Category: PowerCLI
Upgrading VMware Tools on each ESXi Host via ESXCLI
Have you ever wanted to upgrade the version of VMware Tools on your hosts but you’re having an issue with Update Manger/Lifecycle Manager? I ran into this problem recently. I was attempting to upgrade my hosts to the latest version of VMware Tools and even though the remediation completed successfully via Lifecycle Manger finished successfully,…
Change default VMware Remote Console Application
Have you ever tried to open the VMware Remote Console and have it launch VMware Workstation and NOT the VMware Remote Console application? This is set via two keys in the Windows Registry. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\CLASSES\VMRC\DEFAULTICON and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\CLASSES\VMRC\SHELL\OPEN\COMMAND. You can get these values via POWERSHELL. As you can see, my Remote Console is currently set to VMware…
Running VMFS Unmap via PowerCLI
Starting in vSphere 5.5, VMware introduced a new command in the esxcli namespace that allows deleted blocks to be reclaimed on thin provisioned LUNs that support the VAAI UNMAP primitive. You can run the command without any maintenance window, and the reclaim mechanism has been enhanced: Reclaim disk space size can be specified in blocks…
Using PowerCLI to set the Global System Log Location
Are you seeing an error stating that the System Logs on your host(s) are stored on non-persistent storage. Following THIS VMware KB article, I knew I had to change the Global Logdir. What we did was create a shared datastore called ESXiScratch. On this datastore, we created folders for each host. .locker-lab01.locker-lab02etc. Next, I ran…
PowerCLI Script to Change Tag Assignment
I have an environment where, using tags, unused VMs are automatically shutdown. This is done by creating a Tag Category called “Suspend Date” and when the current value is in the past, your VM gets shutdown. I don’t have many VMs that I own in this “test” environment, but the ones that I DO have…
Using vSphere Tags to Check for Pending Reboot State
You may have seen my blog post on the Test-PendingReboot PowerShell module. I’ve been using it a lot lately and had the thought to use vSphere Tags to check pending reboot state. In my environment, we normally check for pending reboot states before patching. If a server is in a pending reboot state, it won’t…
The Pending Reboot Nightmare… PowerShell to the Rescue!
My company has been having issues dealing with servers in a pending reboot state for quite a while. Part of it stems from using SCCM to deploy patches and having the patch deployment set to suppress the reboot and our Operations Team reboots the servers manually. Well, some months require multiple reboots and we get…
PowerShell Script To Get vMotion Events
Recently, I had the need to get a list of vMotion events to pass to management. I attempted to use the Get-VIEvent cmdlet for this, but found it wasn’t easy to only pull logs from one specific cluster. I attempted to use the -Entity option and direct it to the cluster I wanted, but that…
Using PowerCLI to Create a Local Scratch Partition
My company recently purchased some Dell Servers with ESXi installed to local SD cards. The issue we had was that the 8gb SD cards that came with the server and there wasn’t enough space on the cards for a scratch partition. We ordered the servers with a single 300gb HD in order to get the…
vDocumentation: Check Out These Scripts To Automate Your Documentation!
Now that VMworld 2017 US has come to a close, many of the sessions are already up on youtube to watch. One of the ones I watched yesterday was SER2077BU – Achieve Maximum vSphere Stability with PowerCLI Assisted Documentation. My friend, Ariel Sanchez Mora (@arielsanchezmor), and his friend, Edgar Sanchez (@EdmSanchez13), put together these scripts…