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What’s New for vSphere Alarm Management

VM Reconfiguration Alarm Creation

There’s been a migration over the years to treat VM workloads in a more disposable fashion. This means that instead of making changes or updates directly to the deployed VM, we would destroy and re-deploy a new VM with the new configuration. Therefore, we’re looking to create an alarm when any VM has been reconfigured.

To create this alarm, we will need to make use of a couple of the new cmdlets that were introduced with PowerCLI 11.5. Namely: Get-EventType, New-AlarmTrigger, and New-AlarmDefintion

First, we need to find the particular event type related to a VM reconfiguration event. There are over 400 different event types, so we’ll want to get a little more specific by using a filter.

Filter Example:

Get-EventType | Where-Object {$_.Description -like "*reconfig*"}

1	Get-EventType \| Where-Object {$_.Description -like "reconfig"}

Looking through the response, we can see the last event type is the one we happen to be looking to use.

Next, we need to create an alarm trigger which will be based off of the event type we found in the prior step. For this we will use New-AlarmTrigger. This new cmdlet will have two other parameters we will need to populate as well, EntityStatus and EntityType. The EntityStatus parameter controls what the alarm severity will be. The available statuses are listed here: EntityStatus values Example: an EntityStatus of “yellow” is a warning. The EntityType parameter controls what object types the alarm can be referenced against. Example: VirtualMachine, HostSystem

For our use case, we’re going to use the following code to create a warning when a VM reconfigure task has been performed:

$alarmTriggerInput = @{
    EventType = $vmReconfigEvt
    EntityStatus = "Yellow"
    EntityType = "VirtualMachine"
}
$alarmTrigger = New-AlarmTrigger @alarmTriggerInput

$alarmTriggerInput = @{

EventType = $vmReconfigEvt

EntityStatus = "Yellow"

EntityType = "VirtualMachine"

}

$alarmTrigger = New-AlarmTrigger @alarmTriggerInput

Lastly, we will be defining our alarm with the New-AlarmDefinition cmdlet. There are a few parameters which we’ll use to define this new alarm, including: Name, Description, AlarmTrigger, and Entity. The first two are describing our new alarm. The AlarmTrigger parameter is referencing the trigger we built in the prior step. The Entity parameter is not quite as straightforward. This parameter is actually describing at what level the alarm should be applied. Example: to apply this alarm to only a specific cluster, the entity would be for that cluster object. For this use case, we want the alarm to apply across the entire vSphere environment so we will apply it to the top-level folder named “Datacenters”.

The code to create this new alarm will look like the following:

$vmReconfigEvt = Get-EventType | Where-Object {$_.Description -eq "VM reconfigured"}

$alarmTriggerInput = @{
    EventType = $vmReconfigEvt
    EntityStatus = "Yellow"
    EntityType = "VirtualMachine"
}
$alarmTrigger = New-AlarmTrigger @alarmTriggerInput

$alarmDefInput = @{
    Name = "VM Reconfiguration"
    Description = "Alarm to monitor virtual machine reconfiguration events"
    AlarmTrigger = $alarmTrigger
    Entity = Get-Folder -Type Datacenter -NoRecursion
}
New-AlarmDefinition @alarmDefInput

$vmReconfigEvt = Get-EventType | Where-Object {$_.Description -eq "VM reconfigured"}

$alarmTriggerInput = @{

EventType = $vmReconfigEvt

EntityStatus = "Yellow"

EntityType = "VirtualMachine"

}

$alarmTrigger = New-AlarmTrigger @alarmTriggerInput

$alarmDefInput = @{

Name = "VM Reconfiguration"

Description = "Alarm to monitor virtual machine reconfiguration events"

AlarmTrigger = $alarmTrigger

Entity = Get-Folder -Type Datacenter -NoRecursion

}

New-AlarmDefinition @alarmDefInput

If we switch over to the vSphere Client, we can also see our newly created alarm there:

That’s it! Our new alarm is created and enabled by default for usage in our environment.

Listing Active Alarms

The next question is normally “how do we list the alarms with PowerCLI?” Unfortunately, there is not a function to list these alarms easily. However, almost every top-level, managed object (technically, ManagedEntity) has a property available at the vSphere API level that we can reference to easily discover any active alarms. This property is known as the TriggeredAlarmState. When it comes to PowerCLI, this property is available through an object’s ExtensionData.

Going back to our vSphere environment, we can modify a VM in PowerCLI and see that our newly created alarm does work as planned by referencing that TriggeredAlarmState property:

Then, in the vSphere Client, we will also see the following:

The output from the TriggeredAlarmState property feels like it’s being pulled directly from the vSphere API and doesn’t easily give us some important information which we can easily turn into a report. I created a new advanced function and shared it on the VMware Code Sample Exchange and on the PowerCLI Community repo, it’s called Get-TriggeredAlarm.

Get-TriggeredAlarm in action:

The code for Get-TriggeredAlarm:

Summary

The latest version of PowerCLI 11.5 gave us a number of updates, including a handful of new and updated cmdlets which allows us to streamline the process of automating vSphere alarm management. These 6 new cmdlets and 3 updated cmdlets help manage alarm definitions, create alarm triggers, and pull information about available event types and metrics. This blog took a look at how to easily create a new alarm, including identifying a particular event and creating an alarm trigger, as well as how to report back alarms that are already active for particular vSphere objects.

Install PowerCLI 11.5 today and let us know in the comments what you’d like to see added next when it comes to vSphere alarm management!

What’s New for the VMware Cloud on AWS Module

Creating New 1 Host SDDC

The first cmdlet we’ll walkthrough using is the one which creates a new SDDC, New-VmcSddc. This cmdlet requires fairly minimal information such as SDDC name, AWS region, and how many hosts the SDDC should have. We also have the ability to specify the management subnet CIDR as a parameter too, but that parameter is optional.

One big item of note, at the time of the PowerCLI 11.5 release, it can only provision one host SDDCs without an AWS account being linked. We do plan to improve the cmdlet in a future release to support all SDDC deployment configurations.

Here’s an example of creating a VMware Cloud on AWS single host SDDC where we don’t link an AWS account:

New-VmcSddc -Name KR-SDDC -Region US_EAST_1 -HostCount 1 -SkipAccountLinking

1	New-VmcSddc -Name KR-SDDC -Region US_EAST_1 -HostCount 1 -SkipAccountLinking

Creating New 3-Host SDDC

We can also create a standard, 3 host or larger, SDDC which requires an AWS account be linked. There are two new cmdlets which simplifies this process from more than 10 lines of code down to 2 lines.

The first thing we’ll need to obtain, the AWS account we’ll be using. That information can be found with the following command:

Get-AwsAccount

1	Get-AwsAccount

We’ll store that output in a variable and move on to the next step, which is to pick out our desired AWS VPC Subnet. We can use a single cmdlet to do this, however we will need to reference the AWS Account and which region the VPC should reside.

