Powercli on BAFM

PowerCLI: Delete all snapshots by name

Mon, 23 Feb 2015 19:45:22 +0000

I have the issue that we use a cloud automation software, which for whatever reason failed to delete the hypervisor snapshots.

Now I was looking into a quick way to delete all those 520 snapshots with PowerCLI, and I found something pretty quick.

Based on that, I came up with my own quick PowerCLI one-liner, that’ll list all VMs and their snapshots:

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Get-VM | Get-Snapshot | Where { $_.Name -like "201502*" } | Format-Table -Property VM, Name, Created, Description, SizeMB -AutoSize

Now, I could use another one-liner to delete all snapshots, that’ll look like this:

Quick-Add a bunch of Virtual Machine Port-Groups from CSV

Sat, 03 Jan 2015 08:06:07 +0000

Well, I’m currently migrating between different cluster layouts, and I had to create the new PortGroups on the old hosts, in order for me to switch between old and new hosts.

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$vmhosts = Get-Cluster "UCSCL01-02" | Get-VMHost
foreach ($vmhost in $vmhosts) {
 import-csv -Delimiter ";" .\pg.csv | foreach {
 $vmhost | Get-VirtualSwitch -Name "vSwitch3" | New-VirtualPortGroup `
 -Name $_.portgroup -VLanId $_.vlanid
 }
}

And the corresponding CSV would look like this:

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portgroup;vlanid
1700_routers;1700
1701_routers;1701
1702_routers;1702
1703_routers;1703
1704_routers;1704
1705_routers;1705
1706_routers;1706
1707_routers;1707
1708_routers;1708
1709_routers;1709
1710_routers;1710
1711_routers;1711
1712_routers;1712
1713_routers;1713
1714_routers;1714
1715_routers;1715
1716_routers;1716
1717_routers;1717
1718_routers;1718
1719_routers;1719
2000_virtual-machines;2000
2001_virtual-machines;2001
2002_virtual-machines;2002
2003_virtual-machines;2003
2004_virtual-machines;2004
2005_virtual-machines;2005
2006_virtual-machines;2006
2007_virtual-machines;2007
2008_virtual-machines;2008
2009_virtual-machines;2009
2010_virtual-machines;2010
2011_virtual-machines;2011
2012_virtual-machines;2012
2013_virtual-machines;2013
2014_virtual-machines;2014
2015_virtual-machines;2015
2016_virtual-machines;2016
2017_virtual-machines;2017
2018_virtual-machines;2018
2019_virtual-machines;2019

Rename a Standard Port Group on all hosts in a cluster

Wed, 24 Sep 2014 10:59:27 +0000

Well, I recently decided to rename a bunch of my Standard Port Groups, since they did no longer reflect the network they were providing. Since I’m a lazy bastard (well lazy as in click lazy), I wrote this little PowerCLI script:

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param(
 [string] $vcenter,
 [string] $cluster,
 [string] $oldpg,
 [string] $newpg,
 [string] $vlan )

# Add the VI-Snapin if it isn't loaded already
if ( (Get-PSSnapin -Name "VMware.VimAutomation.Core" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) -eq $null )
{
 Add-PSSnapin -Name "VMware.VimAutomation.Core"
}

If ( !($vcenter) -or !($cluster) -or !($oldpg) -or !($newpg) -or !($vlan) )
{
 Write-Host `n "pg-cluster-rename: <vcenter-server> <cluster> <oldpg> <newpg>" `n
 Write-Host "This script renames each port group with the name <oldpg> to <newpg>" `n
 Write-Host " <vcenter-server> - DNS name of your vCenter server." `n
 Write-Host " <cluster> - Display-Name of the vCenter cluster, on which we are"
 Write-Host " gonna create the new portgroup." `n
 Write-Host " <oldpg> - Name of the old Port Group that is to be replaced (ie VLAN2)." `n
 Write-Host " <newpg> - Name of the new Port Group (ie PG-VLAN2-Produktion)." `n
 Write-Host " <vlan> - VLAN-ID for of the new port group." `n
 exit 1
}

