Mastering PowerCLI

Mastering PowerCLI

By : Sajal Debnath

Buy this Book

Mastering PowerCLI

By: Sajal Debnath

Buy this Book

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.

Mastering PowerCLI

Credits

Foreword

About the Author

Acknowledgment

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

Free Chapter

PowerShell and PowerCLI Refresher

The essence of PowerShell and PowerCLI

Implementing programming constructs in PowerShell

Automation through PowerShell scripts

Running and scheduling scripts

Using version control with GitHub

Testing your scripts using Pester

Connecting to a vCenter and other VMware environments using PowerCLI cmdlets

Summary

Reusable Advanced Functions and Scripts

Specifying function attributes

Specifying parameter attributes

Using parameter validation attributes

Dynamic parameters

Switch parameters

PowerShell help files

Creating comment-based help

Error handling in PowerShell

Summary

Deploying vSphere Hosts

Image Builder with PowerCLI

Using host profiles

Configuring Auto Deploy for ESXi hosts

Adding hosts to a vCenter server

Summary

Managing Networks

Managing vSphere standard switches

Managing networking for ESXi

Managing vSphere distributed switches

Managing port groups

Creating private VLANs

Configuring vSphere network I/O control

Configuring Netflow

Working with ports

Summary

Managing Storage

Managing datastores

Configuring Fibre Channel storage

Configuring iSCSI storage

Configuring NFS storage

Configuring virtual SAN

Using datastore clusters

Using Raw Device Mapping

Managing storage using storage policy-based management

Applying VMFS resignaturing

Configuring vFLASH using PowerCLI Extensions

Summary

Managing Clusters and Other Constructs

Configuring vCenter logical constructs

Configuring the Enhanced vMotion Compatibility mode

Configuring High Availability

Using Dynamic Resource Scheduling

Using the DRS affinity and anti-affinity rules

Managing resource pools

Managing alarms

Summary

Managing Virtual Machines

Creating virtual machines

Modifying virtual machines

Managing templates

Managing OS customization specifications

Managing the guest OS

Managing vApps

Summary

Managing vSphere Security, SRM, vCloud Air, and vROps

The vSphere Security Hardening Guide

Managing vSphere Update Manager

Configuring a firewall and services in an ESXi host

Managing host profiles

Managing vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Managing vCloud Air

Managing vRealize Operations Manager

Summary

Managing the vSphere API

Using the Get-View cmdlet to return .NET View objects

Using the ExtensionData property to return .NET View objects

Using the vSphere API

Creating a vSphere scheduled task

Configuring Distributed Power Management

Configuring Fault Tolerance

Managing Content Libraries

Managing SRM advanced configurations

Generating PowerCLI code using Onyx

PowerActions for vSphere Web Client

Summary

Using REST APIs

Introducing REST APIs

Introducing JSON

The Invoke-RestMethod cmdlet

vRealize Automation REST APIs

Authenticating and getting a vRA token

Managing tenants

Managing machines

Managing approvals

Managing provisioned resources

Managing network profiles

Summary

Creating Windows GUI

Different ways to create a Windows GUI

Building a GUI using Windows Forms

Using SAPIEN PowerShell Studio

Building GUI using WPF

Summary

Best Practices and Sample Scripts

Best practices

Security Hardening Script

Capacity check report

Using a proper editor

Summary

Index

Customer Reviews

5 star

4 star

3 star

2 star

1 star

Using parameter validation attributes

Attributes falling under this category define the attributes that we can use to validate the value of a parameter/variable itself. The following is a list of the most commonly used parameters:

AllowNull / AllowEmptyString: This attribute allows a mandatory parameter to accept a NULL value or empty string. Check the following example. When this attribute is not set, the function does not allow us to give an empty string as an input to the $VCName parameter, as it is a mandatory input. When we comment out the AllowEmptyString parameter, it throws an error:
```
Function Get-VC{
    [cmdletbinding()]

    Param(
    [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]
#    [AllowEmptyString()]
    [String]$VCName
    )
    Write-Host "vCenter Name: $VCName"
}
```
Notice that, when this attribute is set, the function allows us to give an empty string as the input to the $VCName parameter:
ValidateCount: This attribute specifies the minimum and maximum number of values that a parameter accepts...

Mastering PowerCLI

By : Sajal Debnath

Mastering PowerCLI

By: Sajal Debnath

Overview of this book

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Mastering PowerCLI

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