We can find the available VPC subnets with the following command:

Get-AwsVpcSubnet -AwsAccount $awsAcct -Region US_EAST_1

1	Get-AwsVpcSubnet -AwsAccount $awsAcct -Region US_EAST_1

At this point, we have all the information needed to create our SDDC. With some minimal updates to the command from the previous section, we can create a new 3 host SDDC, have it linked to our AWS account, and using our requested VPC subnet with the following code:

New-VmcSddc -Name KR-SDDC -Region US_EAST_1 -HostCount 3 -AwsAccount $awsAcct -AwsVpcSubnet $vpcSub

1	New-VmcSddc -Name KR-SDDC -Region US_EAST_1 -HostCount 3 -AwsAccount $awsAcct -AwsVpcSubnet $vpcSub

Viewing SDDC Information

We’ve created two SDDCs in the prior sections, now it’s time to find out what information about each of these SDDCs are available. The Get-VmcSddc cmdlet will turn several lines of API interaction into a single line.

We can find out some basic information about our newly created SDDCs with the following command:

Get-VmcSddc

1	Get-VmcSddc

The above shows some great high-level information. However, if you’ve seen the API response, there’s a lot more information available to us. We can find some additional information about a particular SDDC by piping that command to Format-List. An example:

Get-VmcSddc | Format-List

1	Get-VmcSddc \| Format-List

The above examples shows some important information, such as AWS region, how many hosts the SDDC has, what version the SDDC is on, and even the URL to reach the vCenter server. One thing you may notice is missing though, ExtensionData! This property, and all the information it provides us, is something that is not available at this point in time. We hope to add it in a future release.

In the meantime, you can take the information provided here and simplify the process to retrieve the rest of the properties which make up the SDDC object from the API level. An example to do that is as follows:

$vmcSddc = Get-VmcSddc -Name KR-SDDC-02
$orgId = $vmcSddc.Uid.Split('/')[2].Split('=')[1]
$sddcId = $vmcSddc.Id 
$sddcSvc = Get-VmcService -Name com.vmware.vmc.orgs.sddcs
$sddc = $sddcSvc.Get($orgId, $sddcId)

$vmcSddc = Get-VmcSddc -Name KR-SDDC-02

$orgId = $vmcSddc.Uid.Split('/')[2].Split('=')[1]

$sddcId = $vmcSddc.Id

$sddcSvc = Get-VmcService -Name com.vmware.vmc.orgs.sddcs

$sddc = $sddcSvc.Get($orgId, $sddcId)

Host Capacity Management

One of the amazing parts about a service such as VMware Cloud on AWS is that we can add and remove ESXi hosts to our SDDC in a matter of minutes! We now have two cmdlets to make the management of our ESXi hosts as simple as a one-liner.

We can add a single new host to our SDDC with the following command:

Add-VmcSddcHost -Sddc KR-SDDC-02 -HostCount 1

1	Add-VmcSddcHost -Sddc KR-SDDC-02 -HostCount 1

Similarly, we can also remove a single host from our SDDC with the following command:

Remove-VmcSddcHost -Sddc KR-SDDC-02 -HostCount 1

1	Remove-VmcSddcHost -Sddc KR-SDDC-02 -HostCount 1

In the above examples you’ll also notice the flexibility to several different methods of input for each command, whether that be variables or even using a pipeline.

Removing SDDCs

Completing the lifecycle management of an SDDC is the removal of our created SDDC. Much like the prior create and retrieve cmdlets, we also have a cmdlet to delete an SDDC.

We can now remove our SDDC with the following command:

Remove-VmcSddc –Sddc KR-SDDC-02

1	Remove-VmcSddc –Sddc KR-SDDC-02

More Updates

There are a couple other cmdlets worth discussing when it comes to using PowerCLI with VMware Cloud on AWS. One of the more popular requests was to rename an SDDC. This was recently enabled through the API and PowerCLI can also make this change in a high-level cmdlet.

We can update the name of our SDDC with the following command:

Set-VmcSddc -Sddc KR-SDDC-01 -Name KR-SDDC

1	Set-VmcSddc -Sddc KR-SDDC-01 -Name KR-SDDC

An existing cmdlet was also updated to help us out when it comes to retrieving, and even reporting, on tasks within our Organization. Get-Task now supports these VMC based tasks. If you’ve had a change to view the tasks for any given Organization, unlike vSphere tasks, they are available for quite a long time so the output could be unexpectedly longer than expected.

We can retrieve the tasks of our Organization with the following command:

Get-Task

Get-Task

Each of these tasks are objects, so we can take one of those tasks and expand the available properties with Format-List by using the following command:

Get-Task | Select-Object -First 1 | Format-List

1	Get-Task \| Select-Object -First 1 \| Format-List

Summary

The release of PowerCLI 11.5 added a ton of functionality when it comes to VMware Cloud on AWS. We can manage the entire lifecycle of an SDDC with high-level cmdlet. We can also pull task-based information from an existing cmdlet!

Update to the latest version of PowerCLI with the following command:

Let us know in the comments what cmdlets we should be adding next!

New Release – PowerCLI 11.5.0

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The days are ticking away until VMworld Europe, but we have some exciting news that we just couldn’t keep quiet about! PowerCLI version 11.5.0 is here and it is a huge release! More than 20 cmdlets have been added. There are new properties available for the objects we all know and love, one of which has been requested for years. A big update for the VMC module, support for Horizon 7.10.0, and so much more.

PowerCLI 11.5.0 comes with the following updates:

Added cmdlets for Content Library management
Added cmdlets for vCenter alarm management
Added cmdlets for VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC management
Updated Get-*Service output
Updated New-VM parameters for networking
Updated performance for Tag based operations
Updated properties of Virtual Machine object
Updated support for Horizon 7.10.0
Updated support for HCX migration types

Let’s dig in on some of these updates!

Content Library Management Update

Content Library’s features and capabilities have been going through some impressive updates over the last few versions of vSphere. It was one of the first services available through the vSphere Automation (REST) API and has maintained a steady stream of improvements. The latest update added some long-awaited support for templates! PowerCLI is improving the management of the Content Library with eight new cmdlets!

The new cmdlets for Content Library management are as follows:

New-ContentLibraryItem
Set-ContentLibraryItem
Remove-ContentLibraryItem
Export-ContentLibraryItem
New-ContentLibrary
Set-ContentLibrary
Get-ContentLibrary
Remove-ContentLibrary

Here’s a brief example of viewing the available Content Libraries and the contents within a specified Content Library.

Look for a blog to be released shortly to dive deeper in to the use of these cmdlets!

vCenter Alarm Management Update

Managing vCenter alarms always comes up as one of those things that could be improved when using PowerCLI. There’s a solid set of alarm-based cmdlets which already exist. However, as evidenced by a PowerCLI session at VMworld in 2017 where we dug into some examples only available by the API, those cmdlets didn’t give quite give us everything we needed. PowerCLI 11.5 adds 6 new cmdlets and 3 updated cmdlets to help manage alarm definitions, create alarm triggers, and pull information about available event types and metrics.

