It’s a big week for PowerCLI! We’re closing out 2018 with several new releases. The new PowerShell DSC Resources for VMware came out last week. PowerCLI 11.1.0 was released earlier today. Now, we also have a brand-new Fling to help bridge the gap between the low-level cmdlets already available and the high-level cmdlets that are so easy to use. The PowerCLI Preview for VMware Cloud on AWS adds 14 new high-level cmdlets which are used in combination with the existing VMware.VimAutomation.VMC module.
What do I mean by ‘high-level’ cmdlets? There are generally two forms of cmdlets available through PowerCLI, high-level and low-level. High-level cmdlets abstract the underlying API calls and provide an easy to use and understand cmdlet, like Get-SDDC. Based on that, you can assume the output will be SDDCs within your VMware Cloud on AWS environment. However, every API call does not have a corresponding high-level cmdlet and that’s where the low-level cmdlets come into play. Low-level cmdlets interact directly with the API and therefore have complete coverage of the available API calls. An example of a low-level cmdlet would be Get-View, or in the case of the VMC module it would be Get-VmcService. More information about the low-level cmdlet usage of the VMC module is available in the following blog post: Getting Started with the VMware Cloud on AWS Module
Why is this being released as a fling? Much like the NSX-T preview module released earlier this year, we’re trying a new approach to creating cmdlets based on the APIs. Essentially, we take the VMC API swagger specification and programmatically create the entire module. It’s early in this new development process and we know there is the potential for issues and things that may or may-not make sense.
Another reason for it being a fling, we need your feedback! What cmdlets are you using the most? What should the output look like? What cmdlets aren’t working the way you think they should? What cmdlets are missing? As well as any other feedback you can come up with! The preference is to leave the feedback on the Fling’s comments page. However, if you post it as a comment here, I’ll make sure the right people receive it.
With that said, let’s get started using this new module!
Getting Started
Before we dive right in, the following section is going to be using a Windows environment. However, both the existing VMC module as well as the new VMC Preview module are multi-platform and can be used with PowerShell Core!
First, we’ll need to head out to the VMware Flings site, browse for the fling and download the zip file. Direct link: PowerCLI Preview for VMware Cloud on AWS
Next, extract the module and place it into one of your $PSModule directories. Better yet, do it with PowerShell:
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Expand-Archive -Path $env:USERPROFILE\Downloads\PowerCliPreviewForVmwareCloudOnAws-1.0.0-11171858.zip -DestinationPath $env:USERPROFILE\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules |
We can then verify the module was placed in the proper location and is available for us to use:
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Get-Module -Name *VMC* -ListAvailable |
Note: If you don’t see those two modules, you probably need to install the latest version of PowerCLI. Walkthroughs on how to do that are available:
Now that we can see the module, I would suggest browsing through the new cmdlets available. We can do that with the following command:
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Get-Command -Module VMware.VimAutomation.VmcPreview |
One last step before starting to use the new cmdlets, we need to authenticate to the VMware Cloud on AWS service. This requires the Connect-VMC cmdlet, which is available as part of the VMware.VimAutomation.VMC module, and our Refresh Token from the Account section of the VMware Cloud on AWS Cloud Console. We can then authenticate with the following command:
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Connect-Vmc -RefreshToken xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx |
We are now authenticated and ready to start pulling information from the environment. Following along with the prior blog post, let’s start by pulling information about our organization. We can do that with the Get-Organization cmdlet.
We can clean up the output through the use of the Select-Object cmdlet with the following command:
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Get-Organization | Select-Object -Property Id, DisplayName |
Another item we looked at in the last blog post, and the next logical step, SDDCs. The Get-Sddc cmdlet can be used, however it does require the addition of an Organization ID. I’ll store the Org ID from the prior step in a variable named orgId and then just jump to the cleaned-up view by using the following command to list the SDDC/s in the Org:
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Get-Sddc -OrdId $orgId | Select-Object Id,Name,SddcType,SddcState |
Last thing I want to cover, these cmdlets make use of objects just like standard PowerCLI cmdlets do. Specific to the SDDC, we can access additional information such as what AWS Region and Availability Zone/s are in use, NSX information like the Manager URL (which will be important in a later blog post), and what the vCenter URL is. All of that information happens to be available in the ResourceConfig property of an SDDC. We can retrieve that information with the following command:
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$sddc.ResourceConfig | Select-Object -Property Region,NsxMgrUrl,VcUrl |
Summary
There’s a great new fling available called the PowerCLI Preview for VMware Cloud on AWS. This fling adds an additional 14 high-level cmdlets for VMware Cloud on AWS, like Get-Organization and Get-Sddc, which means that automating VMware Cloud on AWS has never been easier!
As with all of our Flings, please leave feedback on the Comments section! We want to know what you think. What cmdlets are you using the most? What should the output look like? What cmdlets aren’t working the way you think they should? What cmdlets are missing? As well as any other feedback you can come up with!
