Posted by
Alan Renouf
Technical Marketing
How many times have you built a test lab, perhaps you are trying out nested virtualization, which is very cool by the way!
Whilst doing this myself I normally come across an issue where my DNS is not 100% correct, normally I end up editing my hosts file to add entries which define my vSphere hosts just so I can open a console…
Is this a familiar sight ?
Whilst doing this recently I had to add a large number of entries to my hosts file so that I could open the console on some of the VMs, as always I found an easy way than manually adding each host reference one by one. PowerShell.
With the following script I was easily able to pull each host name and IP address and update the hosts file automatically:
The Script
Connect-ViServer MyvCenter
$hostsfilelocation = $env:SystemRoot + "\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts"
$hostsfile = Get-Content $hostsfilelocation
Foreach ($line in (Get-VMHost | Get-VMHostNetworkAdapter -Name vmk0 | Foreach { Write "$($_.IP)`t$($_.VMhost)"})){
If ($Hostsfile -notcontains $line) {
$hostsfile = $Hostsfile + $line
Write-Host "Adding… $line"
}
}
$hostsfile | Set-Content $hostsfilelocation –Force
In Action
Ultimately I ended up with a hosts file which included an entry for each of my hosts and a working console screen !
Note: If you have UAC enabled on windows you will need to right click the PowerCLI Icon and choose “Run as Administrator” so it has the permission to edit the hosts file.
I hope this helps anyone who is manually still adding each entry into their hosts file.