These new cmdlets are as follows:

New-AlarmDefinition
Remove-AlarmDefinition
New-AlarmTrigger
Get-AlarmTrigger
Get-EventType
Get-Metric

The updated cmdlets are as follows:

New-AlarmAction
New-AlarmActionTrigger
Set-AlarmDefinition

Here’s a sneak peak at these new cmdlets in action, creating a new vCenter alarm definition:

More details on these new vCenter alarm management cmdlets will be released in future blog post shortly.

VMware Cloud on AWS Module Update

The module for managing VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) is one of PowerCLI’s newest modules. Initially it was released as a low-level module, which interacted directly with the available VMC APIs. As of PowerCLI 11.5, the VMC module introduces eight new cmdlets to make the management process easier. There’s a cmdlet to easily retrieve high-level information about our SDDCs. We can deploy an SDDC in a single command, down from the 20+ lines it took before. There are also cmdlets to streamline the process of retrieving information about our AWS linked accounts!

The new cmdlets are as follows:

Get-VmcSddc
Set-VmcSddc
New-VmcSddc
Remove-VmcSddc
Add-VmcSddcHost
Remove-VmcSddcHost
Get-AwsAccount
Get-AwsVpcSubnet

Here’s a quick example of how we can compress all those lines of code to deploy and view an SDDC down to, essentially, two lines:

For more details on these new VMC cmdlets, see the following blog: What’s New with the VMware Cloud on AWS Module

VMware Core Module Update

The Core module received a handful of upgrades outside of just the new cmdlets for Content Library and vCenter alarms.

The usage of tags within vSphere environments continues to steadily increase, as well as requests to make the management of those tags more performant. Previously, as of PowerCLI 11.3, the ability to perform batch operations was added. PowerCLI 11.5 builds on that and adds some additional, general, performance improvements to several cmdlets. The Get-Tag cmdlet and Tag parameter for Get-VM have both been updated, as well as Get/Remove-TagAssignment.

There are a couple highly requested updates for some of the standard VM cmdlets too! The ability to configure a new VM’s portgroup, when deploying from template, has been added through the usage of either NetworkName or Portgroup parameters when using New-VM. As of vSphere 6.7, there’s been a new property of VirtualMachine vSphere objects called CreateDate. As of PowerCLI 11.5, the VirtualMachine .Net object now also has a CreateDate property!

Note: Only vSphere 6.7 environments and newer support this property. On vSphere 6.5 and older environments, the property may be blank. An additional caveat, this property is also only supported on VMs which have been created since that environment was on vSphere 6.7 or newer. VMs that have been migrated from older environments will show an older date, generally 1/1/70 12:00:00 AM.

Summary

PowerCLI 11.5.0 has been released and there are tons of new updates! There are more than 20 new cmdlets and 9 cmdlets which have been improved. Support has been added for Horizon 7.10.0 as well as two new migrations types for HCX, Replication Assisted vMotion (RAV) and OS Assisted Migration (OSAM). Plus, when you’re working with a service’s underlying API service, the listing of available services has been updated for easier viewing. The third release of PowerCLI is one you’ll want to update to today!

For more information on changes made in VMware PowerCLI 11.5.0, including improvements, security enhancements, and deprecated features, see the VMware PowerCLI Change Log. For more information on specific product features, see the VMware PowerCLI 11.5.0 User’s Guide. For more information on specific cmdlets, see the VMware PowerCLI 11.5.0 Cmdlet Reference.

Remember, updating your PowerCLI modules is now as easy as:

Update-Module VMware.PowerCLI

1	Update-Module VMware.PowerCLI

Let us know in the comments what you’re looking forward to most!

PowerCLI at VMworld Europe 2019

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It feels like VMworld US was just yesterday and yet, here we are, a month away from VMworld Europe! This year, VMworld continues to have all kinds of sessions related to PowerCLI. From the always popular PowerCLI Deep Dive to more specifically focused sessions on VMware Cloud on AWS, vSphere update lifecycle, vSAN, and even Horizon View. There’s also a very special session given by a member of the PowerCLI engineering team which gives an in-depth look at how new features are added automatically! If you haven’t already registered, the time is quickly slipping away!

Schedule builder is already live, so make sure to add the following sessions to your schedule and catch up with the PowerCLI team and all of the amazing PowerCLI community members!

Breakout Sessions

Session: HBI1729BE – PowerCLI Deep Dive
Date: Thursday, November 7, 10:30 – 11:30
Speakers: Luc Dekens & Kyle Ruddy
Luc and Kyle are back with another edition of the PowerCLI Deep Dive, where they’ll show you some of the advanced methods they use to make even the hardest of tasks look easy.

Session: HBI1463BE – VMware Cloud on AWS: Advanced Automation Techniques
Date: Wednesday, November 6, 15:30 – 16:30
Speakers: William Lam & Kyle Ruddy
William and Kyle will walk you through the available APIs and tooling for VMware Cloud on AWS, then demonstrate they can be used to automate all aspects of the SDDC lifecycle and workload consumption.

Session: HCI1864BE – Automating vSAN from CLI to API: PowerCLI, Govc, and Beyond
Date: Thursday, November 7, 09:00 – 10:00
Speakers: Andreas Scherr & Cedric Rajendran
Andreas and Cedric will show how to automate some of the routine vSAN tasks using the wide variety of APIs and CLIs available and at your disposal.

VMware {code} Sessions

Session: CODE2214E – How PowerCLI Makes Configuration Management Easy
Date: Tuesday, Novmeber 5, 11:00 – 12:00
Speaker: Kyle Ruddy
Kyle will cover some configuration management principles and then dive in to show the latest ways PowerCLI is using PowerShell DSC to make vSphere configuration management easy.

Session: CODE1817E – Automating vCenter Server Appliance Update Lifecycle
Date: Wednesday, November 6, 15:00 – 15:25
Speaker: David Stamen
David will show off his new community module for PowerCLI which can be used to ease the lifecycle management of the vCenter Server Appliance.

Session: CODE2649E – How PowerCLI Gives Day 1 Access to the Latest VMware APIs
Date: Wednesday, November 6, 17:00 – 17:25
Speaker: Nikola Klinkachev
Nikola, an engineer on the PowerCLI team, will provide a “look behind the curtain” when it comes to how PowerCLI can automatically interact with the latest and greatest APIs.

Session: CODE1316E – Horizon 7 Automation 101: How to Get Started with the Horizon API
Date: Thursday, November 7, 10:00 – 10:25
Speaker: Wouter Kursten
Wouter will provide an overview of the Horizon 7 API and how PowerCLI can be leveraged to simplify the automation process for those Horizon environments.

