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Author Archives: Kyle Ruddy

About Kyle Ruddy

Kyle Ruddy is a Senior Technical Marketing Engineer at VMware in the Cloud Platform Business Unit. Kyle currently focuses on vSphere with Operations Management as well as all things API, SDK, and CLI. Kyle can be found blogging on VMware blogs, http://blogs.vmware.com/vSphere and http://blogs.vmware.com/PowerCLI, and his personal blog, http://www.thatcouldbeaproblem.com. You can follow Kyle on twitter as @kmruddy.

Automating File-Based Backups of vCenter Server Appliance

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Did you know the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) has file-based backup options?

This ability was actually released in vSphere 6.5. However, there was one feature in particular that was missing: a scheduler. I’m happy to say that as part of vSphere 6.7, the VCSA received a backup scheduler!

Recently, my teammate, Emad Younis released a couple cool walkthroughs to the vSphere Central site to manage file-based backup and restore actions. Under the covers, both of these actions are served up by vSphere’s RESTful APIs and therefore PowerCLI can also be used to automate these actions! One other benefit of using the API, you don’t have to hand out the root credentials. Users with the ‘SystemConfiguration.Administrators’ permission are able to perform all of the following tasks through the API and PowerCLI!

To perform a file-based backup with PowerCLI, we’ll need to make use of the CIS module. Since the CIS module is a low-level module, let’s see a couple examples of this in action.

Create a File-Based Backup

Let’s first start with the process to perform a backup.

First step, log in to the CIS Service for the VCSA:

Connect-CisServer -Server vcsa01.corp.local

1	Connect-CisServer -Server vcsa01.corp.local

Next, we need to find the appropriate service to perform a backup:

Get-CisService -Name *backup*

1	Get-CisService -Name backup

Based on the output, we will want the ‘com.vmware.appliance.recovery.backup.job’ service. We will store that into a variable so we can easily interact with that specific service. To see the method we are going to use, take that variable and pipe it to ‘Get-Member’.

$backupJobSvc = Get-CisService -Name com.vmware.appliance.recovery.backup.job
$backupJobSvc | Get-Member

1 2	$backupJobSvc = Get-CisService -Name com.vmware.appliance.recovery.backup.job $backupJobSvc \| Get-Member

As part of the respose, we’ll see two important items. First, the ‘create’ method which we’ll use to actually create the backup job. Second, the ‘Help’ property. We can use ‘Help’ to help us form the input for the backup job with the following command:

$backupJobSvc.Help.create.piece

1	$backupJobSvc.Help.create.piece

We can now fill in each of the parameters with information for our environment. There are a couple caveats here. First, the ‘parts’ parameter is expecting an input of an array type. Second, each of the password parameters require a special type in order to be accepted.

$backupSpec.parts = @("common")
$backupSpec.location_type = "FTP"
$backupSpec.location = "ftp01.corp.local"
$backupSpec.location_user = "backup"
[VMware.VimAutomation.Cis.Core.Types.V1.Secret]$backupSpec.location_password = "VMware1!"
$backupSpec.comment = "PowerCLI Backup Job"

$backupSpec.parts = @("common")

$backupSpec.location_type = "FTP"

$backupSpec.location = "ftp01.corp.local"

$backupSpec.location_user = "backup"

[VMware.VimAutomation.Cis.Core.Types.V1.Secret]$backupSpec.location_password = "VMware1!"

$backupSpec.comment = "PowerCLI Backup Job"

Finally, having input all of our information, we can create the backup job!

$backupJob = $backupJobSvc.create($backupSpec)

1	$backupJob = $backupJobSvc.create($backupSpec)

We can combine this into a nice script as follows:

# Login to the CIS Service of the desired VCSA
Connect-CisServer -Server vcsa01.corp.local

# Store the Backup Job Service into a variable
$backupJobSvc = Get-CisService -Name com.vmware.appliance.recovery.backup.job

# Create a specification based on the Help response
$backupSpec = $backupJobSvc.Help.create.piece.CreateExample()

# Fill in each input parameter, as needed
$backupSpec.parts = @("common")
$backupSpec.location_type = "FTP"
$backupSpec.location = "ftp01.corp.local"
$backupSpec.location_user = "backup"
[VMware.VimAutomation.Cis.Core.Types.V1.Secret]$backupSpec.location_password = "VMware1!"
$backupSpec.comment = "PowerCLI Backup Job"

# Create the backup job 
$backupJobSvc.create($backupSpec)

# Login to the CIS Service of the desired VCSA

Connect-CisServer -Server vcsa01.corp.local

# Store the Backup Job Service into a variable

$backupJobSvc = Get-CisService -Name com.vmware.appliance.recovery.backup.job

# Create a specification based on the Help response

$backupSpec = $backupJobSvc.Help.create.piece.CreateExample()

# Fill in each input parameter, as needed

$backupSpec.parts = @("common")

$backupSpec.location_type = "FTP"

$backupSpec.location = "ftp01.corp.local"

$backupSpec.location_user = "backup"

[VMware.VimAutomation.Cis.Core.Types.V1.Secret]$backupSpec.location_password = "VMware1!"

$backupSpec.comment = "PowerCLI Backup Job"

# Create the backup job

$backupJobSvc.create($backupSpec)

Create a Scheduled File-Based Backup

Let’s now take a look at creating a scheduled backup job with PowerCLI.

Following a similar process to the last task, we will want to use one of the services we found previously called: com.vmware.appliance.recovery.backup.schedules

This time, we see two inputs are required. First, the schedule ID. Second, the specification which is similar to the prior example. The ‘Help’ property will be quite useful to create both specifications.

