ser1875bu the power hour - vsphere powercli 10th or ...€¦ · the power hour - vsphere powercli...

Alan RenoufLuc Dekens

SER1875BU

#VMworld #SER1875BU

The Power Hour -vSphere PowerCLI 10th Birthday Edition

VMworld 2017 Content: Not fo

r publication or distri

bution

• This presentation may contain product features that are currently under development.

• This overview of new technology represents no commitment from VMware to deliver these features in any generally available product.

• Features are subject to change, and must not be included in contracts, purchase orders, or sales agreements of any kind.

• Technical feasibility and market demand will affect final delivery.

• Pricing and packaging for any new technologies or features discussed or presented have not been determined.

Disclaimer

2#SER1875BU CONFIDENTIAL



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Agenda

• Humble beginnings

• The path to fame

• What if?

• Community!

• Digging Deep

• It Just Started

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Who are we?

Alan Renouf

– Sr Product Line Manager, VMware

– Personal Blog: http://virtu-al.net/

– vExpert (not awesome enough to be a PowerShell MVP)

– VMTN account: alanrenouf

– 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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http://virtu-al.net/

http://lucd.info/

Humble Beginnings

• From 8 cmdlets in the TP to 616 cmdlets in the current

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The Path to Fame

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Nov2006

PowerShellv1 Beta

1.01.5

VMware Infrastructure Toolkit VMware vSphere PowerCLI VMware PowerCLI

Nov2007

Jul2008

Jan2009

May2009

4.0

Jul2010

4.1

Aug2011

5.0

Sep2012

5.1R1

Sep2013

5.5R1

Sep2014

5.8R1

Mar2015

6.0R1

Mar2016

6.5R1

6.3R1

Nov2016

1.0U1 4.0U1 5.0.1 5.1R2 5.5R24.1U1 6.0R2

6.0R3

Apr2017

6.5.1

6.5.2



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The Path to Fame

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Nov2006

PowerShellv1 Beta

1.0 1.5

VMware Infrastructure Toolkit VMware vSphere PowerCLI VMware PowerCLI

Nov2007

Jul2008

Jan2009

May2009

4.0

Jul2010

4.1

Aug2011

5.0

Sep2012

5.1R1

Sep2013

5.5R1

Sep2014

5.8R1

Mar2015

6.0R1

Mar2016

6.5R16.3R1

Nov2016

1.0U1 4.0U1 5.0.1 5.1R2 5.5R24.1U1 6.0R2

6.0R3

Apr2017

6.5.16.5.2

Core Core

DeployAutomation DeployAutomation

ImageBuilder ImageBuilder

License License

Cloud Cloud

Vds Vds

Storage Storage

Cis.Core

HA

PCloud

SDK

vROps

VUM

Common

HorizonView

PowerCLI

StorageUtility

SRM

8 102 120 157 165 237 293 361 400 426 498 528 587 623



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The path to fame

• IO30 Managing VMware Infrastructure with Windows PowerShell

– First ever PowerCLI presentation

– At VMworld 2007, by Antonio Dias

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The path to fame – First Blog post!

10https://blogs.vmware.com/PowerCLI/2007/09/hello-world-2.html



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https://blogs.vmware.com/PowerCLI/2007/09/hello-world-2.html

Where are we now?

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VMware PowerCLI 6.x (6.5/6.5.1/6.5.2) Improvements

PS> Whats-New

• New Name - VMware PowerCLI

• No more snapins

• Deploy from the PowerShell Gallery

• Move-VM Now includes Cross vCenter vMotion

• Automate everything in VSAN with lots of new cmdlets

• Independent Disk Management Cmdlets

• VVOL Replication Cmdlets

• New Horizon View Module

• DRS cluster groups and VM/Host rules cmdlets

• SPBM Cmdlets

• Content Library Cmdlet enhancements

• Additional inventory based parameters



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My, how the community has grown!Thanks to you all.