VMTN TechTalk Sessions

Session: VMTN5092E – Clones as a Service
Date: Wednesday, November 6, 12:45 – 13:00
Speaker: Dan Belmonte
Dan will cover how both linked clones and instant clones can be incredibly useful for development environments and how PowerCLI can be used to create them.

Hands on Labs

Lab: SPL-2012-01-SDC_E – VMware vSphere Automation – PowerCLI
Date: Anytime the HOL area is open and available
Get hands-on with VMware PowerCLI. Gain familiarity with the tool, and then dive deeper into the functionality available with real world examples. Both new and experienced users are sure to learn something new about automating their environments.

Session: ELW-2012-01-SDC_E – Expert-Led Workshop – VMware vSphere Automation – PowerCLI
Date: Monday, November 4, 14:00 – 15:30
Date: Thursday, November 07, 11:45 – 13:15
Speaker: Peter Kieren
Peter will show attendees how to get hands-on with VMware PowerCLI. You will gain familiarity with the tool, and then dive deeper into the functionality available with real world examples.

Summary

VMworld Europe continues to be the premier event in EMEA to learn about PowerCLI. Come hear directly from the PowerCLI team, as well as numerous community members, how you can harness PowerCLI to automate even the most difficult of tasks.

Make sure you’re registered for VMworld today!

New Release: PowerCLI 11.4.0

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August is always a great month when it comes to new releases, and this year is no different. Even before VMworld, there have already been announcements for vSphere 6.7 Update 3, NSX-T 2.4.2, and a new version of HCX. The PowerCLI team has one more exciting release for you in the form of PowerCLI 11.4.0!

PowerCLI 11.4.0 comes with a bunch of new improvements. The Horizon View module has been updated to support the newest release of Horizon View which is version 7.9. There are a handful of updates to the Storage module, including updates and three new cmdlets. Lastly, there are numerous updates to cmdlets in the HCX module.

PowerCLI 11.4.0 comes with the following updates:

Add support for Horizon View 7.9
Added new cmdlets to the Storage module
Updated Storage module cmdlets
Updated HCX module cmdlets

Let’s take a closer look at some of the updates.

Storage Module Updates

The Storage module received a number of new updates, many of which are there to support brand new features released with vSAN 6.7U3! The first improvement is to the Get/Set-VsanClusterConfiguration cmdlets. These two cmdlets can now access and make use of the newly added functionalities of Proactive Rebalance and vSphere Update Manager baseline preference.

Example of Get-VsanClusterConfiguration and Set-VsanClusterConfiguration in action:

It’s worth noting that those new properties will return no information, nor can you change them, until your vSAN cluster has been updated to version 6.7 U3, as noted in the above error message.

The Storage module also has a couple new cmdlets. The first is the Add-VsanObjectToRepairQueue cmdlet. This cmdlet can repair vSAN objects that are referenced when using the command. This functionality was formerly available with the Repair-VsanObject cmdlet, however this particular cmdlet has been modified to be an alias for Add-VsanObjectToRepairQueue. The other two new cmdlets are Get-VsanResyncingOverview and Get-VsanEnterMaintenanceMode. Both of these cmdlets operate only against vSAN clusters of version 6.7U3 or newer.

HCX Module Updates

The HCX module has seen a flurry of activity since its initial release, and PowerCLI 11.4.0 continues that trend. There are six cmdlets which have been updated to add new capabilities. The Get-HCXAppliance cmdlet returns new information about the current version of an appliance as well as any available versions which exist. This can be combined with the New-HCXAppliance cmdlet that will allow us to upgrade an appliance to one of the available versions. The Get-HCXContainer cmdlet now adds the ability to list containers of a “OrgVdc” type. The Get-HCXNetwork cmdlet adds the ability to view two more types of networks, NsxtSegment and OrgVdcNetwork. Then, there is the New-HCXNetworkExtension cmdlet that can now work with networks of type NsxtSegment. Lastly, we have Get-HCXServiceMesh which has a new property available to view the status of several services.

Example of Get-HCXAppliance and Get-HCXServiceMesh, specifically viewing the new ServiceStatus property:

A couple other issues were addressed with the HCX module as well. The Cmdlet Reference has been updated to reflect the .NET object type of an HCX Migration. Get-HCXServiceMesh and Get-HCXInterconnectStatus have both been updated to remedy issues. Lastly, the DestinationNetworkValue property now properly appears for replication objects.

Summary

This release of PowerCLI has some significant updates. PowerCLI 11.4.0 introduces new support for Horizon View 7.9, new functionality for vSAN 6.7 Update 3 objects, and numerous updates to the HCX module!

For more information on changes made in VMware PowerCLI 11.4.0, including improvements, security enhancements, and deprecated features, see the VMware PowerCLI Change Log. For more information on specific product features, see the VMware PowerCLI 11.4.0 User’s Guide. For more information on specific cmdlets, see the VMware PowerCLI 11.4.0 Cmdlet Reference.

Remember, updating your PowerCLI modules is now as easy as ‘Update-Module VMware.PowerCLI’.

Let us know in the comments what you’re looking forward to most!

PowerCLI at VMworld US 2019

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Would you believe it, VMworld is already right around the corner! This year, VMworld has all kinds of sessions related to PowerCLI. From the introduction and deep dive sessions to more specifically focused sessions on VMware Cloud on AWS, vSphere update lifecycle, vSAN, and even Horizon View. There’s also a very special session given by a member of the PowerCLI engineering team which gives a special look at how new features are added automatically! Plus, a bunch of community sourced sessions and the always fantastic Hands-on-Lab! If you haven’t already registered, the time is quickly ticking away!

Schedule builder is already live, so make sure to add the following sessions to your schedule and catch up with the PowerCLI team and all of the amazing PowerCLI community members! And if the session is already full, don’t worry. Join the waitlist and help us move these sessions to larger rooms!

Breakout Sessions

Session: HBI1743BU – Introduction to PowerCLI
Date: Monday, August 26, 02:30 PM – 03:30 PM
Speakers: Brian Bunke & Kyle Ruddy
Brian and Kyle will show how PowerCLI is one of the easiest ways to manage your environment and how you can easily get started in your own environments.

Session: HBI1729BU – PowerCLI Deep Dive
Date: Thursday, August 29, 12:00 PM – 01:00 PM
Speakers: Luc Dekens & Kyle Ruddy
Luc and Kyle are back with another edition of the PowerCLI Deep Dive, where they’ll show you some of the advanced methods they use to make even the hardest of tasks look easy.

Session: HBI1463BU – VMware Cloud on AWS: Advanced Automation Techniques
Date: Wednesday, August 28, 01:00 PM – 02:00 PM
Speakers: William Lam & Kyle Ruddy
William and Kyle will walk you through the available APIs and tooling for VMware Cloud on AWS, then demonstrate they can be used to automate all aspects of the SDDC lifecycle and workload consumption.