Much like the prior example, this one too has some caveats. The Schedule ID input can be a string of your choosing. For reference, performing this process in the UI creates a default ID of ‘default’. The scheduling recurrence configuration can be done in many ways through the ‘days’ property. If a daily backup is desired, there’s no need for any input and it can be left ‘unset’. If a specific day/s are desired, the input has to be of an array type.

Here’s a script which can be used to create a scheduled file-based backup:

# Store the Backup Job Service into a variable
$backupSchedSvc = Get-CisService -Name com.vmware.appliance.recovery.backup.schedules

# Create a Schedule ID specification based on the Help response
$schedSpec = $backupSchedSvc.Help.create.schedule.Create()
$schedSpec = 'weekly'

# Create a specification based on the Help response
$backupSchedSpec = $backupSchedSvc.Help.create.spec.Create()
$backupSchedSpec.parts = @("common")
$backupSchedSpec.location = "ftp://ftp01.corp.local"
$backupSchedSpec.location_user = "backup"
[VMware.VimAutomation.Cis.Core.Types.V1.Secret]$backupSchedSpec.location_password = "VMware1!"
$backupSchedSpec.enable = $true
$recurSpec = $backupSchedSvc.Help.create.spec.recurrence_info.Create()
$recurSpec.days = @("Sunday")
$recurSpec.minute = '59'
$recurSpec.hour = '23'
$backupSchedSpec.recurrence_info = $recurSpec
$retentSpec = $backupschedsvc.help.create.spec.retention_info.Create()
$retentSpec.max_count = '5'
$backupSchedSpec.retention_info = $retentSpec

# Create the backup job 
$backupSchedSvc.create($schedSpec, $backupSchedSpec)

# Store the Backup Job Service into a variable

$backupSchedSvc = Get-CisService -Name com.vmware.appliance.recovery.backup.schedules

# Create a Schedule ID specification based on the Help response

$schedSpec = $backupSchedSvc.Help.create.schedule.Create()

$schedSpec = 'weekly'

# Create a specification based on the Help response

$backupSchedSpec = $backupSchedSvc.Help.create.spec.Create()

$backupSchedSpec.parts = @("common")

$backupSchedSpec.location = "ftp://ftp01.corp.local"

$backupSchedSpec.location_user = "backup"

[VMware.VimAutomation.Cis.Core.Types.V1.Secret]$backupSchedSpec.location_password = "VMware1!"

$backupSchedSpec.enable = $true

$recurSpec = $backupSchedSvc.Help.create.spec.recurrence_info.Create()

$recurSpec.days = @("Sunday")

$recurSpec.minute = '59'

$recurSpec.hour = '23'

$backupSchedSpec.recurrence_info = $recurSpec

$retentSpec = $backupschedsvc.help.create.spec.retention_info.Create()

$retentSpec.max_count = '5'

$backupSchedSpec.retention_info = $retentSpec

# Create the backup job

$backupSchedSvc.create($schedSpec, $backupSchedSpec)

Afterwards, if you log into the VCSA Appliance Management Interface (VAMI), your backup schedule should look much like the following:

Summary

The ability to create file-based backups of your vCenter Server is a function that is only available to the VCSA. This function is made possible by a set of RESTful APIs which PowerCLI can also consume, with the additional benefit of not being reliant on the root account! This blog post walked through examples of creating a file-based backup job and creating a scheduled file-based backup job.

More information about VCSA file-based backup can be found on the vSphere Central site: vCenter Server Appliance 6.7 File-Based Backup

Let us know in the comments how you’re automating your VCSA backups!

New Release: VMware PowerCLI 10.1.1

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It’s release day and we have another terrific update ready for you. VMware PowerCLI 10.1.1 includes some very important updates specifically for the Horizon View folks!

PowerCLI 10.1.1 includes brand new support for Horizon View 7.5. This is quite significant because Horizon View was released just a few short weeks ago and had quite a few amazing updates as well. More information about the Horizon View 7.5 release is available: Horizon 7.5 View Release Notes

There are two other notable improvements which came thanks to the community! The first is around an issue where users were receiving ‘insufficient privileges’ when attempting to connect to the Horizon View server. The second is around an issue where users would occasionally receive an error message of ‘the request channel timed out while waiting for a reply after 00:01:39.9969495’. Both of these have been updated and should now work as intended!

Summary

VMware PowerCLI 10.1.1 is continuing to show the evolution in our processes to be able to bring the latest and greatest features to you faster and faster. With this release, there are new APIs available from Horizon View 7.5 plus a couple improvements to the way PowerCLI interacts with the Horizon View server.

It’s as simple as ‘Update-Module -Name VMware.PowerCLI’ to update your PowerCLI version!

For more information on changes made in VMware PowerCLI 10.1.1, including improvements, security enhancements, and deprecated features, see the VMware PowerCLI Change Log. For more information on specific product features, see the VMware PowerCLI 10.1.1 User’s Guide. For more information on specific cmdlets, see the VMware PowerCLI 10.1.1 Cmdlet Reference.

Configuring Per-VM EVC with PowerCLI

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vSphere 6.7 was released a couple weeks ago and there were a ton of new features announced. However, there was one feature I was particularly interested in and that was Per-VM EVC (Enhanced vMotion Compatibility).

Giving a brief, high-level overview, EVC can be used to set a baseline of CPU features available to a VM or a set of VMs. In the past, this was a cluster-based setting. It was really nice because you could take hosts which didn’t have the same CPUs, use EVC to apply a common CPU baseline, and still put them in a cluster to take advantage of features like DRS and HA. The problem is that once a VM left that cluster, the EVC configuration would no longer be enforced. With vSphere 6.7 that changes, EVC can now be applied at the VM object level. This is awesome because now a VM can move across clusters, across datacenters, or even out to VMware Cloud on AWS and remain powered on and compatible! Be on the lookout for a much deeper dive on Per-VM EVC by my counterpart Emad Younis shortly.

