It is once again our pleasure to introduce the next version of PowerCLI and all of the features and enhancements that come along with it.
I am pleased to announce that PowerCLI 6.0 R2 is now Generally Available to the public. This release is full of enhancements, improvements, and additional product extensiblity. I urge each of you to take a look through the release notes as well after reading this post to get a more full understanding of what we’ve accomplished to help you out in your day-to-day administration.
The customer has once again spoken and we are happy to inform you that a number of the changes and improvements are a direct result of customer feedback. We continue to welcome feedback on not just PowerCLI, but also your specific use-cases and how you leverage PowerCLI on a daily basis. All of this information is then used to help guide us on the certain future plans and features of PowerCLI. Keep that feedback coming!
What’s New
Modules – In continuation of our plans to convert all snap-ins to modules, we have converted several more snap-ins for this release.
- License – We have converted the License snap-in to a module, lowering the current number of PowerCLI snap-ins included in this release.
- vSphere Update Manager (VUM) – The VUM component used to be a separate downloadable snap-in. In this release we have taken the VUM component, converted it to a module, and included it into the core PowerCLI distribution as an additional installation option.
**Note** VUM is now supported back to VUM 5.5. All previous versions of VUM PowerCLI should be un-installed before installing this version. **
In PowerCLI 6.0 R1 we introduced a hybrid PowerCLI install as we started the conversion of snap-ins to modules. With this comes the need to add some logic into your existing scripts to determine whether or not to add snap-ins or modules (if the machine running the script is using PowerCLI 5.8 or older, the script must add the snap-ins, if it is running PowerCLI 6.0 or newer, it should be importing the modules). The installer set a user PSModulePath for the new modules, which caused errors for users that shared a single machine. This release has fixed that issue and now adds the modules to the System PSModulePath, thereby allowing any user of the machine the benefits of the PowerCLI 6.0 Modules without needing to adjust the module path manually.
Extensibility – We are pleased to announce the addition of the vRealize Operations module. We received quite a bit of feedback that customers wanted the ability to extend PowerCLI into vROPS. With this release, you now have full access to the entire Public API.
- vRealize Operations (6.0.3 and newer at the moment)
- Cmdlets: We have included 12 new cmdlets in this release to allow users to quickly and easily begin interacting with their vROPs environments.
- API: As we tend to do, we have given users the ability to access the entire public API of vROPs, allowing users the flexibility to create their own advanced functions and invoke API calls that are not covered by the current cmdlets we’ve created (we would love to see what you end up doing with this).
There will be several blog posts released shortly on using these new cmdlets and interacting with the API. STAY TUNED!
vCloud Air – in PowerCLI 6.0 R1 we released the vCloud Air cmdlets allowing users to connect to their vCloud Air accounts. This however, did not apply to On-Demand accounts until now.
- On Demand: You can now connect to on-demand accounts using the Connect-PIServer and adding the -VCA parameter and then using Get-PIComputeInstance cmdlet.
- New Cmdlet: Get-OrgVdcNetwork has been created to allow users the ability to work with OrgVDC Networks.
Host Hardware Information – We’ve had a number of people ask for the ability to have a little easier visibility into host hardware information. We have created two new cmdlets to satisfy this need.
- Get-VMHostHardware: This cmdlet allows you to see host information including the Manufacturer, Model, Serial, AssetTag, BiosVersion, and more.
- Get-VMHostPCIDevice: This cmdlet lists all the PCI devices of the host.
Storage enhancements –
- VASA Cmdlets: VMware vSphere API for Storage Awareness has received new cmdlets to work with Vasa providers and to retrieve the Vasa storage array.
- NFS 4.1 Cmdlets: These cmdlets are used for working with NFS users.
- VAIO filters Cmdlet: This cmdlet will allow users to set their VAIO filters.
Other changes
- Starting Directory: Ever notice how when you start PowerCLI the starting path is the PowerCLI folder, which takes up most of the command line? We’ve fixed that. PowerCLI will now start from the root of the installation drive (for most people it will be C:\).
- vCloud Director 8.0: PowerCLI supports the vCloud Director 8.0 features which are provided by the backwards compatibility agreement of the VCD API.
- Site Recover Manager 6.1: PowerCLI now supports SRM 6.1 and its related functionality, including the ability to discover SRM servers when they are deployed in a “shared recovery model”
- Other general bug fixes and performance enhancements on various PowerCLI cmdlets.
More Info
For more information on changes made in vSphere PowerCLI 6.0 Release 2, including improvements, security enhancements, and deprecated features, see the vSphere PowerCLI Change Log. For more information on specific product features, see the VMware vSphere PowerCLI 6.0 Release 2 User’s Guide. For more information on specific cmdlets, see the VMware vSphere PowerCLI 6.0 Release 2 Cmdlet Reference.
Download
You can find the PowerCLI 6.0 Release 2 build HERE:
