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

Workflows


As in previous chapters, workflows are a process or procedure of multiple "things" in a specific order. A common misconception is that workflows are not just a script; they can and should be drawn out using a pen and paper, process flow software, or a whiteboard. It is something software developers have been doing for years and has been touched on throughout all the scripts shown in the previous chapters.

The visualization of a workflow starts at a very high level and gets deeper and deeper when more areas are fleshed out. This starts with what the user sees, leads through the expectations and outcomes, and finally concludes with the finished product; this is what a workflow will entail.

The beginning of a workflow

Talk to any process manager, software developer, or even a project manager and they understand this with their methodologies and their normal day-to-day jobs. Project managers have their Gantt charts that show tasks and time frames. Developers have their own tools that...