Currently, configuring a VM’s EVC mode with PowerCLI is only available through a low-level command. That means, to configure this setting, we’re going to need to use methods that are exposed through either Get-View or a VM’s ExtensionData.

Let’s take a look at how we can automate this new setting using PowerCLI!

Introduction

First things first, we need to cover some requirements. To configure Per-VM EVC we need a couple things, including:

vSphere 6.7 (vCenter and ESXi host version)
A VM with hardware version 14
PowerCLI 10.1.0

Once we have those all inline, we need to figure out what EVC mode is appropriate for this particular VM.

Determining the Desired EVC Mode

PowerCLI makes it extremely easy to figure out what EVC modes are available. Each ESXi host object has a top-level property we can use to discover what their maximum EVC mode is. Once we obtain that information from all the potential hosts, we choose the lowest baseline and configure the VM with that.

Obtaining an ESXi host’s maximum EVC mode can done with the following command:

Get-VMHost | Select-Object Name,MaxEVCMode

1	Get-VMHost \| Select-Object Name,MaxEVCMode

From the above example, we can see that the VM’s EVC mode should be no higher than ‘intel-sandybridge’ to work on these hosts. If we anticipate moving this VM between vCenters, we would want to run the same command against the ESXi hosts managed by that vCenter. If we anticipate moving this out to VMware Cloud on AWS, we already know those hosts are configured to be at an EVC mode of ‘intel-broadwell’. Broadwell is a higher, more advanced, mode than Sandy Bridge, so we’re still going to use the Sandy Bridge mode for our VM.

For more details about each EVC mode and how they rank, see the following KB article: 1003212 – Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) processor support

Assigning EVC Mode

We’re now ready to configure the per-VM EVC mode for this particular VM. The method we’ll be using is ‘ApplyEvcModeVM_Task’. More information about this can be found in the vSphere 6.7 Web Services API: ApplyEvCModeVM_Task

Based on the documentation, we have a couple parameters available to use:

Parameter	Type
mask	completeMask
HostFeatureMask object	Boolean

The ‘mask’ parameter is looking for the CPU masking features we wish to configure. This is where the API gets a little more advanced than the UI. Where the UI only allows us to set the top level EVC mode, the API enables us to either specify all the feature masks which correlate to the EVC mode or be as granular as to only specify specific masks, the choice is ours. To be clear, this method does not accept the top-level EVC mode as input. Personally, I configure all the feature masks so that the VM’s level is aligned with the top level EVC mode.

The second parameter is ‘completeMasks’. This parameter is essentially asking if the masks presented are the complete list of masks to enable for this VM. This parameter accepts true or false as input and defaults to true. This is another reason I, personally, specify all the feature masks because then there is no confusion over what is or is not enabled for the virtual machine object.

Before we run the method, we need to obtain a list of feature masks. Starting from a high level, we can obtain the EVC Modes which are supported by our present vCenter with the following command:

$global:DefaultVIServer.ExtensionData.Capability.SupportedEVCMode

1	$global:DefaultVIServer.ExtensionData.Capability.SupportedEVCMode

To only retrieve information about the ‘intel-sandybridge’ mask, we can add a ‘where’ statement searching for that as the ‘key’ property:

$evcMode = $global:DefaultVIServer.ExtensionData.Capability.SupportedEVCMode
$evcMode | Where-Object {$_.key -eq 'intel-sandybridge'}

1 2	$evcMode = $global:DefaultVIServer.ExtensionData.Capability.SupportedEVCMode $evcMode \| Where-Object {$_.key -eq 'intel-sandybridge'}

Then, to isolate the masks we will be using as inputs for the ‘mask’ parameter, we can store the ‘FeatureMask’ output into a variable:

$evcSB = $evcMode | Where-Object {$_.key -eq 'intel-sandybridge'}
$featureMasks = $evcSB | Select-Object -ExpandProperty FeatureMask

1 2	$evcSB = $evcMode \| Where-Object {$_.key -eq 'intel-sandybridge'} $featureMasks = $evcSB \| Select-Object -ExpandProperty FeatureMask

The above can also be wrapped up into a one-liner with the following command:

$featureMasks = $global:DefaultVIServer.ExtensionData.Capability.SupportedEVCMode | Where-Object {$_.key -eq 'intel-sandybridge'} | Select-Object -ExpandProperty FeatureMask

1	$featureMasks = $global:DefaultVIServer.ExtensionData.Capability.SupportedEVCMode \| Where-Object {$_.key -eq 'intel-sandybridge'} \| Select-Object -ExpandProperty FeatureMask

We’re now ready to run the command as follows:

$vm.ExtensionData.ApplyEvcModeVM_Task($featureMasks,$true)

1	$vm.ExtensionData.ApplyEvcModeVM_Task($featureMasks,$true)

Putting It All Together

If we combine all of the code above, it will look like the following:

Get-VM -Name file02 | select Name,HardwareVersion,@{Name='EvcMode';Expression={$_.ExtensionData.Runtime.MinRequiredEVCModeKey}}
$vm = Get-VM -Name file02
Get-VMHost | Select-Object Name,MaxEVCMode
$featureMasks = $global:DefaultVIServer.ExtensionData.Capability.SupportedEVCMode | Where-Object {$_.key -eq 'intel-sandybridge'} | Select-Object -ExpandProperty FeatureMask
$vm.ExtensionData.ApplyEvcModeVM_Task($featureMasks,$true)
Get-VM -Name file02 | select Name,HardwareVersion,@{Name='EvcMode';Expression={$_.ExtensionData.Runtime.MinRequiredEVCModeKey}}

Get-VM -Name file02 | select Name,HardwareVersion,@{Name='EvcMode';Expression={$_.ExtensionData.Runtime.MinRequiredEVCModeKey}}

$vm = Get-VM -Name file02

Get-VMHost | Select-Object Name,MaxEVCMode

$featureMasks = $global:DefaultVIServer.ExtensionData.Capability.SupportedEVCMode | Where-Object {$_.key -eq 'intel-sandybridge'} | Select-Object -ExpandProperty FeatureMask

$vm.ExtensionData.ApplyEvcModeVM_Task($featureMasks,$true)

Get-VM -Name file02 | select Name,HardwareVersion,@{Name='EvcMode';Expression={$_.ExtensionData.Runtime.MinRequiredEVCModeKey}}

In 6 lines of code, we’ve gone from a VM with no EVC mode to a VM configured with an EVC mode of ‘intel-sandybridge’!