Session: HCI1864BU – Automating vSAN from CLI to API: PowerCLI, Govc, and Beyond
Date: Wednesday, August 28, 09:30 AM – 10:30 AM
Speakers: Cedric Rajendran & Dharmesh Bhatt
Cedric and Dharmesh will show how to automate some of the routine vSAN tasks using the wide variety of APIs and CLIs available and at your disposal.

Session: HCI1825BU – Automate VMware HCI Deployments at Any Scale with PowerCLI
Date: Wednesday, August 28, 02:00 PM – 03:00 PM
Speakers: Shane Limbach & Jase McCarty
Shane and Jase will show you how to harness the power of PowerCLI to build, manage, and report on your vSAN environment regardless of scale.

VMware {code} Sessions

Session: CODE2214U – How PowerCLI Makes Configuration Management Easy
Date: Tuesday, August 27, 01:00 PM – 02:00 PM
Speaker: Kyle Ruddy
Kyle will cover some configuration management principles and then dive in to show the latest ways PowerCLI is using PowerShell DSC to make vSphere configuration management easy.

Session: CODE1817UR – Automating vCenter Server Appliance Update Lifecycle
Date: Wednesday, August 28, 09:00 AM – 09:30 AM
Speaker: David Stamen
David will show off his new community module for PowerCLI which can be used to ease the lifecycle management of the vCenter Server Appliance.

Session: CODE2649U – How PowerCLI Gives Day 1 Access to the Latest VMware APIs
Date: Wednesday, August 28, 04:00 PM – 04:30 PM
Speaker: Nikola Klinkachev
Nikola, an engineer on the PowerCLI team, will provide a “look behind the curtain” when it comes to how PowerCLI can automatically interact with the latest and greatest APIs.

Session: CODE1316UR – Horizon 7 Automation 101: How to Get Started with the Horizon API
Date: Wednesday, August 28, 09:30 AM – 10:00 AM
Date: Thursday, August 29, 09:00 AM – 09:30 AM
Speaker: Jack McMichael
Jack will provide an overview of the Horizon 7 API and how PowerCLI can be leveraged to simplify the automation process for those Horizon environments.

VMTN TechTalk Sessions

Session: VMTN5040U – Beginning PowerShell from Cmdlet to Function
Date: Tuesday, August 27, 05:30 PM – 05:45 PM
Speaker: Mike Nelson
Mike will cover a quick introduction to PowerShell, as well as PowerCLI, to help you down the path of getting started with PowerShell.

Session: VMTN5004U – ReportCardPS – Create Pretty Reports Using PowerCLI and Clarity
Date: Wednesday, August 28, 01:00 PM – 01:15 PM
Speaker: Justin Sider
Justin will show you how to easily combine the reporting power of PowerCLI with the UI stylings of clarity to create amazing reports.

Session: VMTN5026U – Automating VDI Tasks, the story of the life of a VDI admin
Date: Thursday, August 29, 01:00 PM – 01:30 PM
Speaker: Chris Hildebrandt
Chris will tell you his personal story of how he learned to automate his daily tasks with, amongst other things, PowerCLI to make him more productive as a VDI administrator.

Hands on Labs

Lab: SPL-2012-01-SDC_U – VMware vSphere Automation – PowerCLI
Date: Anytime the HOL area is open and available
Get hands-on with VMware PowerCLI. Gain familiarity with the tool, and then dive deeper into the functionality available with real world examples. Both new and experienced users are sure to learn something new about automating their environments.

Session: ELW-2012-01-SDC_U – Expert-Led Workshop – VMware vSphere Automation – PowerCLI
Date: Tuesday, August 27, 02:15 PM – 03:45 PM
Date: Thursday, August 29, 08:30 AM – 10:00 AM
Speaker: Peter Kieren
Peter will show attendees how to get hands-on with VMware PowerCLI. You will gain familiarity with the tool, and then dive deeper into the functionality available with real world examples.

Summary

VMworld US 2019 continues to be the premier event to learn about PowerCLI. Come hear directly from the PowerCLI team, as well as numerous community members, how you can harness PowerCLI to automate even the most difficult of tasks.

Make sure you’re registered for VMworld today!

Check Out VMware Code’s Talking Code

1 Reply

There’s a new(-ish) series going on through VMware Code, it’s called Talking Code. This series has been taking a look at new features, such as Code Capture, as well as how to accomplish certain tasks in short, demo-based videos. PowerCLI has been featured in several of these videos already posted to the VMware Code blog and will continue to be included going forward.

Here’s a sampling of some of the PowerCLI based videos already available:

For a complete list of the videos in the Talking Code series, see the: Talking Code Archive

If there’s anything you would like to see covered in the future, let us know in the comments!

New Release: VMware PowerCLI 11.3.0

4 Replies

Today marks the release of VMware PowerCLI 11.3.0 and this one brings the count up to 732 different cmdlets. The combination of all these cmdlets allow us to manage and automate a majority of the VMware ecosystem! The HCX module receives the bulk of the new cmdlets, however there is also a new cmdlet to interact with the vSphere Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM) APIs. There is a new way to view opaque network types and a high-level method of promoting instant clones to full clones. Last, but certainly not least, this release also includes a handful of updates for reported issues and two deprecations.

PowerCLI 11.3.0 comes with the following updates:

Added 22 new cmdlets for HCX and SPBM management
Added support for vSphere 6.7 Update 2 to the VMware.VIM module
Added support for opaque networks to the Get-VirtualNetwork cmdlet
Added support for the creation of additional network adapter types
Added support for the high-level promotion of instant clones
Updated the handling of a Cluster’s ‘SpbmEnabled’ status
Updated the handling of bulk tagging assignments

Let’s take a more in-depth look at some of the updates.

Tag Improvements

vSphere tags are always a popular discussion. Normally, the conversation ends up being about performance. This update, with PowerCLI 11.3, allows us to make use of the backend API where we can perform bulk assignment of tags. This means that the New-TagAssignment cmdlet has been updated to allow for arrays to be passed for either the Entity or Tag properties. In my test environments, I am able to report anywhere from a 12x to 18x improvement in performance. Of course, the performance will vary by environment. The following is an example of running the same set of 100 vSphere tags to a single VM. In PowerCLI 11.3, the task took 1.771 seconds whereas in PowerCLI 11.2, it took 32.495 seconds. That’s a pretty impressive improvement.

For more information about general vSphere tag performance with PowerCLI, check out a recently released blog from the Performance team: Writing Performant Tagging Code

New Cmdlets for HCX

VMware HCX is best thought of as a swiss army knife – a single tool with multiple options to move your workloads in and out of the cloud. The HCX module was introduced just earlier this year, in PowerCLI 11.2.0, as the 21st module for PowerCLI. New in PowerCLI version 11.3.0, the module receives an additional 21 cmdlets to interact with your HCX deployment. A majority of the new cmdlets deal with profiles, which are used as a site’s deployment configurations for items like storage, compute, and networking. There are also new cmdlets to manage the HCX Service Mesh, which is composed of the source and destination sites.