Connect-VIServer -Server $vcenter

Get-Cluster $cluster | Get-VMHost | Get-VirtualSwitch -Name $vswitch | `
 New-VirtualPortGroup -Name $pg -VLanId $vlan
Get-Cluster $cluster | Get-VM | Get-NetworkAdapter | Where { $_.NetworkName -eq "$oldpg" } | `
 Set-NetworkAdapter -NetworkName $newpg -Confirm:$false
Get-Cluster $cluster | Get-VMHost | %{Get-View (Get-View $_.ID).configmanager.networkSystem} | %{
 $_.RemovePortGroup($oldpg)
}

Disconnect-VIServer -server $vcenter -Confirm:$false

This script basically takes a vCenter instance and a single cluster, then creates a new Port Group on each host, after which it reconfigures all VMs possessing a virtual NIC with that Port Group and then deletes the old Port Group.

vCenter: Removing VSC custom attributes

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 20:10:01 +0000

Well, yesterday I got pissed of those Virtual Storage Console custom attributes.

Currently we don’t use the Provisioning & Cloning feature of the VSC, thus we don’t need the custom attributes. After poking around, I decided to write a short PowerCLI script to do the task.

It’s really rather simple, so here goes:

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param( [string] $vCenter )

# Add the VI-Snapin if it isn't loaded already
if ( (Get-PSSnapin -Name "VMware.VimAutomation.Core" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) -eq $null )
{
 Add-PSSnapin -Name "VMware.VimAutomation.Core"
}

If ( !($vCenter) )
{
 Write-Host
 Write-Host "vcenter-remove-vsc-attributes: <vcenter-server>"
 Write-Host
 Write-Host " <vcenter-server> - DNS name of your vCenter server."
 Write-Host
 exit 1
}

Connect-VIServer -Server $vCenter

Remove-CustomAttribute -CustomAttribute "PnC.CustSpec", "PnC.Deployed", "PnC.GroupID", "PnC.Source" -Confirm:$false

Disconnect-VIServer -server $vCenter -Confirm:$false

vm-online-backup - Another day, another PowerCLI script

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 16:38:47 +0000

Well, on Friday I had a short chat with someone from one of our application departments, stating he wanted a backup copy of a VM (ain’t to hard), but a) they don’t want any downtime and b) it has to be identical to the original.

So I sat down today, googled for a bit and actually found something that pretty much does what I want, though I had to fix it up a bit … So find attached a script, which creates a hot-clone from a snapshot and then only if the latest clone was successful deletes the old one.

Microsoft Cluster on VMware and Devices

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 08:40:44 +0000

Well, once again the Microsoft Cluster on VMware bit my ass … As you might know, MSCS on VMware is a particular kind of pain, with each upgrade you end up with the same problem over and over again (SCSI reservations on the RDM-LUNs being one, and the passive node not booting being the other).

So I opened up another support case with VMware, and the responded like this:

Please see this kb entry: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1016106

Reconfiguring NTP settings vCenter-wide

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 19:55:40 +0000

I recently started reinstalling all my ESX hosts, so I wrote up a short script that is reconfiguring all hosts and sets the NTP configuration according to my wish:

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param( [string] $vcenter, [string] $ntpserver1, [string] $ntpserver2 )

# Add the VI-Snapin if it isn't loaded already
if ( (Get-PSSnapin -Name "VMware.VimAutomation.Core" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) -eq $null )
{
 Add-PSSnapin -Name "VMware.VimAutomation.Core"
}

If ( !($vcenter) -or !($ntpserver1) -or !($ntpserver2) )
{
 Write-Host `n "vcenter-ntp-reconfigure: <vcenter-server> <ntpserver1> <ntpserver2>" `n
 Write-Host "This script clears the NTP servers currently configured and" `n
 Write-Hsot "adds the ones supplied on the command line." `n
 Write-Host " <vcenter-server> - DNS name of your vCenter server." `n
 Write-Host " <ntpserver1> - NTP server #1" `n
 Write-Host " <ntpserver2> - NTP server #2" `n
 exit 1
}

Connect-VIServer -Server $vcenter

foreach ($esxhost in Get-VMHost)
{
 Get-VMHost $esxhost | Remove-VMHostNtpServer -Confirm:$false -NtpServer (Get-VMHost $esxhost | `
 Get-VMHostNtpServer)
 Get-VMHost $esxhost | Add-VMHostNtpServer -NtpServer $ntpserver1
 Get-VMHost $esxhost | Add-VMHostNtpServer -NtpServer $ntpserver2
}

Disconnect-VIServer -server $vcenter -Confirm:$false

As you can see, the script takes the vCenter hostname and two NTP servers and basically applies it to each host in your vCenter environment.