Community Module

If you found all the above to be a little too cumbersome, there’s a community module you can use to simplify this entire process. This module is available on the PowerCLI Community Repository: PerVMEVC

The PerVMEVC module provides the following three functions:

Get-VMEvcMode
Remove-VMEvcMode
Set-VMEvcMode

Here’s an example of them in action:

Summary

vSphere 6.7 came packed with new features. One feature in particular really enables VMs the mobility to run anywhere. That feature is Per-VM EVC. This new feature takes the cluster based EVC functionality we’re already familiar with and now makes it available at the VM object level. PowerCLI gives us the ability to automate the entire process through the API using the ‘ApplyEvcModeVM_Task’ method as well as a new community module that can be used to simplify the process!

Let us know in the comments what you think of Per-VM EVC mode!

New Release: VMware PowerCLI 10.1.0

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April has been a release heavy month for VMware. We have seen releases for vSphere 6.7, the entire vRealize suite, Site Recovery Manager 8.1, Horizon 7.4.1, and quite a few more. As of today, PowerCLI is being added to that list with the release of 10.1.0!

PowerCLI 10.1.0 offers the following updates:

Support for vSphere 6.7
Support for NSX-T 2.1
New VMware.Vim module
New cmdlets for managing Auto Deploy script bundles

Let’s take a look at those and some of the other updates.

Updated Support

Compatibility is something very important to PowerCLI. PowerCLI version 10.1.0 adds support for both vSphere 6.7 and NSX-T 2.1. This update gives you access to continue automating the latest and greatest VMware releases, plus have access to all those new APIs!

New Module

This new version of PowerCLI brings our 20th module! This new module is named: VMware.Vim The goal of this module is to be able to allow you to have access to the latest vSphere APIs, including those available as part of VMware Cloud on AWS.

New Auto Deploy Cmdlets

Auto Deploy has two new cmdlets available to help with management of script bundles. These new cmdlets are:

Set-ScriptBundleAssociation
Remove-ScriptBundle

The Set-ScriptBundleAssociation cmdlet allows us to configure ESXi hosts to be associated with specific Auto Deploy script bundles.

The Remove-ScriptBundle cmdlet allows us to remove script bundles from Auto Deploy in an automated fashion. This functionality was actually requested by the community as PowerCLI Idea 114, so it’s really cool to see the direct impact the community can have.

General Updates

There’s a number of other improvements available in PowerCLI 10.1.0 as well. The first of which is to allow Import-VApp to support SHA-256 and SHA-512 hash algorithms. Next, we have deprecated the ‘Version’ parameter for the New-VM and Set-VM cmdlets. This parameter has been replaced by ‘HardwareVersion’. The same deprecation has been applied to the VirtualMachine object as a whole. Instead of referencing the ‘Version’ property, reference the ‘HardwareVersion’ property instead. Then, the Get-TagAssignment cmdlet has had the functionality corrected so we can query tags on datastore clusters. Another shout out to the community for this update, since that’s how this was brought to our attention! Also, we have made some updates to the process of migrating a VM to a VMware Cloud on AWS environment.

Lastly, PowerCLI 10.0.0 brought a bit of a change when it comes to handling vCenter and ESXi certificates. Instead of producing a warning when connecting to resources using invalid or self-signed certificates, PowerCLI now produces an error. We found some valid certificates were still producing an error and have corrected that process with PowerCLI 10.1.0.

If you do need to change PowerCLI’s configuration for handling certificate validation, the following code can be used to ignore those invalid or self-signed certificates:

Set-PowerCLIConfiguration -InvalidCertificateAction Ignore

1	Set-PowerCLIConfiguration -InvalidCertificateAction Ignore

Wrap-Up

PowerCLI 10.1.0 is the second release of the year and its only April! This release brought support for both vSphere 6.7 and NSX-T 2.1. A new module was introduced, VMware.Vim, making PowerCLI 20 modules strong. Two new cmdlets were added to help in the management of Auto Deploy script bundles! Plus, there were a number of other improvements added as well.

Remember, updating your PowerCLI modules is now as easy as ‘Update-Module VMware.PowerCLI’.

For more information on changes made in VMware PowerCLI 10.1.0, including improvements, security enhancements, and deprecated features, see the VMware PowerCLI Change Log. For more information on specific product features, see the VMware PowerCLI 10.1.0 User’s Guide. For more information on specific cmdlets, see the VMware PowerCLI 10.1.0 Cmdlet Reference.

New Release: PowerCLI 10 Poster!

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The release of VMware PowerCLI 10.0.0 was another big one for us. As a result, PowerCLI is now available on Linux, MacOS, and Windows! As part of every major release, there’s a large number of asks for the PowerCLI poster and today we’re releasing it!

The poster features a bit of a layout refresh which conforms to a more standardized poster sizing guideline, but still features all of our cmdlets, some basic examples, and links to helpful resources.