A complete list of the newly added cmdlets:

Get/New/Remove/Set-HCXComputeProfile
Get-HCXInventoryCompute
Get-HCXInventoryDatastore
Get-HCXInventoryDVS
Get-HCXInventoryNetwork
Get-HCXNetworkBacking
Get/New/Remove/Set-HCXNetworkProfile
Get/New/Remove/Set-HCXServiceMesh
Get-HCXStorageProfile
New-HCXComputeProfileDVS
New-HCXComputeProfileNetwork
New-HCXServiceMeshDVS

More information on using the HCX module can be found in the following blog post: Getting Started with the HCX Module

Opaque Network Support

Another improvement to the PowerCLI 11.2 release was the addition of a new object type for opaque networks. These network types are the result of logical switches that have been created in NSX-T. That update allowed us to retrieve these objects through only low-level, direct API access, commands. With PowerCLI 11.3, the Get-VirtualNetwork cmdlet has been updated so we can now view opaque networks with a high-level cmdlet!

An example of using Get-VirtualNetwork to display distributed, opaque, and standard networks:

For some additional information about working with opaque networks in vCenter, see the following blog: Configuring VMs with Opaque Networks

Instant Clone Promotion

Instant Clone is a functionality which has been around VMware in one form or another for quite a while. First discussed as “VMFork”, going back as early as 2014, this allows us to immediately create a child VM based off of a presently powered on VM, which we can then viewe as a cloned VM in vCenter. vSphere 6.7 was the first release to have this available as a public feature, though it was only available through the API. This is where PowerCLI, and specifically version 11.3, comes into play because we can now make use of the Set-VM cmdlet combined with the PromoteDisks parameter against one of the available child VMs to create a fully cloned VM object. The selling point is that afterwards, there is no longer a dependency on that parent VM!

Look for more information about this great new functionality in a future blog post.

SPBM Updates

The last big update we’re going to cover is for those looking to automate the management of vSphere Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM) policies. The first update comes in the form of a new cmdlet named Get-SpbmView. This cmdlet gives us direct access to the available APIs for SPBM. In the example below, we can see the usage of this cmdlet to list out the available services and start to interact with the Replication Manager service to see the available methods.

The other update is to how the Get/Set-SpbmEntityConfiguration cmdlet operates. Both of these cmdlets can now display or modify policies for datastores. However, there is also a deprecation for cluster objects and whether they display an “SpbmEnabled” status. This is due to a change, which happened as of vSphere 6.0, where clusters always have a status of “Enabled.” Here is an example of using the Get-SpbmEntityConfiguration to display information about the specified datastore.

Summary

The second release of the year is here in the form of PowerCLI 11.3.0. This release adds 22 new cmdlets to help automate workload migrations and granular management of SPBM policies. There are new ways to manage network-based objects, whether those are networks themselves or network adapter types. We can also now upgrade an instant clone to a full clone with an easy to use, high-level cmdlet. Lastly, bulk tag assignment is now a supported mechanism of the New-TagAssignment cmdlet.

For more information on changes made in VMware PowerCLI 11.3.0, including improvements, security enhancements, and deprecated features, see the VMware PowerCLI Change Log. For more information on specific product features, see the VMware PowerCLI 11.3.0 User’s Guide. For more information on specific cmdlets, see the VMware PowerCLI 11.3.0 Cmdlet Reference.

Remember, updating your PowerCLI modules is now as easy as ‘Update-Module VMware.PowerCLI’.

Let us know in the comments what you’re most excited about!

New Release – DSC Resources for VMware 2.0

2 Replies

The Desired State Configuration (DSC) Resources for VMware was released late last year. This initial release was able to leverage the PowerShell DSC engine in order to declare configurations for a handful of ESXi host settings and a couple vCenter server settings. The response to these resources has been amazing! So amazing that over the last 7 months, there have been 64 issues and 74 pull requests. A result of all of that feedback, input, and code contributions brings us to the next release, version 2.0 of the DSC Resources for VMware!

The DSC Resources for VMware version 2.0 contains a number of new resources, lots of improvements, and a new way to access them. First and foremost, as requested, these resources are now available on the PowerShell Gallery! There are also a number of examples which have been added to the repository since the first release. In the root of the repo, there’s an ‘Examples’ folder which contains some examples of combining multiple resources into a single configuration. Then, within the resource itself, there’s a folder by the name of ‘Configurations’. This folder has example configurations of using these resources with configuration management utilities like Ansible, Chef, and Puppet. Lastly, there are 14 new resources for us to use!

Let’s walk through some of the new resources.

New Resources

These newly added resources can be easily categorized into the following buckets: Inventory, vSphere Standard Switch (vSS), and VMHost.

The new Inventory resources, which allow us to manage the existence of these object types, are:

Cluster
HACluster
DRSCluster
DatacenterFolder
Datacenter
Folder

The following is an example of using the Folder resource to manage a VM based folder, named Management, along with a folder nested in the first folder:

Folder "Folder_Management" {
    Server = $Server
    Credential = $Credential
    Name = Management
    Location = ''
    DatacenterName = 'DemoLab'
    DatacenterLocation = ''
    Ensure = 'Present'
    FolderType = 'VM'
    DependsOn = "[Datacenter]DemoLab"
}

Folder Folder_Management_VMware {
    Server = $Server
    Credential = $Credential
    Name = 'VMware'
    Location = 'Management'
    DatacenterName = 'DemoLab'
    DatacenterLocation = ''
    Ensure = 'Present'
    FolderType = 'VM'
    DependsOn = "[Folder]Folder_Management"
}

Folder "Folder_Management" {

Server = $Server

Credential = $Credential

Name = Management

Location = ''

DatacenterName = 'DemoLab'

DatacenterLocation = ''

Ensure = 'Present'

FolderType = 'VM'

DependsOn = "[Datacenter]DemoLab"

}

Folder Folder_Management_VMware {

Server = $Server

Credential = $Credential

Name = 'VMware'

Location = 'Management'

DatacenterName = 'DemoLab'

DatacenterLocation = ''

Ensure = 'Present'

FolderType = 'VM'

DependsOn = "[Folder]Folder_Management"

}

The new vSS resources, which allow us to manage a VMHost’s vSS configuration, are:

VMHostVss
VMHostVssBridge
VMHostVssSecurity
VMHostVssShaping
VMHostVssTeaming

The following is an example of using the VMHostVss resource to manage a vSS on a particular VMHost:

VMHostVss "esx01_vSS" {
    Name = $vmHost
    Server = $Server
    Credential = $Credential
    Ensure = 'Present'
    VssName = 'vSS_DSC'
    Mtu = 1500
}

VMHostVss "esx01_vSS" {

Name = $vmHost

Server = $Server

Credential = $Credential

Ensure = 'Present'

VssName = 'vSS_DSC'

Mtu = 1500

}

The new VMHost resources, which have been added to the already existing set of resources that manage VMHosts, are:

VMHostService
VMHostSettings
VMHostSyslog
VMHostAccount

The following is an example of using the VMHostService resource to manage an ESXi host’s SSH service to ensure it is running and the policy is set to automatic:

VMHostService "esx01_ssh" {
    Name = $Name
    Server = $Server
    Credential = $Credential
    Key = 'TSM-SSH'
    Policy = 'Automatic'
    Running = $true
}

VMHostService "esx01_ssh" {

Name = $Name

Server = $Server

Credential = $Credential

Key = 'TSM-SSH'

Policy = 'Automatic'

Running = $true

}

Here’s a demo which combines a number of the new resources for the following configuration:
Datacenter: DemoLab
Folder Structures:
Development - Linux - Windows Management - Linux - Windows - VMware Production - Linux - Windows

Summary

The DSC Resources for VMware have only been available for a short period of time, however they have made a tremendous impact! Over the last 7 months, there have been 64 issues and 74 pull requests to the GitHub repository. Today, we’re taking the culmination of that input and releasing the 2.0 version of these resources. This adds an additional 14 resources, a number of functionality improvements, and they have been added to the PowerShell Gallery!

I also want to say a special thank you to some of our community contributors: Luc Dekens, for his immense contributions to this release including having a hand in at least 8 of the new resources as well as Brett Johnson and Markus Fischbacher for their contributions as well!

To get started, it is now as simple to install as:

Find-Module -Name VMware.vSphereDSC | Install-Module

1	Find-Module -Name VMware.vSphereDSC \| Install-Module

For more information on this release, see the latest release page on the DSC Resources for VMware GitHub page.

Let us know in the comments how you’re using these in your environment and what resources you’re looking for next!

Automating VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC Cluster Lifecycle

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VMware Cloud on AWS has the ability to add new clusters to an existing SDDC. This is most useful for workload separation. A cluster could be specified as the failover resource, a development environment, and so forth. However, as of Version 1.6, there’s a new reason to add new clusters to an SDDC: custom core counts! The ability to control the CPU count for hosts in a cluster is extremely important when it comes to running mission-critical applications that happen to be licensed per-core. Even better, it is extremely easy to automate the lifecycle of a cluster with PowerCLI.

Let’s check out some examples of how we can manage clusters within the VMware Cloud on AWS service.

Environment Setup

As part of this blog, I will be using a previously deployed SDDC and will begin by working with the low-level VMC module to perform these tasks. We will start by opening a PowerShell session and authenticating to the VMware Cloud on AWS service with our API Token. Then, we need to identify a couple services to use. These services will be the following:

com.vmware.vmc.orgs
com.vmware.vmc.orgs.sddcs
com.vmware.vmc.orgs.sddcs.clusters
com.vmware.vmc.orgs.tasks

One last setup requirement, we will need to grab IDs for the Organization and SDDC which we’ll be working with.

We can summarize the above criteria with the following code:

# Connect to the VMware Cloud on AWS Service
Connect-VMC -RefreshToken "xxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxx"
# Reference Orgs service and populate a variable with the desired Org
$orgSvc = Get-VmcService -Name com.vmware.vmc.orgs
$org = $orgSvc.List() | select -first 1
# Reference Sddcs service and populate a variable with the desired SDDC
$sddcSvc = Get-VmcService -Name com.vmware.vmc.orgs.sddcs
$sddc = $sddcSvc.List($org.Id) | select -first 1
# Reference Clusters service
$sddcClusterSvc = Get-VmcService -Name com.vmware.vmc.orgs.sddcs.clusters
# Reference Tasks service
$taskSvc = Get-VmcService -Name com.vmware.vmc.orgs.tasks

# Connect to the VMware Cloud on AWS Service

Connect-VMC -RefreshToken "xxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxx"

# Reference Orgs service and populate a variable with the desired Org

$orgSvc = Get-VmcService -Name com.vmware.vmc.orgs

$org = $orgSvc.List() | select -first 1

# Reference Sddcs service and populate a variable with the desired SDDC

$sddcSvc = Get-VmcService -Name com.vmware.vmc.orgs.sddcs

$sddc = $sddcSvc.List($org.Id) | select -first 1

# Reference Clusters service

$sddcClusterSvc = Get-VmcService -Name com.vmware.vmc.orgs.sddcs.clusters

# Reference Tasks service

$taskSvc = Get-VmcService -Name com.vmware.vmc.orgs.tasks

If any of these commands seem foreign, please check out the following blog post for more information: Getting Started with the VMware Cloud on AWS Module

SDDC Cluster Service Overview

We will be using the SDDC Clusters service, and therefore the sddcClusterSvc variable. In order to discover the actions we can perform with the Clusters service, we will take the output from the sddcClusterSvc variable and pipeline that into the Get-Member cmdlet:

$sddcClusterSvc | Get-Member

1	$sddcClusterSvc \| Get-Member

Here we can see that there are two methods available, create and delete. As part of this blog post, we will walk through the usage of these two methods in the following sections. However, there’s a method or two that are missing, get and list. We can pull that information directly from the get method on the SDDC itself. The cluster information is available by referencing the resource_config property, then the clusters property.

To pull out some basic cluster information, we can use the following command:

$sddc.resource_config.clusters | select cluster_id, cluster_name, cluster_state

1	$sddc.resource_config.clusters \| select cluster_id, cluster_name, cluster_state

Cluster Creation

For the first example, we have been tasked with creating a new cluster within our SDDC.

In order to populate the parameters for the create method, we will make use of the Help property for the SDDC Cluster service stored in the sddcClusterSvc variable. We can identify all of the parameters required for the create method, including an Org ID, SDDC ID, and the cluster configuration specification, with the following command:

$sddcClusterSvc.Help.create

1	$sddcClusterSvc.Help.create

We already have our Org ID and SDDC ID stored in a variable. Next, we need to create a cluster config spec for the new cluster. If we take the prior command and append the ‘cluster_config’ property, we can view all of the properties available to populate the spec. Then, by again using ‘Get-Member’, we can see that the cluster_config has a method of create which we can use to create the object for that particular specification.

We’ll then store the spec in a variable named sddcClusterCreateSpec. Based on the prior screenshot, there’s only one required property. This property is for the desired number of hosts for the new cluster. We’ll populate that property with a value of ‘1’, then run our create method to start the creation of the new cluster.

