PowerCLI Best Practices - A Deep Dive

Luc Dekens, Eurocontrol

Alan Renouf, VMware

VSVC4944

#VSVC4944

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Who Are We?

Alan Renouf –

Sr. Technical Marketing Architect, VMware

• Automation: PowerCLI

• vExpert

• VMware Blog: http://blogs.vmware.com/vipowershell/

• Personal Blog: http://virtu-al.net/

• Twitter: @alanrenouf

Luc Dekens –

Systems Engineer, Eurocontrol Maastricht

• Personal Blog: http://lucd.info/

• vExpert & PowerShell MVP

• VMTN account: LucD

• Twitter: @Lucd22

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Introduction I hope the coffee has kicked in…

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Background

We’re back for the 3rd time in a row

• You just cant get enough of PowerCLI!

No 1 unique solution for a task/problem.

Some are better

• More performant

• More flexible

This session shows a number of these, so you don’t have to find

them out yourselves

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Common PowerCLI Questions

The PowerCLI Community is huge!

This session will make your life easier

(and also full of famous people)

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Common PowerCLI Questions

The PowerCLI Community is huge!

This session will make you an expert

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Community Question

I sense a new

force in the galaxy,

what is this PowerCLI ?

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PowerCLI Overview

Why PowerCLI?

• PowerShell is universal, easy to use and works with objects

Why universal?

• The standard on Windows platforms

• Reuse your PowerShell knowledge in different applications

Easy to use?

• The verb-noun construct in plain English

• Help is available

• Start with minimal set of cmdlets, and grow

What’s with these objects?

• Think of it as unit that has data and functions

• Objects flow through the pipeline to the next cmdlet

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PowerCLI Overview – Simple Examples

Simple to read/write

New-VM –Name VM1 –VMHost MyEsx

Easy to extend for big(ger) environments

1..10 | Foreach {New-VM –Name VM$_ –VMHost MyEsx}

Clear, understandable minimal code

Get-Datastore | Select Name,Type,FileSystemVersion

Access to API covers what is not (yet) there

Get-VMHost |

Select Name,

@{N=“Reboot”;E={$_.ExtensionData.Summary.RebootRequired}}

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Community Question

I already know

most things…

So what's new in

PowerCLI 5.5 R1?

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PowerCLI Snap-in’s

Core

• Managing vSphere

Image Builder

• Working with Image Profiles

Auto Deploy

• Deploying ESXi via PXE

License

• Working with vSphere Licensing

VDS

• Working with vSphere Distributed Switch

Cloud

• vCloud Director Providers

Tenant

• vCloud Director Tenants

Core Image

Builder

Auto

Deploy License

Cloud

Tenant

VDS

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PowerCLI 5.5 R1 - Overview

New Cmdlets to manage vSphere Tags

Manage Tags in the vSphere environment

Assign Tags to vSphere Objects

Remove Tag assignments from vSphere Objects

VDS

Easy VDS Migration

Manage Private VLANs

Manage VDS Policies

Manage VDS Ports

VM Console

Open a console for vSphere/vCloud VM

Open multiple consoles at once

Output the URL to open VM Consoles

vCloud Director 5.5 Support

Support for vCD 5.5

Host Licensing

Assign Host Licensing

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Community Question

Quit your

jibber jabber, how can I apply

some PowerShell best practices

to PowerCLI, fool!

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Best Practices

Store results in variables

• Speed

• Re-use

• Filter on the variables

Use Get-Help and the Examples –ShowWindow

Break things down into functions – Don’t forget splatting

Try/Catch/Throw

Filter on the left

• Get-Event | Sort Date | Where { $_.Something –eq “5” }

• Get-Event | Where { $_.Something –eq “5” } | Sort Date

Steal from the best (Lucd.info) and write the rest

Do not use Write-Host as output, only for output to console

• Use Write-Verbose or Write-Warning

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Community Question

How do I run these scripts?

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What Is the Best Way to Run My Script?

PS1 file / dot source / functions - what does this mean?

