Book Image

PowerCLI Essentials

By : Chris Halverson
Book Image

PowerCLI Essentials

By: Chris Halverson

Overview of this book

Have you ever wished you could automatically get a report with all the relevant information about your VMware environments in exactly the format you want? Or that you could automate a crucial task that needs to be performed on a regular basis? Powerful Command Line Interface (PowerCLI) scripts do all these things and much more for VMware environments. PowerCLI is a command-line interface tool used to automate VMware vSphere environments. It is used to handle complicated administration tasks through use of various cmdlets and scripts, which are designed to handle certain aspects of VSphere servers and to help you manage them. This book will show you the intricacies of PowerCLI through real-life examples so that you can discover the art of PowerCLI scripting. At the start, you will be taught to download and install PowerCLI and will learn about the different versions of it. Moving further, you will be introduced to the GUI of PowerCLI and will find out how to develop single line scripts to duplicate running tasks, produce simple reports, and simplify administration. Next, you will learn about the methods available to get information remotely. Towards the end, you will be taught to set up orchestrator and build workflows in PowerShell with update manager and SRM scripts.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
PowerCLI Essentials
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Orchestration of Storage (VSAN)


Virtual Storage Area Network (VSAN) is a construct of locally attached disks assembled into a fully connected array of storage. VSAN is included into the kernel of later versions of vSphere (5.5 and newer) and allows the locally attached storage to be pooled and presented as a single datastore with the hosts connected to it.

VSAN requires a cache tier as seen in the graphic as an SSD and a capacity tier as displayed as a HDD. This delivers fantastic performance and can be run on essentially commodity storage. This provides a huge cost benefit and gives the company a means to build a highly scalable solution for a remote office/branch office or running an entire infrastructure. It also simplifies the administration of the storage for the typical Virtual Infrastructure and gives an almost set-it-and-forget-it type of interface.

Setting up a VSAN is a fairly simple process as it has an attached disk to the host. Examining the Hardware Compatibility List (HCL)...