Tag: vCenter
BDRSuite VMware VM Recovery
If you’re backing up your environment and not doing recovery tests, you may end up with big problems when it comes time to perform a recovery and run into problems! It’s always best to perform test restores to make sure your backups are running properly. Lets run through the restore process in BDRSuite! First, we need to login! In order…
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 there, I want to be…
Script to backup your vCenter DRS Rules
I was thinking yesterday, I have a script that I run on a monthly basis to backup my vDS configs… Shouldn’t I also have something that does the same for my DRS rules? So, I wrote a script that I can schedule to run on a weekly/monthly basis to backup my DRS rules. I have multiple vCenter servers, so I…
One of my favorite tools – Remote Desktop Manager by Devolutions
One of the tools I’ve been using for many years now is called Remote Desktop Manager by Devolutions. Based on the name, you’d think it’s just another RDP tool, but it’s much MUCH more! There are 2 versions of the product. There is a FREE version, which gives you limited functionality, and an ENTERPRISE version for full functionality. There is…
Adding a PowerShell Windows Update Script to my VMware Customizations
In my environments, we typically convert the templates to Virtual Machines once a quarter so we can install Windows Updates. This means, there could be a number of patches to install if you’re 2+ months out from the last time they were updated. So I decided to use a PowerShell script that my coworker wrote to do Windows Updates and…
My Experience Upgrading vCenter to 5.5 Update 3b
I recently upgraded my vCenter from 5.5 Update 2, to 5.5 Update 3b. As this is a fairly straightforward process, I didn’t expect anything to go wrong. I proceeded through all the main components and once completed, attempted to connect to vCenter… I found I couldn’t connect. Further investigation found that the service would not start! Attempting to start the…
Patching VMware ESXi Hosts via PowerCLI!
*** Updated 5/17/2017 – See below *** This year, I’m trying something new… Anything that I have to do more than 2-3 times, I’m going to attempt to automate it! In keeping with this mantra, I recently had a task come across my plate to patch the 20+ ESXi Hosts in one of my production environments. Along with installing the…
Display list of Multiple vCenter Servers to connect to in your PowerCLI Scripts
If you’re company anything like mine, you probably have multiple vCenter servers in your environment. They may be linked, they may not. In my environment, we have 4 vCenter servers we consider Production, even though one is for QA, and we have a lab environment. Normally, I just connect to vCenter manually in PowerCLI before I run a command/script to…
Migrating Roles & Privileges from an old vCenter to a new vCenter using PowerCLI
So we’re finally upgrading an old environment running vCenter 4.0 to a new vCenter running 5.5. Instead of attempting an upgrade, we’re building new. As it’s a new build, we had to find a way to migrate the roles & privileges to the new vCenter. I have done this in the past utilizing the “Cheap Disaster Recovery” scripts from Gabe’s…
You should backup your VDS Configs with PowerCLI
So, another vExpert that I follow on twitter (@h0bbel) recently had an issue in his home lab where he cut power to his lab, and his vDS lost all the portgroup names. Seeing this post made me think, “I should probably backup MY vDS configs too, as my backups were pretty old! Here are some PowerCLI commands that I found…