Console (PowerCLI Prompt) / Editor

Scheduled Task in Windows (add-pssnapin

VMware.vimautomation*)

vCenter Alert action

• VM Creation – Secure a VM

• Host added to vCenter

Robust PS Sessions (See demo later)

WebCommander (Future VMware Fling)

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Launching the Code

DEMO

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Community Question

Why is PowerCLI so slow?

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Why is PowerCLI so Slow?

Why is PowerCLI slow to launch?

• Load environment

• PowerShell v1, v2, v3 – Caching

How can I make it even faster?

• Remote session

• Run the Connect-VIServer

• Run a cmdlet

• Disconnect/Reconnect from the session (see demo later)

Why is PowerCLI slower than a direct API call or other SDK?

• Abstracted Object

• Easier to read code

• Easier to work with / Pipeline Results

• Formulated objects

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Why is PowerCLI so Slow?

Making results faster

Finding the properties you need

• ExtensionData

• New-VIProperty

• Use the Property parameter with Get-View

Creating a new object

• What to read in the SDK

• How to create it

• Creating the bare frame and filling in what's needed

Onyx

• How it is helpful

• How it is not helpful

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Community Question

How do I export my

information?

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Advanced Reporting

CSV/TXT/XML

• Use whatever is relevant and saves time

• Think about how you can use the information later

Export-XLS / Word

• Export-XLS is a function available on LucD.Info which exports straight to Excel

• Including multiple sheets and Graphs

vCheck

• Community driven script to give you the information you need

• Plugins to add your own checks or remove others for speed

• Change the Style easily

• FREE

• Get Involved!

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Performance: Advanced, and Fun, Reporting

The performance data is there, use it!

How to find the available counters?

VMware Tools gives access to guest OS metrics

Data where you don’t expect it, like for example through CIM

And a picture still says more than 1K words

• Replace your CSV files with nice graphs

• Several options available (XLS, MS Chart…)

• Combining metrics in a graph will bring a point across

Mapping of vDisks to OS Partitions (The holy grail)

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Advanced Reporting

DEMO

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Community Question

How do the newer

versions of PowerShell

make a difference?

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Use the PowerShell v3 Features

Use the new CIM cmdlets

• A wealth of information

• Find out what is there (CIM classes)

Robust sessions

• See the SIW demo later on

Calling SOAP/REST methods became a lot easier

Ordered objects

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CIM Demo

DEMO

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CIM/SMASH

See VMware CIM SMASH/Server Management API for ESXi

Documentation

Result in PNG/PDF/…

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Server In Waiting

PowerCLI is great !

…but do some of these sound familiar ?

• Slow Connect-VIServer

• Slow first cmdlet

• Aligning PowerCLI snapin versions

• Exceptions in big environments

We did, and we were fed up with those

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PS Remoting I

Use PS Remoting with robust sessions !

A “work horse” box

Lots of CPU power & memory (if needed)

Start a remote session

• Load PowerCLI

• Connect-VIServer

• Execute any PowerCLI cmdlet (JIT)

• Disconnect the remote PSSession

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PS Remoting II

Discover with Get-PSSession

Use Connect-PSSession !

• Connects to robust session

• PowerCLI environment is ready

Some drawbacks

• Reconnect same account

• Sessions tend to get bloated (leaks)

• Some GUIs have a problem (PSP, PowerGUI)

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PS Remoting III - Schematic

SIW

Session 3

Session 2

Session 1

Server 2012 Core

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New-PSSession

Disconnect-PSSession

Invoke-Command # PowerCLI environment

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Get-PSSession

Connect-PSSession

Enter-PSSession

Invoke-Command

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PS Remoting IV - Gotchas

Set up PowerCLI in the PSSession

Pre W2K12 – mind the available memory

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SIW Demo

DEMO

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Comparison – Classic vs SIW

Classic SIW

Connect-VIServer 14.6 0

Get-

Datacenter(1st)

5.3 0.1

Get-Datacenter 0.1 0.1

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Community Question

I'm all about Events,

but how can I use them?

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Events - What

Used to record significant state changes of managed entities

Stored in the vCenter DB

Retention!

