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PowerCLI Cookbook

By : Philip Brandon Sellers
Book Image

PowerCLI Cookbook

By: Philip Brandon Sellers

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PowerCLI Cookbook
Philip Brandon Sellers
Mar, 2015 | 274 pages
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Table of Contents (19 chapters)
PowerCLI Cookbook
PowerCLI Cookbook
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Configuring the Basic Settings of an ESXi Host with PowerCLI
Configuring the Basic Settings of an ESXi Host with PowerCLI
Introduction
Connecting to an ESXi host or a vCenter instance
Getting the VMware host object
Joining an ESXi host into Active Directory
Enabling services and setting security profiles
Setting network configuration
Creating datastores on an ESXi host
Configuring syslog settings on an ESXi host
Joining an ESXi host to vCenter
Creating a configuration script to set all properties uniformly
2
Configuring vCenter and Computing Clusters
Configuring vCenter and Computing Clusters
Introduction
Creating a virtual datacenter in vCenter
Creating a cluster and adding ESXi hosts
Setting cluster advanced features, including HA, DRS, and EVC
Setting up resource pools
Setting up folders to organize objects in vCenter
Setting permissions on vCenter objects
3
Managing Virtual Machines
Managing Virtual Machines
Introduction
Deploying the first virtual machine
Cloning a virtual machine to a template
Deploying new virtual machines from a template
Importing a virtual appliance from OVA
Performing a hot add of virtual hardware to an existing virtual machine
Enabling and disabling Fault Tolerance on a virtual machine
Increasing the disk space in a virtual machine
Upgrading the virtual hardware version of a virtual machine
Locating and reloading inaccessible or invalid virtual machines
Setting VMware Tool settings from PowerCLI
Creating basic reports of VM properties using VMware Tools and PowerCLI
4
Working with Datastores and Datastore Clusters
Working with Datastores and Datastore Clusters
Introduction
Performing Storage vMotion
Finding Raw Disk Mappings in your environment
Locating thin or thick provisioned disks
Converting thin to thick disks with Storage vMotion
Creating and managing datastore clusters
Setting Storage DRS automation levels for individual virtual machines
Setting Storage DRS automation levels for individual VMs using PowerCLI 6
5
Creating and Managing Snapshots
Creating and Managing Snapshots
Introduction
Creating a snapshot
Getting a list of snapshots in the environment
Manipulating the list of snapshots to get better information
Scoping and filtering a list of snapshots
Removing targeted snapshots
Find lost or unknown snapshots
Creating a function to automatically remediate snapshots
Scheduling automatic snapshot remediation
Creating a snapshot management module
6
Managing Resource Pools, Reservations, and Limits for Virtual Machines
Managing Resource Pools, Reservations, and Limits for Virtual Machines
Introduction
Setting reservations and limits for resource pools
Balancing share allocations on resource pools
Creating a custom attribute with a number of shares per VM on each resource pool
Automating share allocation balancing
Reporting shares, reservations, and limits of resource pools and virtual machines
7
Creating Custom Reports and Notifications for vSphere
Creating Custom Reports and Notifications for vSphere
Introduction
Getting alerts from a vSphere environment
Basics of formatting output from PowerShell objects
Sending output to CSV and HTML
Reporting VM objects created during a predefined time period from VI Events object
Setting custom properties to add useful context to your virtual machines
Using PowerShell native capabilities to schedule scripts
8
Performing ESXCLI and in-guest Commands from PowerCLI
Performing ESXCLI and in-guest Commands from PowerCLI
Introduction
Retrieving the ESXCLI object in PowerCLI
Using the ESXCLI vm namespace to kill a misbehaving VM
Performing ESXi ping with an ESXCLI object
Configuring custom storage and path selection policies
Configuring coredump settings for an ESXi host from PowerCLI
Executing native commands inside the guest operating system from PowerCLI
9
Managing DRS and Affinity Groups using PowerCLI
Managing DRS and Affinity Groups using PowerCLI
Introduction
Applying recommendations for partially automated DRS clusters
Setting a cluster into maintenance mode with PowerCLI
Using native DRS rule cmdlets to manage KeepTogether and Separate rules
Learning the MoRef way of identifying objects
Creating a DRS group for virtual machines
Listing the members of a DRS group
Updating the members of a VM DRS group
Creating a custom function to update members of a DRS group
Creating rules to maintain memberships of DRS groups using a custom function
Using Compare-Object to audit group memberships for differences
10
Working with vCloud Director from PowerCLI
Working with vCloud Director from PowerCLI
Introduction
Connecting to a vCloud environment
Creating and managing organizations in vCloud
Creating a new user in an organization using Views
Creating an organization's virtual datacenter in vCloud Director
Importing a vApp template into vCloud
Configuring networking in a vCloud vApp
Reassigning vApp VM network settings with PowerCLI
Starting and stopping vApps and individual VMs in a vCloud
Setting up and Configuring vCloud Director
Setting up and Configuring vCloud Director
The hosted vCloud environment
Deploying the vCloud Director environment from AutoLab
Build your own vCloud Director implementation on your vSphere lab environment
Additional resources
Index
Index

