Upgrading to PowerCLI 4.0 Update 1
Well, now I have upgrade to vSphere 4 U1, I’m just doing an upgrade of the PowerCLI (VMware’s addition of some 200+ cmdlets together with access to the VMware SDK too). I’m avid fan and believe in the powers of PowerCLI. Although I wouldn’t claim to be the warrior monk status of Hal, Luc or Al… 
PowerCLI has been overhauled with a whole new raft of cmdlets which will go a long way to shortening my PS1 scripts. That said I don’t when I’m gonna get the time replace my lengthy referrences to much short cmdlets.
If you want to download and install the latest PowerCLI you will find it here:
http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/vsphere/automationtools/windows_toolkit
I’ve been looking at the new cmdlets and trying to make a hit list one’s I should look at first. So what my personal favourites/highlights by looking at the release notes:
- Managing the failover and load-balancing policies of
VirtualSwitchandVirtualPortGroupobjects withGet-NicTeamingPolicyandSet-NicTeamingPolicy. Previously, these setting were only accessible by navigating the complicated SDK environment - Working with host storages and iSCSI HBA devices with
Get-VMHostHba,Set-VMHostHba,Get-iScsiHbaTarget,New-iScsiHbaTarget,Remove-iScsiHbaTarget,Set-iScsiHbaTarget, andSet-VMHostStorage. Previously, these setting were only accessible by navigating the complicated SDK environment - Upgrading hosts with
Install-VMHostPatch - Running BAT (Windows) and BASH (Linux) scripts with
Invoke-VMScript. I think these cmdlets maybe very useful in the SRM environment.
- Uploading firmware packages with
Set-VMHostFirmware. - Extending, cloning, inflating, and reallocating virtual hard disks with
Copy-HardDisk, New-HardDisk,andSet-HardDisk. I’m hoping these cmdlets will able tell me if my virtual disk is eagerzeroedthick – the format valid for VMware Fault Tolerance. The conversion process can take sometime – so it will be helpful to know because it factors into your maintenance windows.
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November 30th, 2009 at 4:56 am
The Eager bit is not exposed via Get-HardDisk and can’t be controlled via Set-HardDisk or New-HardDisk in 4.0 U1.
You can get the Eager status as follows:
function Is-Eager {
param ($hd)
$vm = Get-VM -id $hd.ParentId
$vmView = $vm | get-view -property Config
Write-Output (
$vmView.config.Hardware.Device |
Where { $_.Backing.FileName -eq $hd.FileName }
).Backing.EagerlyScrub
}
And LucD has code to convert a disk to eager: http://lucd.info/?p=918