If you' haven’t seen Joel “Jaykul” Bennett’s Windows Automation Snapin for PowerShell (WASP) you really need to check it out. WASP lets you automate UI interactions with PowerShell. You can select windows, send mouse clicks, keystrokes, and a whole lot more. Think of it as AutoIt with a much, much better scripting language underneath.
This has a lot of implications for VMware users. For example, sometimes when you upgrade VMware Tools you’ll get a message asking you if you want to reboot, or other messages that can block the upgrade. Right now, console interaction is the only way to deal with these. Another example is if you upgrade your VM’s virtual hardware from version 4 to version 7. This causes lots of driver upgrades that Windows will complain about. With WASP you can dismiss all of these pop-ups automatically with no console interaction.
If you combine WASP with the VI Toolkit’s upcoming ability to run scripts inside guests you’ll be able to do all this automation from a single command line! In fact, this is one of the things we’ll be showing off at VMworld Europe, so if you’re there be sure not to miss it.
