After the exciting first release of Power Actions last week, this week brings another new release – PowerCLI 13.1.
With this release, we’re delivering one of the most requested PowerCLI features – a PowerCLI module for vSphere Replication. It is built on the same technology that we used to deliver the auto-generated modules for the NSX and vSphere REST APIs and provides full coverage of the new vSphere Replication REST API.
Here are some of the other exciting features of this PowerCLI release:
- New auto-generated module for the new SRM REST API
- Added support for vLCM host configuration and offline depots
- New vSAN cmdlets for vSAN direct disk and remote datastore management
- New cmdlets for vSAN cluster shutdown
- Updated NSX and Horizon modules
- Extended Python version support for the ImageBuilder module
Let’s take a closer look at some of these new features.
New SDK modules for SRM and vSphere Replication
With the 8.6 release of SRM and vSphere Replication, these two products received new REST APIs. In fact, it was the first public API released for vSphere Replication. This gave us the opportunity to automatically generate PowerCLI modules for these products as we had already done for NSX and vSphere. As with vSphere you will be able to find the PowerCLI examples directly in the vSphere Replication and SRM REST API documentation. We’re also working on a dedicated blog post to demonstrate how to use those modules to perform some common use cases.
vLCM improvements
In PowerCLI 13.1 we’re adding new parameters to the Set-VMHost cmdlet to allow you to set the ESXi host LCM configuraiton in the same way that you set the cluster LCM configuration. This is a new feature, supported only in vSphere 8.0 Update 1. We’re also introducing cmdlets for the creation of new LCM offline depots with PowerCLI.
New vSAN cmdlets
PowerCLI 13.1 comes with a lot of new vSAN functionality. New cmdlets are introduced for vSAN remote datastore management, direct disk management, and vSAN cluster shutdown.
VMware Cloud Director changes
For VMware Cloud Director, we changed the authentication mechanism of Connect-CIServer and it now authenticates against the new vCD API authentication endpoint. This will allow the cmdlet to continue working without issues with the future vCD versions. We also updated the Import-CIVappTemplate cmdlet to work with the latest APIs. Because of this we made some cmdlet interface changes, which might lead to the need of reworking some of your Cloud Director scripts.
ImageBuilder module Python version support
With PowerCLI 13.0 we ported the ImageBuilder and AutoDeploy modules to work on Linux and MacOS. That required users to have Python installed as a pre-requisite for those modules. In 13.0, these modules only supported Python version 3.7.x, which was quite limiting. With PowerCLI 13.1, we have fixed that and the ImageBuilder module now works with Python 3.7.1 and all later versions.
Conclusion
PowerCLI 13.1 is another release that brings a rich set of new features to our customers. It delivers one of the most requested PowerCLI functionalities, vSphere replication module, as well as new SRM module, new vSAN cmdlets, extended support for vLCM, and much more. For a full list of all improvements and fixes, check the PowerCLI 13.1 Release Notes. For more information on specific cmdlets, see the PowerCLI Cmdlet Reference.