Emptying a VMFS datastore with PowerCLI

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:14:41 +0000

Well, once again I hacked at the Powershell/PowerCLI the other day. Since we don’t yet have a Enterprise Plus license at work (which would support Datastore Maintaince and Storage DRS), I needed a way to empty one datastore and move all the content into another one, while enabling Thin-Provisioning.

So I googled for a bit, and actually found a few hints … So without further yada-yada, here’s the script I came up with:

Rebooting a virtual machine via Task scheduler

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 09:03:06 +0000

Since the Scheduled Tasks in vCenter ain’t exportable, I went ahead and wrote a rather simple script, which lets me do this in Windows own Task Scheduler. What this script does, is initiate a graceful shutdown and if the VM isn’t shutdown within 60 seconds (12 * 5 seconds) it simply powers the VM off and immediately after that powers it back on.

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param( [string] $vCenter, [string] $VMname )

# Add the VI-Snapin if it isn't loaded already
if ( (Get-PSSnapin -Name "VMware.VimAutomation.Core" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) -eq $null )
{
 Add-PSSnapin -Name "VMware.VimAutomation.Core"
}

If ( !($vCenter) -or !($VMname) )
{
 Write-Host
 Write-Host "vm-reboot: <vcenter-server> <VMname>"
 Write-Host
 Write-Host " <vcenter-server> - DNS name of your vCenter server."
 Write-Host " <VMname> - Display name of the VM in this vCenter server."
 Write-Host
 exit 1
}

Connect-VIServer -Server $vCenter

$VM = Get-VM $VMname

# First, try shutting down the virtual machine gracefully
Write-Host "Stopping VM $( $VM )"
Write-Host " - Graceful shutdown"
Shutdown-VMGuest -VM $VM -Confirm:$false
$VM = Get-VM $VMname

$i = 0
While ($VM.PowerState -ne "PoweredOff") {
 # If that doesn't work, break out the hammer and just kill it
 if ( $i -gt 12 ) {
 Write-Host " - Forced shutdown"
 Stop-VM -VM $VMname -Confirm:$false
 }

 Start-Sleep -Seconds 5
 $VM = Get-VM $VMname
 $i++
}

If ($VM.PowerState -eq "PoweredOff") {
 Write-Host "Starting VM $( $VM )"
 Start-VM -VM $VM -Confirm:$false >$NULL
}

Disconnect-VIServer -server $vCenter -Confirm:$false

Before this implementation in PowerCLI, I needed three tasks for each VM that was to be scheduled. And when migrating vCenters (and I usually do an empty install) vCenter’s scheduled tasks are not exportable, thus you need to re-create the tasks on the new vCenter by yourself again, which for more than four virtual machines is really a pain in the ass …

Reoccurring memory limits in vCenter

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:00:20 +0000

We recently had, after we migrated from vSphere 4 to vSphere 5, a memory limit in size of the configured memory on each and every VM. Since memory limits on VM level pretty much destroy performance, I went ahead an wrote this simple script to remove all memory limits on all VMs that don’t have “Unlimited” configured:

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param( [string] $vCenter )

# Add the VI-Snapin if it isn't loaded already
if ( (Get-PSSnapin -Name "VMware.VimAutomation.Core" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) -eq $null )
{
 Add-PSSnapin -Name "VMware.VimAutomation.Core"
}

If ( !($vCenter) )
{
 Write-Host
 Write-Host "cluster-remove-mem-limits: <vcenter-server>"
 Write-Host
 Write-Host " <vcenter-server> - DNS name of your vCenter server."
 Write-Host
 exit 1
}

Connect-VIServer -Server $vCenter

Get-VM | Get-VMResourceConfiguration | Where-Object { $_.memlimitmb -ne '-1' } |`
 Set-VMResourceConfiguration -memlimitmb $null

Disconnect-VIServer -server $vCenter -Confirm:$false

This script is basically what the guy over at get-admin.com did, just only for memory limits.

PowerCLI undamp; Windows jump list for recent items set to zero

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 17:22:27 +0000

Today I had to install PowerCLI on my workstation. When I tried launching it for the first time, it simply opened and closed again instantly. After browsing the VMware community for this error and not finding a useful solution, I ended up googling the error. As it turns out, this only happens when you did set the " Number of recent items to display in jump lists" to something less than 4.

