Continuing our new blog series that spotlights individuals who use PowerCLI, how they learned it, and what they’ve done with it, I am pleased today to spotlight a major contributor to the PowerCLI community, Luc Dekens!
Customer Spotlight – A little about Luc
- Name: Luc Dekens
- Twitter: @LucD22
- Blog: http://lucd.info
- Github: https://github.com/lucdekens
- Current City: Alken, Belgium
- Works for: Eurocontrol Maastricht
- Job Title: Systems Engineer
- Years using PowerCLI: 9 years
Luc is a Systems Engineer for Eurocontrol, a European Organisation for the Security of Air Navigation. He has been in IT for more than 25 years. He started off in a mainframe environment and evolved along to Windows and Linux environments. Luc is a 7-time vExpert and a 2-year PowerShell MVP. He has presented several sessions at VMworld US & EMEA and at local VMUG meetings. He co-authored the VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference book. His blog is called LucD notes.
How did you learn PowerCLI in the beginning?
While I was looking for a tool to help us automate our virtualisation platform, a Google search, yes, I was feeling lucky, drew my attention to a PowerShell PSSnapin called VI Toolkit. We had started using PowerShell in our environment in 2006, so this PSSnapin was a gift from heaven.
At VMware TSX (Technical Solutions Exchange) 2007 in Nice, I attended a session by Carter Shanklin, then the PM for the product, and afterwards we had a lengthy discussion about the potential merits of the free product. I was admitted to the beta, and from there on it kind of became an avalanche.
What have been three accomplishments, scripts, or major wins for your job because of PowerCLI?
There have been quite a few scripts that turned out useful for me or others. Just to name a few:
1. Raiders of the Lost VMX: which allows one to find orphaned VMs on datastores
2. PowerCLI and vSphere Statistics: a series on using vSphere performance data from PowerCLI
3. Export-Xls: a function to create Excel spreadsheets with worksheets and graphs
Any other words of wisdom you’d like to share with the community?
- When you want to start using/learning PowerShell and PowerCLI, don’t hesitate, just dive in. The language is easy to learn and has provisions for starters, intermediates and experienced users.
- There is hardly anything to memorise, Get-Help is one of my favorite Cmdlets.
- Most importantly there is a huge community that is very willing to help you if you get stuck.
A great spotlight with Luc. What Luc didn’t mention is that he is also the top contributor in the VMware VMTN PowerCLI communities forum with 62,525 points. To put this into perspective, the next top contributor has 6,300 points. A big thanks Luc for your contributions to the PowerCLI community!
