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Monthly Archives: May 2016

Blogger Talk Show–Pilot Episode on PowerCLI

Here at VMware we are always trying to make sure we give you the information you need in a way that you can best consume it.

With this in mind, a little while ago I was asked to take part in a pilot for a new talk show VMware is looking to gain feedback on, this gives us the chance to give you more information in a less formal way and you to learn more about a given subject.

The initial talk show is a little rough around the edges but please do take 30 minutes out of your busy schedule to check it out and perhaps learn a little more about PowerCLI and how to work with VMs in particular.

Watch the video

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Using the entire API for vRealize Operations via PowerCLI

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Previously we showed you how to use the useful cmdlets available with the PowerCLI vRealize Operations Manager (vR Ops) module, but as we also explained there are only a few cmdlets at the moment and anyone who knows vR Ops will know that there is a lot more functionality than is provided by those cmdlets.

But don’t worry, it is possible to access the entire vR Ops REST API! PowerCLI gives us the ability to expand the capability of the module to perform many more tasks that aren’t available via the included cmdlets.

In this blog post, which is a continuation of my previous blog posts on the PowerCLI vR Ops module, I will explain how to access the entire vR Ops public REST API via PowerCLI. Before I begin, it will be helpful to cover some basic information about the vR Ops REST API.

The API is available via the base URI of https://{vrops-IP}/suite-api and if you browse to this link the documentation is available. For the most part, the API is pretty well documented with examples for usage including payloads for XML and JSON. Below is a screenshot of the XML request body example for the performAction method.

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Working with Recommendations and Statistics in vR OPs with PowerCLI

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In our previous post you learned how to get started with using PowerCLI against vR Ops and how to use the cmdlets to work with alerts, in this post we take you a step further an learn how to take the work from the previous post and use it with Recommendations and Statistics from vR Ops.

As part of an alert which we discussed previously, vR Ops provides recommendations that guide you to possible solutions. These recommendations are available as well via the Get-OMRecommendation cmdlet. Continuing with the example, now that I have taken ownership of an alert I can easily grab the recommendation.

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Getting started with PowerCLI for vRealize Operations (vR OPs)

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I recently took some time to explore the PowerCLI module for vRealize Operations Manager (vR Ops). This module was released with PowerCLI 6.0 R2 last year and I can say that after a test drive I am really impressed at the capabilities of this new module. A useful set of cmdlets are provided and the entire vR Ops public API is accessible through this module.

In this blog post, I will cover some of the basics of the module and give some examples of usage including programmatically resolving an alert condition on a virtual machine. In these examples I am using PowerCLI 6.3 Release 1 with vRealize Operations Manager 6.2. I will follow this up with a more in-depth blog post explaining how the vR Ops API can be leveraged via PowerCLI.

To begin, the available cmdlets for the module (which is named “VMware.VimAutomation.vROps”) are shown below.

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New Book: PowerCLI Essentials by Chris Halverson

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What angle does this book give on PowerCLI?

The book covers where to get PowerCLI and its history, including version differences and their change logs. Developing single line scripts into longer ones, reusable code and how to document your scripting.

Bridging scripts that pull key components of VMware scripting and incorporating Windows based calls in the same script, an introduction to vRealize Orchestrator and PowerShell Workflows and lastly incorporating PowerShell into other VMware products.

Who should buy this book, beginners, experts or all?

As this is an essentials book, the intended audience is the beginners to intermediate skill set, although I hope some points will be useful to even the most seasoned PowerShell scripter. This being said the ideal reader will be the VMware Administrator or the Windows Administrator that works with VMware products on a daily basis.