Blog post: VMware PowerCLI 101

At VMworld US 2019, Brian Bunke and Kyle Ruddy presented session HBI1743BU - "Introduction to PowerCLI." It was intended for those new to PowerShell and/or PowerCLI to see it in action -- hopefully making the command line a little more familiar -- and to provide a permanent "how to get started" example via recorded video and this code repository.

Demo Files

• 0 - Setup.ps1
  • Get/update PowerCLI; connect to vCenter; perform optional one-time setup tasks
• 1 - Intro.ps1
  • Discover infrastructure; use the pipeline and a variable; display other object properties
• 2 - VM snapshots.ps1
  • Discoverability in PowerShell; find and remove old VM snapshots
• 3 - VM tags.ps1
  • Tag lifecycle: create, read, update, delete ("CRUD" operations)
• 4 - VM creation date.ps1
  • Explore the ExtensionData property to view a new vSphere 6.7 feature
• 5 - Extras.ps1
  • Some code examples of ideas we introduced but didn't have time to cover during the session:
    • Get VM by MAC address
    • Find VMs with connected media drives
    • Data manipulation and reporting
    • Compare host DNS/NTP entries
    • Check the "Upgrade VMware Tools before each power on" box on all VMs

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Links

Basic PowerShell and PowerCLI Info

• PowerShell Overview
  • Installing PowerShell
• PowerCLI Blog
  • Installing PowerCLI
• PowerCLI Feature Requests

VMware Hands-on Labs (HOL)

• VMware vSphere Automation - PowerCLI [HOL-1911-05-SDC]

PowerCLI Community

• VMware PowerCLI Community Forums
• VMware {code} Slack Community