Connecting to an ESXi host or a vCenter instance

To begin working with PowerCLI, you must first have PowerShell installed and available on the system on which you will run PowerCLI. PowerShell is a part of the Windows Management Framework and it ships with Windows client and server versions. PowerCLI extends PowerShell with commands to administer VMware environments. With PowerShell installed, you will need to obtain PowerCLI from http://www.vmware.com. The specific link is listed in the See also section of this recipe.

Once you have installed PowerCLI, you will need to build an ESXi host for this recipe. All that is required is a fresh ESXi installation from the ISO or DVD image distributed by VMware. Once installed, set an IP address on an accessible network using the console screens of the new ESXi host. The network address should be accessible from your PowerCLI workstation.

With the assumption that your ESXi host is built, the first step to administer VMware environments in PowerCLI is to connect to the ESXi host or to a vCenter server. In this chapter, you will focus on how to configure a single ESXi host. In the next chapter, you will focus on how to configure a vCenter Server and a vSphere cluster of ESXi hosts.

Getting ready

To begin, you only need to launch PowerCLI from its shortcut on the desktop or from the Start Menu. If you already had PowerCLI previously installed, you will want to check the version number to ensure that the cmdlet references throughout the book are available to you. Each version of PowerCLI builds additional native cmdlets and functionalities. To check the version you are running, open a PowerCLI prompt and run Get-PowerCLIVersion.

The recipes in this book are built and tested using VMware PowerCLI 5.5 Release 1 and have also been tested with VMware PowerCLI 5.8 Release 1, which accompanies vCloud Suite 5.8. The recipes also work on vSphere and PowerCLI 6.0 with any differences noted.

How to do it...

  1. At the PowerCLI prompt, you will execute the Connect-VIServer cmdlet as follows:

    Connect-viserver <hostname or IP>

  2. When executed, the code will attempt to perform a single sign-on into the ESXi host, but unless your username is root and you set the same password locally and on ESX, single sign-in will fail. You will be prompted with a normal Windows login window, which is displayed as follows, and you should log in with the root username and the password you specified during your ESXi installation:

  3. Once you successfully log in to the ESXi host, a confirmation message will be displayed with the name or IP address of the ESXi host you connected to, the port, and the user you've connected to, as shown in the following example:

    Name                           Port  User
----                           ----  ----
192.168.0.241                  443   root

  4. At this point, the PowerCLI session is connected to a host and ready to execute work.

How it works…

The Connect-VIServer cmdlet is the simplest kind of cmdlet in PowerCLI. This cmdlet initiates a connection to the vCenter or ESXi web services to allow additional commands to be passed to the server and be executed.

The Connect-VIServer cmdlet requires only the name of the host to which you want to connect. There are additional parameters that you might pass to the cmdlet, such as the protocol (HTTP or HTTPS), the username, and the password. If you prefer not to keep your password in plain text, you can also pass a PSCredentials object. The PSCredentials object contains login data to authenticate. For more information about the PSCredentials objects, type get-help about_server_authentication.

Once you execute the cmdlet, a warning will be displayed in yellow, similar to the following one:

The warning is displayed because the certificate installed on the ESXi host is self-signed and untrusted by the computer you are connecting from. Changing an SSL certificate on ESXi hosts will be covered later in the book, but the warning can be ignored this time. The cmdlet will continue to execute even though the warning is displayed.

You can also prevent the invalid certificate errors by running the following PowerCLI cmdlet that changes the action when an invalid certificate is encountered:

Set-PowerCLIConfiguration -InvalidCertificateAction Ignore -Scope Session -Confirm:$false

There's more…

If you choose to join the ESXi host to Active Directory, your PowerCLI session performs a single sign-in. PowerCLI uses the credentials of your current Windows session to log in against the ESXi host or vCenter server if your account has access to the server. If your account does not have access to the server that it is attempting to connect to, a login box will be presented like our example, shown in the preceding screenshot, in this recipe.

See also

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