Sign In Start Free Trial

Book Overview & Buying
Table Of Contents
Feedback & Rating

PowerCLI Cookbook

By : Philip Brandon Sellers

4.8 (4)

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.

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. Configuring the Basic Settings of an ESXi Host with PowerCLI

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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

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

Index

Index

Customer Reviews

4.8 (4)

5 star

75%

4 star

25%

3 star

0

2 star

0

1 star

0

Joining an ESXi host to vCenter

Joining an ESXi host to vCenter is done from vCenter. The cmdlets for adding a host to a vCenter installation all require communication with vCenter. In this section, we'll connect to vCenter and add the host into inventory. All additional configuration to vCenter from PowerCLI will be covered in the next chapter.

Getting ready

Open a new PowerCLI window. This will ensure that no variables are populated and no open connection to an ESXi is lingering.

How to do it…

In this example, you will connect to a vCenter Server instead of directly connecting to an ESXi host. Our vCenter server has the hostname: vcentersrv.domain.local.

To connect to vCenter, use the same cmdlet that you used in the Connecting to an ESXi host or a vCenter instance recipe:
```
$vcenter = connect-viserver vcentersrv.domain.local 
```
Note
The same certificate warning might be displayed and you might be prompted to log in if your computer cannot single sign-in to the vCenter instance.
Once connected to vCenter, you can use the Add-VMHost to add the host into inventory:
```
Add-VMHost -Server $vcenter -Name esxsrv1.domain.local -Location "Primary"
```
Note
For the purpose of this section, the value of -Location is assumed to be a datacenter object already created in vCenter. In the next chapter, you'll see code on how to create this datacenter object.
When prompted, enter the administrative account credentials for the ESXi to perform the join operation.
The host is now added to vCenter Server and can be administered by the server.

How it works…

Joining an ESXi to vCenter is a simple cmdlet to configure and complete. It simply links the ESXi into vCenter so that all of the additional configuration and control will be directed from the vCenter host.

At this point, connecting to the ESXi host will display a message in the GUI clients that shows it's being managed by vCenter and that all changes should be made through vCenter. That is mostly the case from PowerCLI too, but there might be additional times when configuration needs to be made directly against a host. One example would be to change multipathing settings for storage.

See also

The Creating a virtual datacenter in vCenter, Creating a cluster and adding ESXi hosts, and Setting cluster advanced features, including HA, DRS, and EVC recipes in Chapter 2, Configuring vCenter and Computing Clusters

Search

Your notes and bookmarks