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Community

• On December 22nd 2007, the VI Toolkit VMTN Community was started

• The VI Toolkit Alpha (build 68764) was made available on December 21st 2007 to early access subscribers

• Until the first official release, VI Toolkit 1.0 on March 11th 2008, this VMTN Community stayed a private community

• Currently the VMTN community for all things PowerCLI is named VMware PowerCLI

• One of the reasons for the success of PowerCLI can be attributed to a very active community

• Automation was becoming more and more popular in IT circles, and System Administrators, with a Windows background, now had a great tool at their disposal

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Community

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22 December 2007

22 August 2017

11294

5591questions

accepted answer

4399

5141

3.2 ?/day

4.2 ?/business day

Thread Rate



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Community

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Avg Answered Time

2.4 days

Shortest Response Time

59 seconds

Longest Response Time

1009 days

Most replies

Most views

166

94303

Top creator

Top replier

TheVMinator215

LucD19663

Thread



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Community

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2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

Count 7 754 1044 1158 1395 1413 1451 1324 1098 960 690

Threads/Year

374

1760

2292 2266 2276

1916

410

Avg Threads/Day



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Community

18

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Count 251 226 212 209 204 216 255 329 419 479 498 472 542 685 871 908 757 645 672 653 640 504 387 260

Avg Threads/Hour



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Community

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0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Th

rea

ds

Month

Threads/Month/Year

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017



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Community

• When you Google PowerCLI, it comes up with an impressive number!

• Funny fact: know to pick your name ☺

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Scripts Revisited

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What if?

• One of the early popular scripts was the “Raiders of the Lost VMX”

• It scanned your datastores to find VMX files for unregistered VMs

• It could take quite a bit of time to scan a datastore (depending on it’s size)

– Time mostly spent in the SearchDatastoreSubFolders method

• What if I told you, we can now make this script run a bit faster!

• It uses the HTTP access method

– Returns all the required info for the script

– Logic more or less the same

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VMware is headed towards a REST API

• Since PowerShell v4, we have cmdlet support for calling REST API

• VMware is also providing more and more REST API for their solutions

• Connect-CISServer and Get-CISService cmdlets

– Allow 100% access of the REST APIs

– Session management is easy

– Use the API in a discoverable way

– Expose both properties and methods

• See William’s series on the VAMI REST API:

http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2017/01/exploring-new-vcsa-vami-api-wpowercli-part-1.html

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http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2017/01/exploring-new-vcsa-vami-api-wpowercli-part-1.html

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Rest is everywhereWhat else can we do?

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REST API

• REST API are everywhere

– Jive demo

• PowerShell support through Invoke-RestMethod

• No more analyzing HTML

• JSON is easy to use from PowerShell

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What If?

• I published a script, way back, to query the VMTN PowerCLI Community

– Simulated web page queries

– Interpreted HTML page(s) that were returned

– Very Bad!

• Jive does have a REST API

– Invoke-RestMethod

– Script updated, queries way simpler.

– Results returned in JSON format

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REST API

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REST API

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• On a side note

– Adapt some coding practices

– For example splatting clean, readable



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Digging Deep

• By now we all know that we can do a lot more with VMware PowerCLI

– Not only manage Hosts, VM, Datastores…

– We can also manage settings like for example Permissions

• Due to the tree structure of a vSphere environment, and due to Permission inheritance, this can become quite complex

• Solution: recursive walk of the inventory tree!

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Digging Deep

• For each child call the function again

• … and remember what permissions were set on the parent objects

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Digging Deep

• For your own ease of mind, and to avoid these “Oops” moments!

• Provide and use WhatIf support in your destructive functions

• It’s easy, it’s built in

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It Just Started

For more information on what ideas VMware has for PowerCLI in the future attend

SER2529BU

vSphere PowerCLI What’s New: The Next Evolutionary Leap is now!

16:00 – 17:00

Islander C, Lower Level

That’s 30 mins from now so go get in the line!

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Takeaways

1. PowerCLI has come along way – With your help!

2. The community grows from strength to Strength

3. PowerCLI is here to stay and has a bright future!

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Everything is awesome!



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ser1875bu the power hour - vsphere powercli 10th or ...€¦ · the power hour - vsphere powercli...

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