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PowerCLI Cookbook

PowerCLI Cookbook

By : Philip Brandon Sellers
4.8 (4)
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PowerCLI Cookbook

PowerCLI Cookbook

4.8 (4)
By: Philip Brandon Sellers

Overview of this book

If you are a virtualization professional who wants to unleash the power of automation and combat the complexity of sprawling virtual environments, this book is ideal for you. This book will enhance your skills of administering VMware vSphere and vCloud Director with PowerCLI.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
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Preface
Preface
What this book covers
What you need for this book
Who this book is for
Conventions
Reader feedback
Customer support
Free Chapter
1
1. Configuring the Basic Settings of an ESXi Host with PowerCLI
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1. 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
2. Configuring vCenter and Computing Clusters
2. 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
3. Managing Virtual Machines
3. 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
4. Working with Datastores and Datastore Clusters
4. 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
5. Creating and Managing Snapshots
5. 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
6. Managing Resource Pools, Reservations, and Limits for Virtual Machines
6. 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
7. Creating Custom Reports and Notifications for vSphere
7. 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
8. Performing ESXCLI and in-guest Commands from PowerCLI
8. 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
9. Managing DRS and Affinity Groups using PowerCLI
9. 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
10. Working with vCloud Director from PowerCLI
10. 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
11
A. Setting up and Configuring vCloud Director
A. 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
12
Index
Index

Enabling services and setting security profiles

ESXi hosts enable a few services by default, but there are some additional services that are installed but blocked. In some cases, you might want to enable SSH on the host. However, since VMware does not recommend enabling SSH and will display a warning. You can set an advanced setting to disable this warning.

Getting ready

To begin with, you should open a PowerCLI prompt and connect to an ESXi or vCenter host. You will also want to store a VMHost object in a variable named $esxihost.

How to do it…

  1. The first step is to get the list of available services from a VMware host. To do this, you use the Get-VMHostService cmdlet and pass the VMHost object into the cmdlet as follows:
    $esxihost | Get-VMHostService
    How to do it…
  2. The output of the preceding cmdlet will display a list of the available services on the ESXi host along with its policy (whether it is set on or off by default) if it's running. The label is a friendly identifier to find the service you want to configure, but the key is the piece of data you will use to return the single service you want.
  3. In this case, we're looking to configure the service with the TSM-SSH key. To scope the results down to that one service in the object, you will use a PowerShell where clause as follows:
    $esxihost | Get-VMHostService | where { $_.key -eq "TSM-SSH" }
    How to do it…
  4. Now that you have it scoped down to a single service, you pass this object into the Set-VMHostService cmdlet with the desired policy of On as follows:
    $esxihost | Get-VMHostService | where { $_.key -eq "TSM-SSH" } | Set-VMHostService -Policy "On"
    How to do it…
  5. At this point, you have configured the host to autostart the service on boot, but the service is still not running in the current boot. To do this, you will instead use the Start-VMHostService cmdlet. Again, you have to pass in the VMHostService object for SSH (or any other service that you choose).
    $esxihost | Get-VMHostService | where { $_.key -eq "TSM-SSH" } | Start-VMHostService
    How to do it…
  6. With the service running, vSphere displays the warning that you have enabled SSH. This will leave your host showing in a warning state as long as the service is running; however, VMware does allow you to suppress this warning, but this is set through an advanced setting. To set this, you need to execute the following cmdlet:
    $esxihost | Get-AdvancedSetting –Name UserVars.SuppressShellWarning | Set-AdvancedSetting –value 1
  7. When executed, the preceding command line will prompt you to confirm the settings. This confirmation can be suppressed using the –Confirm:$false common parameter, which is useful in scripts:
    $esxihost | Get-AdvancedSetting –Name UserVars.SuppressShellWarning | Set-AdvancedSetting –value 1 –Confirm:$false

How it works…

For configuring host services, the native cmdlets follow the expected pattern of Get and Set functionality in PowerCLI. Get-VMHostService expects a VMHost object as the input which is logical since these host services exist within the scope of a host. Once you get the host service by name and store it in a variable or pass it as an object in the pipeline, you can easily set the settings to the desired configuration. In addition to Get and Set cmdlets, you also have Start and Stop cmdlets. The Start and Stop cmdlets are more specific to this use case since we're dealing with host services and there is a specific need to start or stop them in addition to configuring them. The Start and Stop cmdlets also accept the HostService objects as inputs, just like the Set-VMHostService cmdlet.

In the specific use case of the SSH Server service, it causes a warning to be displayed to the client. To disable this warning from been displayed, you can use an advanced setting named UserVars.SupressShellWarning. While this is not recommended for production systems, there are plenty of use cases where SSH is needed and is helpful in lab environments, where you might want to configure the setting.

There's more…

The cmdlet to start the SSH service can be easily adapted beyond the illustrated use case with the use of a ForEach loop. For troubleshooting and configuration, you might need to enable SSH in order to tail a log file or to install a custom module. In these cases, starting SSH in bulk might be handy. To do this, you take the preceding code and wrap it in the loop. An example of a connection to a vCenter host, a variable with multiple VMHost objects returned, and a loop to step through and start SSH on each is shown as follows:

Connect-VIServer vcenterhost.domain.local
$esxihosts = Get-VMHost
foreach ($esxihost in $esxihosts) {
$esxihost | Get-VMHostService | where { $_.key -eq 
"TSM-SSH" } | Start-VMHostService 
}

This quickly allows you to turn on SSH for temporary use. Following a reboot, the service will no longer be running and you can easily change the preceding code to be a Stop-VMHostService cmdlet and turn off the service in bulk.

End of Section 6
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