Create an offline snapshot of a VM

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 16:11:25 +0000

We’re currently thinking about automating Windows Updates and the involved disaster snapshot-copy to a degree, where we don’t need to intervene anymore.

Right now, we already have a rudimentary scheduler in place, which does the reboots for some (200 ..) systems already. Now, we’d like to extend it to also cover the bi-weekly Windows Update spree.

Since PowerShell (and PowerCLI) work quite well with vSphere automation, I cooked up the below script to first shutdown a virtual machine (for snapshot consistency reasons), then take a snapshot and power on the virtual machine again afterwards.

Modified SnapReminder

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 16:06:57 +0000

Well, PowerCLI makes my life a little bit easier. Believe it or not, each of us vCenter infrastructure admins has one of these: a Windows admin, thinking a snapshot is also a backup. Thankfully, Alan Renouf over at virtu-al.net wrote the SnapReminder, which already helped me a lot! However, occasionally the script isn’t finding the snapshot author (for whatever reason).

Since I want a notification in that case, I modified the script a little bit to suit my needs.

Fix Path Selection Policy for a whole vCenter Cluster

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 18:38:49 +0000

These last few weeks, I’ve been toying with PowerCLI (and PowerShell for that matter). One thing I do have to say, is that Microsoft finally did it right! It’s a useable, program-able command line interface for Windows after all! Thanks to Ivo Beerens and his post " Best practices for HP EVA, vSphere 4 and Round Robin multi-pathing", I was able to come up with the below:

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# LICENSE: GNU General Public License v2. (see LICENSE.txt)
# COPYRIGHT: Copyright 2010 Christian Heim <christian.heim@barfoo.org>

# Add the VI-Snapin if it isn't loaded already
if ( (Get-PSSnapin -Name "VMware.VimAutomation.Core" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) -eq $null )
{
 Add-PSSnapin -Name "VMware.VimAutomation.Core"
}

if ($args.length -lt 2) {
 Write-Host
 Write-Host "fix_multipathing: "
 Write-Host " - Display-Name of the vCenter cluster, we should check all LUNs"
 Write-Host " on all available Hosts, and set the Path Selection Policy"
 Write-Host " to the selected one."
 Write-Host ""
 Write-Host " - Path Selection Policy"
 Write-Host " Possible:"
 Write-Host " - RoundRobin (VMW_PSP_RR, Round Robin)"
 Write-Host " - Fixed (VMW_PSP_FIXED, Fixed)"
 Write-Host " - MostRecentlyUsed (VMW_PSP_MRU , Most Recently Used)"
 Write-Host
 exit 1
}

$vcserver = "vcenter.home.barfoo.org"
$cluster = $args[0]
$target_policy = $args[1]

# Since I do have only SVC-Disks connected to my hosts, I limit the search to those
$canonical_name = "naa.6005076801808021*"

Write-Host "Target vCenter Cluster: " $cluster
Write-Host "Target PSP: " $target_policy
Write-Host

switch ($target_policy) {
 RoundRobin { $display_policy = "VMW_PSP_RR"; }
 MostRecentlyUsed { $display_policy = "VMW_PSP_MRU"; }
 Fixed { $display_policy = "VMW_PSP_FIXED"; }
 default { Write-Warning "Unknown PSP selected! Please consult the help and try again."; exit }
}

Connect-VIServer $vcserver >/dev/null 2>&1

Write-Host "Found "@(Get-VMHost -location ( get-cluster $cluster ) | Get-ScsiLun -CanonicalName $canonical_name -LunType "disk" | where {$_.MultipathPolicy -ne $target_policy }).Count" LUNs in "$cluster" not using Path Selection Policy "$display_policy
Get-VMHost -location ( get-cluster $cluster ) | Get-ScsiLun -CanonicalName $canonical_name -LunType "disk" | where {$_.MultipathPolicy -ne $target_policy } | Set-ScsiLun -MultipathPolicy $target_policy >/dev/null 2>&1

This works great, however you could make it work on the whole vCenter inventory, which I don’t want. We usually add LUNs to a single cluster at one time. Only thing you might need to change, is the canonical name. Mine simply says “find all SVC LUNs” and you might need to change it, if you’re using a different storage.