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Events – Objects - Inheritance

Event VmEvent VmDeployed

Event

Template srcTemplate CreatedTime

…

vm

EventEx

ExtendedEvent

Arguments

eventTypeId

…

General

Event

message

data

eventTypeId

…

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Events – Simple Retrieval

Get-VIEvent

Attention points

• MaxSamples: default is 100

• Entity: is not recursive

$esx = Get-VMHost -Name ESX1

$start = (Get-Date).AddDays((-1)

Get-VIEvent -MaxSamples ([int]::MaxValue) -Entity $esx -Start $start

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Events – Filtering I

Get-VIEvent has limited filters

Use a Where-clause on all returned objects

• Filtering done on your machine !

$esx = Get-VMHost -Name ESX1

$start = (Get-Date).AddDays((-1)

Get-VIEvent -MaxSamples ([int]::MaxValue) -Entity $esx -Start $start |

Where {$_ -is [VMware.Vim.VmDeployed]}

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Events Demo I

DEMO

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Events – Filtering II

Use EventHistoryCollector

• Filtering on vSphere Server

• More filtering options

$esx = Get-VMHost -Name ESX1

$start = (Get-Date).AddDays((-1)

Get-VIEventPlus -Entity $esx -Start $start -EventType “VmDeployed”

Up to 80 times faster !

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Events Demo II

DEMO

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Events – Which One ?

The ‘regular’ events are in the SDK Reference

Other, go via EventManager

Or, use the Event-O-Matic !

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Events Demo III

DEMO

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Community Question

This stuff is MAGIC

How do I take it further?

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Integration Next Steps

PowerShell has many Snapins/Modules and doesn’t care what the

technology is

• Microsoft

• CIM Cmdlets / Active Directory Cmdlets / Windows Cmdlets

• 3rd Party

• NetApp / PernixData

Rest API

• Invoke-RestMethod

• Invoke-Webrequest

Read from files

• XML

• CSV

• TXT

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Further Automation of your Day to Day Tasks

Do you do the same thing every day?

• Snapshot a VM to make sure its ok

Do you love documentation?

• PowerGUI Export / PowerGUI Reports / Export to Word / Export-XLS

• CIM Demo

Module for vShield

• REST API

Other VMware products with Automation (Automation Triangle)

Built-in with policies 1st choice

Orchestration/workflows integration

Scripts quick solutions

Andy Troup blog article: http://url.vmware.com/j2g5

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Community Question

Where do I go now?

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Where Do I Go Now

Community

Official PowerCLI Blog

External PowerCLI Blogs

New Developer Network

Books

Trainsignal Videos

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Take Aways

1. PowerCLI, a quick and easy tool for automating your “vTasks”

2. Take PowerCLI and Automation to the next level

3. Automating the components you didn’t think were possible

4. Combine everything you have learned

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PowerCLI Summary

Additional Resources and references

PowerCLI Blog - http://blogs.vmware.com/vipowershell/

PowerCLI Download - http://vmware.com/go/PowerCLI

PowerCLI Documentation - http://vmware.com/support/developer/PowerCLI/

PowerShell Performance - http://powershell.com/cs/blogs/donjones/archive/2012/05/07/powershell-

performance-it-s-the-dlr.aspx

Detailed PowerCLI cmdlet reference with examples - http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/PowerCLI/PowerCLI501/html/index.html

PowerCLI Community - http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/server/vsphere/automationtools/powercli?view=discussions

vSphere Automation Blog - http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/automation/

Luc Dekens Blog – http://Lucd.info

Alan Renoufs Blog – http://virtu-al.net

Google ”PowerCLI”

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VMware vSphere™ PowerCLI

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What Else Do You Want from PowerCLI ?

Before you ask, no I don’t know who this is!

@alanrenouf and @LucD22

#VSVC4944

Q&A

Winners will be tweeted

back by me during VMworld

Tweet a comment about this session to win!

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Other VMware Activities Related to This Session

HOL:

HOL-SDC-1307

vCloud Automation Solutions

Group Discussions:

VSVC1005-GD

PowerCLI and Automation with Alan Renouf

VSVC4944

THANK YOU

PowerCLI Best Practices - A Deep Dive

Luc Dekens, Eurocontrol

Alan Renouf, VMware

VSVC4944

#VSVC4944