , Introduction to PowerCLI, gets you started using PowerCLI. First, you will see how to download and install PowerCLI. Then, you will learn to connect to and disconnect from the vCenter and ESXi servers and retrieve a list of all of your hosts and virtual machines.

Chapter 2 , Learning Basic PowerCLI Concepts, introduces the Get-Help, Get-Command, and Get-Member cmdlets. It explains the difference between PowerShell Providers and PSdrives. You will see how you can use the raw vSphere API objects from PowerCLI and how to use the New-VIProperty cmdlet to extend a PowerCLI object.

Chapter 3 , Working with Objects in PowerShell, concentrates on objects, properties, and methods. This chapter shows how you can use the pipeline to use the output of one command as the input of another command. You will learn how to use the PowerShell object cmdlets and how to create PowerShell objects.

Chapter 4 , Managing vSphere Hosts with PowerCLI, covers the management of the vSphere ESXi servers. You will see how to add hosts to the vCenter server and how to remove them. You will work with host profiles, host services, Image Builder, and Auto Deploy, as well as with the esxcli command and the vSphere CLI commands from PowerCLI.

Chapter 5 , Managing Virtual Machines with PowerCLI, examines the lifecycle of virtual machines-from creating to removing them. Creating templates, updating VMware Tools and upgrading virtual hardware, running commands in the guest OS, and configuring fault tolerance are some of the topics discussed in this chapter.

Chapter 6 , Managing Virtual Networks with PowerCLI, walks you through vSphere Standard Switches and vSphere Distributed Switches, port groups, and network adapters. It shows you how to configure host networking and how to configure the network of a virtual machine.

Chapter 7 , Managing Storage, explores creating and removing datastores and datastore clusters, working with Raw Device Mapping, configuring software iSCSI initiators, Storage I/O Control, and Storage DRS.

Chapter 8 , Managing High Availability and Clustering, covers HA and DRS clusters, DRS rules and DRS groups, resource pools, and Distributed Power Management.

Chapter 9 , Managing vCenter Server, shows you how to work with privileges, work with roles and permissions, manage licenses, configure alarm definitions, alarm action triggers, and retrieve events.

Chapter 10 , Patching ESXi Hosts and Upgrading Virtual Machines, focusses on using VMware vSphere Update Manager to download patches, creating baselines and baseline groups, testing virtual machines and hosts for compliance, staging patches, and remediating inventory objects.

Chapter 11 , Managing VMware vCloud Director and vCloud Air, covers connecting to vCloud servers, retrieving organizations, virtual datacenters, organization networks, and users, using vCloud virtual machines and appliances, and using snapshots.

Chapter 12 , Using Site Recovery Manager, explores the Meadowcroft.SRM module to manage SRM protection groups, protecting virtual machines and running recovery plans to migrate or fail-over virtual machines from the protected site to the recovery site.

Chapter 13 , Using vRealize Operations Manager, shows you to use alerts, retrieve recommendations, statistical data, solutions, and traversalSpecs, manage local user accounts and user roles and create and retrieve reports.

Chapter 14 , Using REST API to Manage NSX and vRealize Automation, walks you through REST APIs with examples from VMware NSX and vRealize Automation using basic authentication and bearer tokens, XML, and JSON.

Chapter 15 , Reporting with PowerCLI, concentrates on retrieving log files and log bundles, performance reporting, exporting reports to CSV files, generating HTML reports, sending reports by e-mail, and reporting the health of your vSphere environment with the vCheck script.

To run the example PowerCLI scripts given in this book, you need the following software:

If you don't have specific software installed, you can use the VMware Hands-on Labs at https://labs.hol.vmware.com/ to test the scripts.

The scripts in this book are tested using VMware PowerCLI 6.5 Release 1, VMware vCenter Server 6.5, and VMware ESXi 6.5. Microsoft PowerShell and VMware PowerCLI are free. You can download a free 60-day evaluation of VMware vCenter Server and VMware ESXi from the VMware website. It is not possible to modify the settings on the free VMware vSphere Hypervisor using PowerCLI.

This book is written for VMware vSphere administrators who want to automate their vSphere environment using PowerCLI. It is assumed that you have at least a basic knowledge of VMware vSphere. If you are not a vSphere administrator, but you are interested in learning more about PowerCLI, then this book will also give you some basic knowledge of vSphere.

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "The script uses the Get-Cluster cmdlet to retrieve all the clusters."

A block of code is set as follows:

$HostName = '192.168.0.133' 
$iSCSITarget = '192.168.0.157' 
$VirtualSwitchName = 'vSwitch2' 
$NicName = 'vmnic3' 
$PortGroupName = 'iSCSI Port group 1' 
$ChapType = 'Preferred' 
$ChapUser = 'Cluster01User' 
$ChapPassword = ' Cluster01Pwd' 
$DatastoreName = 'Cluster01_iSCSI01' 

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

PowerCLI C:\> New-VM -Name VM1 -ResourcePool (Get-Cluster
  -Name Cluster01) 

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "If your cluster is incorrectly configured, the vSphere Web Client will show you the issues in the  Summary  tab."

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