Book Image

Mastering PowerCLI

By : Sajal Debnath
Book Image

Mastering PowerCLI

By: Sajal Debnath

Overview of this book

Have you ever wished that every morning you could automatically get a report with all the relevant information about your datacenter in exactly the same format you want? Or whether you could automate that boring, exhausting task? What if some crucial task needs to be performed on a regular basis without any error? PowerCLI scripts do all that and much more for VMware environments. It is built on top of the popular Windows PowerShell, with which you can automate server tasks and reduce manual input, allowing you to focus on more important tasks. This book will help you to achieve your goals by starting with a short refresher on PowerShell and PowerCLI and then covering the nuances of advanced functions and reusable scripts. Next you will learn how to build a vSphere-powered virtualized datacenter using PowerCLI while managing different aspects of the environment including automated installation, network, and storage. You will then manage different logical constructs of vSphere environment and different aspects of a virtual machine. Later, you will implement the best practices for a security implementation in vSphere Environment through PowerCLI before discovering how to manage other VMware environments such as SRM, vCloud Director and vCloud Air through PowerCLI. You will also learn to manage vSphere environments using advanced properties by accessing vSphere API and REST APIs through PowerCLI. Finally, you will build a Windows GUI application using PowerShell followed by a couple of sample scripts for reporting and managing vSphere environments with detailed explanations of the scripts. By the end of the book, you will have the required in-depth knowledge to master the art of PowerCLI scripting.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Mastering PowerCLI
Credits
Foreword
About the Author
Acknowledgment
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Using a proper editor


The last topic of this chapter is about an editor. An editor is the proper tool for any script writer. Depending on the editor that you use, your actual scripting time may lessen. So I have decided to discuss my favorite editors here.

Sublime Text

In Mac, I use Sublime Text as my PowerShell editor. It is probably one of the most useful editors in a Mac environment. It does what it is supposed to do: work as an editor. By default, it does not support PowerShell formatting but you can add the PowerShell support by using the required packaging. Follow the instructions provided in these links and you are good to go.

First, follow the steps in this link to install the Package Control: https://packagecontrol.io/installation.

Then, install the package for PowerShell using the information provided at https://github.com/SublimeText/PowerShell.

This is what the editor looks like once the PowerShell support is added to it:

In my environment, I use Sublime Text 3. One of the best blogs...