Putting the above together, we can create a new cluster with a single host using the following code:

# Create Cluster Config spec and populating the required properties
$sddcClusterCreateSpec = $sddcClusterSvc.Help.create.cluster_config.Create()
$sddcClusterCreateSpec.num_hosts = 1
# Perform the Create action and output some basic information from the returned task
$sddcClusterTask = $sddcClusterSvc.Create($org.Id, $sddc.Id, $sddcClusterCreateSpec)
$sddcClusterTask | Select-Object Id,Task_Type,Status,Created

# Create Cluster Config spec and populating the required properties

$sddcClusterCreateSpec = $sddcClusterSvc.Help.create.cluster_config.Create()

$sddcClusterCreateSpec.num_hosts = 1

# Perform the Create action and output some basic information from the returned task

$sddcClusterTask = $sddcClusterSvc.Create($org.Id, $sddc.Id, $sddcClusterCreateSpec)

$sddcClusterTask | Select-Object Id,Task_Type,Status,Created

If we login to the VMware Cloud on AWS Cloud Console, we should see the following in our SDDC’s Summary tab:

Cluster Creation – Custom Core Count

For the second example, we have been tasked with creating another new cluster within our SDDC. However, this time, we only want a specific core count to be available. We will use our prior example and add-on to the specification by setting the host_cpu_cores_count to be a value of 8, 16, 36, or 48, depending on the host type. We can do this by adding the following command to the existing workflow:

$sddcClusterCreateSpec.host_cpu_cores_count = 8

1	$sddcClusterCreateSpec.host_cpu_cores_count = 8

Putting the prior example together with the above command, we can create a new cluster with a single host that’s been configured with a CPU core count of 8 using the following code:

# Create Cluster Config spec and populating the required properties
$sddcClusterCreateSpec = $sddcClusterSvc.Help.create.cluster_config.Create()
$sddcClusterCreateSpec.host_cpu_cores_count = 8 
$sddcClusterCreateSpec.num_hosts = 1
# Perform the Create action and output some basic information from the returned task
$sddcClusterTask = $sddcClusterSvc.Create($org.Id, $sddc.Id, $sddcClusterCreateSpec)
$sddcClusterTask | Select-Object Id,Task_Type,Status,Created

# Create Cluster Config spec and populating the required properties

$sddcClusterCreateSpec = $sddcClusterSvc.Help.create.cluster_config.Create()

$sddcClusterCreateSpec.host_cpu_cores_count = 8

$sddcClusterCreateSpec.num_hosts = 1

# Perform the Create action and output some basic information from the returned task

$sddcClusterTask = $sddcClusterSvc.Create($org.Id, $sddc.Id, $sddcClusterCreateSpec)

$sddcClusterTask | Select-Object Id,Task_Type,Status,Created

Cluster Removal

For the third example, we have been tasked with deleting the first cluster we created, Cluster-2. Making use of the Help property from the SDDC Cluster service, we can run the following command to find out what parameters the delete method requires:

$sddcClusterSvc.Help.delete

1	$sddcClusterSvc.Help.delete

We can see that we have three parameters to enter: Org ID, SDDC ID, and Cluster ID. We still have the first two stored in variables, so we need to obtain the Cluster ID. If we remember back to the SDDC Cluster Service Overview section, there’s no list or get methods for the SDDC Cluster service. Therefore, we need to refresh our sddc variable and return back the updated list of clusters to obtain the ID. We can do that with the following commands:

$sddc = $sddcSvc.List($org.Id)
$sddc.resource_config.clusters | select cluster_id, cluster_name, cluster_state

1 2	$sddc = $sddcSvc.List($org.Id) $sddc.resource_config.clusters \| select cluster_id, cluster_name, cluster_state

We will then store the cluster information for only Cluster-2, by filtering the cluster_name property with a where statement and storing it in a variable by the name of cluster. Then, we’re ready to run the delete method. We can do that with the following commands:

$cluster = $sddc.resource_config.clusters | where {$_.cluster_name -eq 'Cluster-2'}
$sddcClusterTask = $sddcClusterSvc.delete($org.id, $sddc.id, $cluster.cluster_id)

1 2	$cluster = $sddc.resource_config.clusters \| where {$_.cluster_name -eq 'Cluster-2'} $sddcClusterTask = $sddcClusterSvc.delete($org.id, $sddc.id, $cluster.cluster_id)

Putting the above together, we can delete the newly created Cluster-2 with the following code:

# Update SDDC variable and filter the clusters for only Cluster-2
$sddc = $sddcSvc.List($org.Id)
$cluster = $sddc.resource_config.clusters | where {$_.cluster_name -eq 'Cluster-2'}
# Perform the Delete action and output some basic information from the returned task
$sddcClusterTask = $sddcClusterSvc.delete($org.id, $sddc.id, $cluster.cluster_id)
$sddcClusterTask | Select-Object Id,Task_Type,Status,Created

# Update SDDC variable and filter the clusters for only Cluster-2

$sddc = $sddcSvc.List($org.Id)

$cluster = $sddc.resource_config.clusters | where {$_.cluster_name -eq 'Cluster-2'}

# Perform the Delete action and output some basic information from the returned task

$sddcClusterTask = $sddcClusterSvc.delete($org.id, $sddc.id, $cluster.cluster_id)

$sddcClusterTask | Select-Object Id,Task_Type,Status,Created

VMC Community Module Update

Another option to perform the above tasks is with the VMware.VMC community module, which is available on the PowerCLI Community Repository as well as the PowerShell Gallery. I have updated the module to include the following advanced functions:

Get-VMCSDDCCluster
New-VMCSDDCCluster
Remove-VMCSDDCCluster

The only difference between the above sections and these functions, these functions expect names instead of IDs as input. Otherwise, they work exactly as you would expect. An example of them in use:

Summary

VMware Cloud on AWS based SDDCs can contain multiple clusters, which is beneficial for a couple reasons. First, workload separation. A cluster could be specified as the failover resource, a development environment, and more. Second, and new as of Version 1.6, these clusters can be deployed with a specific amount of CPU cores. This control is certainly important when it comes to running mission-critical applications that happen to be licensed per-core. All of the cluster actions are available via the VMware Cloud on AWS APIs, and therefore PowerCLI as well! This blog post walked us through how to identify the deployed clusters, deploy new clusters, and remove clusters which are no longer needed.

Let us know in the comments how you’re making use of additional clusters in your automation workflows!

PowerCLI is the best tool for automating management and configuration of VMware vSphere

VM Reconfiguration Alarm Creation

Listing Active Alarms

Summary

Creating New 1 Host SDDC

Creating New 3-Host SDDC

Viewing SDDC Information

Host Capacity Management

Removing SDDCs

More Updates

Summary

Content Library Management Update

vCenter Alarm Management Update

VMware Cloud on AWS Module Update

VMware Core Module Update

Summary

Breakout Sessions

VMware {code} Sessions

VMTN TechTalk Sessions

Hands on Labs

Summary

Storage Module Updates

HCX Module Updates

Summary

Breakout Sessions

VMware {code} Sessions

VMTN TechTalk Sessions

Hands on Labs

Summary

Tag Improvements

New Cmdlets for HCX

Opaque Network Support

Instant Clone Promotion

SPBM Updates

Summary

New Resources

Summary

Environment Setup

SDDC Cluster Service Overview

Cluster Creation

Cluster Creation – Custom Core Count

Cluster Removal

VMC Community Module Update

Summary