PowerCLI 13 is now GA!

We are excited to announce that PowerCLI 13.0 was officially released today. It is a major release full of new and exciting features. Here is what you can find in the new PowerCLI 13:

• PowerCLI is now fully multi-platform!
• The vCD module has been updated to support vCD 10.4 and some new features have been added to it.
• Support for vSAN ESA has been added to the vSAN module.
• OS customization spec support has been updated to support IPv6 and customization scripts.
• Seed checkpoint and custom attributes support have been added to the HCX module.
• vSphere and Horizon modules have been updated to support the latest API features of vSphere 8 and Horizon 8 2209.

Let’s take a closer look at some of these features.

Fully Multi-platform PowerCLI

We have started the PowerCLI multi-platform journey back in 2018, just months after Microsoft released the first multi-platform version of PowerShell. Since then, we have gradually improved the multi-platform support by porting more and more modules.

Now we’re happy to announce that PowerCLI 13 is the first fully multi-platform version of PowerCLI. We have ported the last two Windows-only modules – ImageBuilder and AutoDeploy – and now they can run on all supported platforms.

To do that we have made some changes. Since Python is mandatory for the ImageBuilder module to run, we have decided not to bring Python with PowerCLI anymore, but to add it as a prerequisite for using the ImageBuilder module. So in PowerCLI 13, if you are using this module, you will need to have Python 3.7 installed on your machine. You will also need to install some additional packages in Python that the module uses (six, psutil, lxml, pyopenssl). We have added instructions in the PowerCLI User’s Guide on how to install these on all supported platforms. We have also introduced a PowerCLI setting that allows you to set the path to the Python 3.7 installation. For this setting you can use

VMware Cloud Director module updates

We have made several improvements in the vCD module in PowerCLI 13. First of all we updated the module to work with vCD 10.4 as well as to support the API features of vCD 10.4 (API version 37.0). But that’s not all. We have also extended some cmdlets with new parameters and parameter sets. For example, we have extended the New-CIVM cmdlet with a new parameter set that allows the creation of a blank VM, as well as the New-OrgVdc cmdlet with a new -StorageProfile parameter. We have also extended the Get-NetworkPool cmdlet to return the NSX-T-backed network pools.

Following some removals on the API side, we have removed the Get/New/Set/Remove-OrgNetwork cmdlets, which were replaced by the Get/New/Set/Remove-OrgVdcNetwork a long time ago.

VMware vSAN Express Storage Architecture™ support

In PowerCLI 13 we’re also adding support for the new vSAN ESA. You can read more about this new vSAN architecture here. We have introduced several new cmdlets (Get-VsanEsaEligibleDisk and Add/Get/Remove-VsanStoragePoolDisk) and extended some existing ones (New/Set-Cluster and Get-VsanClusterConfiguration) to enable support for vSAN ESA.

NSX module updates

To encourage the usage of the new NSX SDK module, we have added a dedicated chapter for it in the PowerCLI user’s guide. In PowerCLI 13 we are also deprecating the old way of accessing the NSX APIs through the Get-NsxtPolicyService, Get-NsxtGlobalManagerService and Get-VmcSddcNetworkService cmdlets.

HCX improvements

In PowerCLI 13 we’re also adding some new HCX features. The HCX module now allows enabling seed checkpoint and migration of custom attributes.

Certificate issue while upgrading

As a quick reminder – you may encounter a certificate error while updating the existing PowerCLI module via Update-Module, as discussed here. This is because we replaced the certificate that we used to sign the modules with a new one from a new publisher. To resolve this issue, delete the existing module and re-install the module with the Install-Module cmdlet.

Summary

PowerCLI 13 is the first fully multi-platform PowerCLI version, which also comes with updated vCD support, cmdlets for vSAN ESA and much more. For a full list of all improvements and fixes, check the PowerCLI 13.0 release notes. For more information on specific cmdlets, see the PowerCLI Cmdlet Reference.

Let us know in the comments what you think of this release!