PowerCLI Poster

If you’re looking to print one out, they are best at 36 inches wide by 24 inches tall.

Be on the lookout for these posters coming to a VMworld and/or VMUG near you!

Let us know where you’re putting your poster and how you’re using it either in the comments or on Twitter by mentioning the PowerCLI account!

New Release: PowerCLI Preview for VMware NSX-T Fling

Geting Started

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 NSX-T Fling

Next, extract the module and place it into one of your $PSModule directories. Better yet, do it with PowerShell:

Expand-Archive -Path ~\Downloads\PowerCliPreviewForNsxt.zip -DestinationPath ~\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules

1	Expand-Archive -Path ~\Downloads\PowerCliPreviewForNsxt.zip -DestinationPath ~\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules

We can then verify the module was placed in the proper location and is available for us to use:

Get-Module -Name *nsxt* -ListAvailable

1	Get-Module -Name nsxt -ListAvailable

Note: If you don’t see the VMware.VimAutomation.Nsxt module, 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 all of the 280 cmdlets available in the module. We can do that with the following command:

Get-Command -Module VMware.VimAutomation.Nsxt.Commands

1	Get-Command -Module VMware.VimAutomation.Nsxt.Commands

One last step before starting to use the new cmdlets, we need to authenticate to the NSX-T server. This requires the VMware.VimAutomation.Nsxt module because it makes available the ‘Connect-NsxtServer’ cmdlet. We can authenticate to the NSX-T server with the following command:

Connect-NsxtServer -Server nsxmgr-01a.corp.local -User "admin" -Password "VMware1!"

1	Connect-NsxtServer -Server nsxmgr-01a.corp.local -User "admin" -Password "VMware1!"

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 cluster. We can do that with the ‘Get-ClusterNodeConfig’ cmdlet.

We can clean up the output through the use of the ‘Select-Object’ cmdlet with the following command:

Get-ClusterNodeConfig | Select-Object -Property Id,Name,ResourceType

1	Get-ClusterNodeConfig \| Select-Object -Property Id,Name,ResourceType

Another item we looked at in the last blog post, Transport Zones. The ‘Get-TransportZone’ cmdlet can be used, however if we want to clean it up a bit we can run the following command:

Get-TransportZone | Select-Object -Property Id,Name,ResourceType,TransportType

1	Get-TransportZone \| Select-Object -Property Id,Name,ResourceType,TransportType

One last example, we’ll get the status of the cluster. This can easily be done with the ‘Get-ClusterStatus’ cmdlet. However, the results are probably not what you expect. The ControlClusterStatus and MgmtClusterStatus each have an additional nested property of ‘Status’ which we’ll need to gain access to for this to really make sense. To do that, we’ll create a custom dynamic property with PowerShell! These custom properties will be made of hashtables used as part of the ‘Select-Object’ cmdlet. Each hashtable will need a ‘Name’ and an ‘Expression’. Here’s an example of this concept with the ‘Get-ClusterStatus’ cmdlet:

Get-ClusterStatus | Select-Object -Property @{Name="ControlCluster";Expression={$_.ControlClusterStatus.Status}}, @{Name="MgmtCluster";Expression={$_.MgmtClusterStatus.Status}}

1	Get-ClusterStatus \| Select-Object -Property @{Name="ControlCluster";Expression={$_.ControlClusterStatus.Status}}, @{Name="MgmtCluster";Expression={$_.MgmtClusterStatus.Status}}

Summary

There’s a great new fling available called the PowerCLI Preview for NSX-T Fling. This fling adds an additional 280 high-level cmdlets for VMware NSX-T, like Get-TransportZone, which means that automating NSX-T 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!

Installing PowerCLI 10.0.0 on MacOS

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PowerCLI 10.0.0 was released just a few weeks ago and one of the key updates was the added support for MacOS and Linux operating systems. It’s still amazing to think about! PowerShell and PowerCLI available to users on OSes other than just Windows. Wow!

Let’s put this to action and get PowerCLI installed on a MacOS system.

Prerequisite: Installing PowerShell Core – Package

The minimally required version for MacOS is PowerShell Core 6.0.1. There’s a couple different ways to install PowerShell onto a MacOS system. This first method is downloading the PowerShell package and installing it through GUI installer.

We can start by browsing to the PowerShell GitHub repository, and clicking on the ‘Releases’ button. Alternatively, here’s a direct link: PowerShell Releases page

On the PowerShell Releases page, we will want to download the latest MacOS package to our local system. Now, we will want to run through the installer. Accepting all of the defaults worked in my environment.

Prerequisite: Installing PowerShell – Homebrew

The other main way of installing PowerShell is through Homebrew. Homebrew is a package manager. It will easily allow us to install, update, and remove packages, like PowerShell, directly from the command line!

If you don’t already have Homebew installed, it too can be installed from the command line with the following within Terminal:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

1	/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Next, we’ll need to install Homebrew-Cask. Homebrew-Cask is extension of Homebrew to allow for the downloading of additional, pre-compiled, applications. We will perform the install with the following command within Terminal:

brew tap caskroom/cask

1	brew tap caskroom/cask

Now, we’re ready to install PowerShell onto our MacOS system! This can be done with the following command within Terminal:

brew cask install powershell

1	brew cask install powershell

Installing PowerCLI

We have our prerequisite of PowerShell installed on our MacOS system. We’re now ready to install PowerCLI!

Start by opening Terminal and starting our PowerShell session by entering:

pwsh

pwsh

At this point, we’re in PowerShell so we install PowerCLI just like we have for the past couple versions!

Example:

Install-Module -Name VMware.PowerCLI -Scope CurrentUser

1	Install-Module -Name VMware.PowerCLI -Scope CurrentUser

At this point, we’re all set! We can start using PowerCLI just like we normally have on Windows systems for years!

Couple Things to Keep in Mind

There are still a couple things to keep in mind as you move forward in the excitement of having PowerCLI on a non-Windows system. PowerShell Core, as well as the underlying .NET Core, are not feature complete to their non-Core counterparts. Make sure to test your scripts thoroughly prior to using them. A recent example that was brought up within the PowerCLI channel in the VMware Code Slack group: ConvertFrom-SecureString doesn’t currently work, as per Issue 1654. Therefore, if you have any scripts containing secure string objects, PowerShell Core will not be able to decrypt them.

The PowerCLI 10.0.0 release starts with support for the following modules, and the rest of the modules will be added over time:

VMware.VimAutomation.Cis.Core
VMware.VimAutomation.Common
VMware.VimAutomation.Core
VMware.VimAutomation.Nsxt
VMware.VimAutomation.Vds
VMware.VimAutomation.Vmc
VMware.VimAutomation.Sdk
VMware.VimAutomation.Storage
VMware.VimAutomation.StorageUtility

Some cmdlets, even though they may be in the above list, also still may not function properly. Examples:

Get-VICredentialStoreItem
New-VICredentialStoreItem
Remove-VICredentialStoreItem
Get-VMHostHardware
Open-VMConsoleWindow

Wrap-Up

The PowerCLI 10.0.0 release added the much requested support for MacOS and Linux systems! In this blog, we walked through two different methods to make PowerShell Core available on MacOS and how to install PowerCLI.

Let us know what you’re most excited about now that PowerCLI works on multiple OSes!

New Release: VMware PowerCLI 10.0.0

40 Replies

We are only two months in to 2018, but it has already been pretty exciting from an automation standpoint. Let’s review some of the big news. Microsoft open-sourced and released PowerShell 6.0. They also made it available on a number of operating systems, from Windows to Linux to Mac OS. Then, PowerCLI hit 2,000,000 downloads from the PowerShell Gallery! Today, we are releasing VMware PowerCLI 10.0.0!

Let’s talk about the version change for a second. If you’ve been a PowerCLI user for a couple years, you have probably noticed quite the transformation here recently. One item of note was when the name was changed from vSphere PowerCLI to VMware PowerCLI. This was due to PowerCLI’s ability to manage more than just vSphere. With this release, we are taking that next step to remove ourselves from being in lockstep with vSphere’s versioning. Why did we go with 10? Well, PowerCLI recently celebrated its 10th birthday so it seemed like the perfect number!

Time to take a look at everything that’s new!

Multi-Platform Support

PowerCLI 10.0.0 adds support for Mac OS and Linux! The only pre-requisite is to have PowerShell Core 6.0 installed. The installation process is also the same:

Install-Module -Name VMware.PowerCLI -Scope CurrentUser

1	Install-Module -Name VMware.PowerCLI -Scope CurrentUser

This release brings support for the following modules:

VMware.VimAutomation.Cis.Core
VMware.VimAutomation.Common
VMware.VimAutomation.Core
VMware.VimAutomation.Nsxt
VMware.VimAutomation.Vds
VMware.VimAutomation.Vmc
VMware.VimAutomation.Sdk
VMware.VimAutomation.Storage
VMware.VimAutomation.StorageUtility

Future releases of PowerCLI will continue to add support for the remaining modules.

Default Certificate Handling

This version changes the way certificates are handled when connecting to a vCenter server or ESXi host with the Connect-VIServer cmdlet. If your connection endpoint is using an invalid certificate (self-signed or otherwise), PowerCLI would previously return back a warning. The handling has been updated to be more secure and now return back an error.

If you are using an invalid certificate, you can correct the error with the ‘Set-PowerCLIConfiguration’ cmdlet. The parameter needing to be configured is ‘InvalidCertificateAction’ and the available settings are Fail, Warn, Ignore, Prompt, and Unset.

The following code will configure the ‘InvalidCertificateAction’ parameter to be Ignore:

Set-PowerCLIConfiguration -InvalidCertificateAction Ignore

1	Set-PowerCLIConfiguration -InvalidCertificateAction Ignore

Deprecated Cmdlets and Property

There are five cmdlets being deprecated. These cmdlets are found in the VMware.VimAutomation.Core module. They are:

Get-VMGuestNetworkInterface
Set-VMGuestNetworkInterface
Get-VMGuestRoute
New-VMGuestRoute
Remove-VMGuestRoute

These cmdlets are replaced with the use of the Invoke-VMScript cmdlet.

Sample code to change the IP Address of a Windows VM:

$ipAddr = "192.168.10.25"
$subMask = "255.255.255.0"
$gw = "192.168.10.1"
$netsh = "c:\windows\system32\netsh.exe interface ip set address ""Local Area Connection"" static $ipAddr $subMask $gw 1"
Invoke-VMScript -VM $VM -GuestCredential $creds -ScriptType bat -ScriptText $netsh

$ipAddr = "192.168.10.25"

$subMask = "255.255.255.0"

$gw = "192.168.10.1"

$netsh = "c:\windows\system32\netsh.exe interface ip set address ""Local Area Connection"" static $ipAddr $subMask $gw 1"

Invoke-VMScript -VM $VM -GuestCredential $creds -ScriptType bat -ScriptText $netsh

One other deprecation is to the Client property. If you have any scripts that are making use of the ‘Client’ property, you’ll want to get those updated to use the ServiceInstance managed object. More information can be found at the following: ServiceInstance

Resolved Issues

First, I want to thank the community for this section. There was an overwhelming amount of feedback that came in and I’m quite excited about how many items we were able to get resolved! Let’s check some of them out:

Piping the Get-Datacenter cmdlet output to Get-Cluster now works when more than one datacenter is present
Configuring manual MAC addresses with the New/Set-NetworkAdapter cmdlet now accepts all addresses, not just MAC addresses in the 00:50:56 range
VMs with snapshots can be Storage vMotioned to VMFS6 datastores without hitting a ‘redoLogFormat’ error
Lots of updates to the Get-TagAssignment cmdlet, including when connected to two vCenter Servers and also displays the Tag Category as expected

Summary

Today, we release PowerCLI 10.0.0. This release adds support for PowerShell Core 6 which can be run on Linux and Mac OS systems. There are also a handful of VMGuest related cmdlets which have been removed from the release. Their functionality can be replaced with the usage of Invoke-VMScript. Lastly, there have been several corrections. Many of which are thanks to our amazing community for bringing them to our attention.

Remember, updating your PowerCLI modules is now as easy as:

Update-Module VMware.PowerCLI

1	Update-Module VMware.PowerCLI

For more information on changes made in VMware PowerCLI 10.0.0, including improvements, security enhancements, and deprecated features, see the VMware PowerCLI Change Log. For more information on specific product features, see the VMware PowerCLI 10.0.0 User’s Guide. For more information on specific cmdlets, see the VMware PowerCLI 10.0.0 Cmdlet Reference.

Getting Started with the VMware Cloud on AWS Module

4 Replies

VMware Cloud on AWS is a new on-demand service that enables you to run applications across vSphere-based environments plus access to a broad range of AWS services. PowerCLI already helps to automate your VMware Cloud on AWS tasks! This includes tasks such as creating SDDCs, adding or removing ESXi hosts, managing firewall rules, and so forth.

The VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) module was released as a low-level, API access only, module and will feature the following cmdlets:

Connect-VMC
Disconnect-VMC
Get-VmcService

Let’s take a look at how we can get started using this new module.

Getting Started

When getting started with the VMC module, we’ll notice immediately that it has a little different authentication process than the other PowerCLI connection cmdlets. This module requires you first acquire the OAuth Refresh Token from the VMware Cloud Console:

Copy the refresh token, open a new PowerShell session, and connect to the VMC service with the following command:

Connect-Vmc -RefreshToken xxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxx

1	Connect-Vmc -RefreshToken xxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxx

Now that we are connected, let’s start by doing some discovery. The more you work with this module, and the VMC API as a whole, the more you’ll notice the need to be able to easily recall the organization (Org) ID. Therefore, let’s start by looking into how we can discover information about our org. First, we want to figure out what the service is itself with the ‘Get-VmcService’ cmdlet. Notice that we can use the standard PowerShell filtering and wildcard usage to help make the discovery process a bit simpler. Example code:

Get-VmcService *orgs

1	Get-VmcService *orgs

Next, we’ll make use of the ‘Get-Member’ cmdlet which will show us the available properties and methods for each issued command. We can pipeline the return from the ‘com.vmware.vmc.orgs’ service to the ‘Get-Member’ cmdlet and discover there’s a ‘Get’ and a ‘List’ method available. Since we don’t have any current information about the Orgs within this environment, we’ll opt for the ‘List’ method. Example code:

$orgSvc = Get-VmcService com.vmware.vmc.orgs
$orgSvc | Get-Member
$orgSvc.list()

$orgSvc = Get-VmcService com.vmware.vmc.orgs

$orgSvc | Get-Member

$orgSvc.list()

Now that we have our org information, the next thing we will want to discover is information about the org’s SDDC. That information can be found with the following commands:

$sddcSvc = Get-VmcService com.vmware.vmc.orgs.sddcs
$sddcSvc.list($org.Id)

1 2	$sddcSvc = Get-VmcService com.vmware.vmc.orgs.sddcs $sddcSvc.list($org.Id)

Notice, there’s quite a bit of information to parse through. Let’s look at a simple way to pull out some information about the SDDC’s ESXi hosts. Example code:

$sddc = $sddcSvc.list($org.id)
$sddc.resource_config.esx_hosts | select Name,Hostname,Provider,esx_state

1 2	$sddc = $sddcSvc.list($org.id) $sddc.resource_config.esx_hosts \| select Name,Hostname,Provider,esx_state

VMware Cloud on AWS uses NSX under the covers to provision all of the networking. Therefore, we will also want to have an understanding of the Edge nodes that are available in the environment. This information is actually in a separate service. Remembering what we’ve done previously, here’s some example code to discover some basic information about the SDDC’s Edge nodes:

$edgeSvc = Get-VmcService *edges
$edges = $edgeSvc.get($org.id, $sddc.id).edge_page.data
$edges | select Name,id,edge_type,state,edge_status | ft -AutoSize

$edgeSvc = Get-VmcService *edges

$edges = $edgeSvc.get($org.id, $sddc.id).edge_page.data

$edges | select Name,id,edge_type,state,edge_status | ft -AutoSize

Another good area to be aware of in your SDDC are the firewall rules. These are also easily retrievable through the ‘Get-VmcService’ cmdlet as well. Example of the firewall rules associated with the edge-2 node:

$fwConfigSvc = Get-VmcService *firewall.config
$fwConfigE2 = $fwConfigSvc.get($tmmOrg.id,$tmmsddc.id,'edge-2')
$fwConfigE2.firewall_rules.firewall_rules | select Name,rule_id,enabled,action,description

$fwConfigSvc = Get-VmcService *firewall.config

$fwConfigE2 = $fwConfigSvc.get($tmmOrg.id,$tmmsddc.id,'edge-2')

$fwConfigE2.firewall_rules.firewall_rules | select Name,rule_id,enabled,action,description

Last example, let’s do something exciting! How about we automate the creation of an SDDC? This is going to require quite a bit of what we’ve learned so far, plus some new tricks. We can find the ‘Create’ method against the com.vmware.vmc.orgs.sddc service. We see that input requires the Org ID and an ‘sddc_config’ input. This is where it gets tricky.

If we remember back in the PowerCLI 6.5.3 release, there was the addition of the ‘Create’ method to a couple cmdlets. This method is also available with the ‘Get-VmcService’ cmdlet. The whole point of this method is to allow us to create a specification in an easy manner. For this example, we’re reference the ‘sddcSvc’ variable, the ‘Help’ property, then the create property. This shows us a property of ‘sddc_config’. This is the specification we’ll need to use. The ‘sddc_config’ property has this ‘Create’ method available so we can automatically build out the specification. Pretty simple, right?

We’re not quite done quite yet though. Each SDDC can have multiple VPC subnets. Therefore, we also need to populate the spec’s customer_subnet_ids list object with the ‘Add’ method.

Example code:

$sddcCreateSpec = $sddcSvc.Help.create.sddc_config.Create()
$sddcCreateSpec.Name = "PowerCLI_SDDC"
$sddcCreateSpec.Provider = "AWS"
$sddcCreateSpec.region = "US_WEST_2"
$sddcCreateSpec.num_hosts = "4"
$accountLinkSpec = $sddcSvc.Help.create.sddc_config.account_link_sddc_config.Element.Create()
$accountLinkSpec.connected_account_id = "xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx"
$custSubId0 = $sddcSvc.Help.create.sddc_config.account_link_sddc_config.Element.customer_subnet_ids.Element.Create()
$custSubId0 = "subnet-xxxxxxxx"
$accountLinkSpec.customer_subnet_ids.Add($custSubId0)
$sddcCreateSpec.account_link_sddc_config.Add($accountLinkSpec)
$newSddc = $sddcSvc.create($org.Id, $sddcCreateSpec)

$sddcCreateSpec = $sddcSvc.Help.create.sddc_config.Create()

$sddcCreateSpec.Name = "PowerCLI_SDDC"

$sddcCreateSpec.Provider = "AWS"

$sddcCreateSpec.region = "US_WEST_2"

$sddcCreateSpec.num_hosts = "4"

$accountLinkSpec = $sddcSvc.Help.create.sddc_config.account_link_sddc_config.Element.Create()

$accountLinkSpec.connected_account_id = "xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx"

$custSubId0 = $sddcSvc.Help.create.sddc_config.account_link_sddc_config.Element.customer_subnet_ids.Element.Create()

$custSubId0 = "subnet-xxxxxxxx"

$accountLinkSpec.customer_subnet_ids.Add($custSubId0)

$sddcCreateSpec.account_link_sddc_config.Add($accountLinkSpec)

$newSddc = $sddcSvc.create($org.Id, $sddcCreateSpec)

The output above from our last create method is a task object. There’s a service for those too! Since the call we made is asynchronous, you can also have a bit of fun and build a progress checker as well!

Here’s some example code I tossed together while waiting on the SDDC to deploy:

$taskSvc = Get-VmcService *task*
$progPercent = 0
while ($progPercent -ne 100) {
    $tempOut = $taskSvc.list($org.id) | Where-Object {$_.task_type -eq 'SDDC-PROVISION' -and $_.resource_id -eq $newSddc.resource_id} | sort updated | select -last 1
    $screenOut = "" | select PercentComplete, MinutesRemaining
    $screenOut.PercentComplete = $tempOut.progress_percent
    $screenOut.MinutesRemaining = $tempOut.estimated_remaining_minutes
    $screenOut
    $progPercent = $tempOut.progress_percent
    Start-Sleep -Seconds 60
}

$taskSvc = Get-VmcService *task*

$progPercent = 0

while ($progPercent -ne 100) {

$tempOut = $taskSvc.list($org.id) | Where-Object {$_.task_type -eq 'SDDC-PROVISION' -and $_.resource_id -eq $newSddc.resource_id} | sort updated | select -last 1

$screenOut = "" | select PercentComplete, MinutesRemaining

$screenOut.PercentComplete = $tempOut.progress_percent

$screenOut.MinutesRemaining = $tempOut.estimated_remaining_minutes

$screenOut

$progPercent = $tempOut.progress_percent

Start-Sleep -Seconds 60

}

Summary

VMware Cloud on AWS is a fantastic new service that enables you to run applications across vSphere environments as well as accessing a broad range of AWS services. Within this service, PowerCLI is one of the best ways to automate your VMware Cloud on AWS tasks! In this blog post we covered how to discover the available services, explore was methods are available as actions against each of those services, and how to start interacting with those services. We obtained detailed information about our organization, that org’s SDDC and its accompanied configuration including firewall rules, and then had some fun while deploying a brand new SDDC!

Check PowerCLI’s functionality in your own VMware Cloud on AWS environment today and let us know your feedback!

PowerCLI Offline Installation Walkthrough

4 Replies

Can you believe it? PowerCLI is closing in on a year of being in the PowerShell Gallery! We’re up to 20 different modules and, wait for it, over 2,000,000 downloads of those modules!

As exciting as that is, there’s still quite a few questions on how to install PowerCLI to systems that do not have internet access. We’re going to take a much closer look at that with this post.

Preparing the Offline System

First things first, we need to uninstall any prior instance of PowerCLI that was installed by way of the MSI. This can be done by:

Open the Control Panel
Look beneath the ‘Programs’ section, select ‘Uninstall a Program’
Select ‘VMware PowerCLI’, click ‘Uninstall’

One last thing to check, ensure there is no folder containing PowerCLI as part of the title in the following directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\

We can verify whether such a folder exists or not with a oneliner:

Test-Path -LiteralPath "C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\PowerCLI\"

1	Test-Path -LiteralPath "C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\PowerCLI\"

Accessing the PowerCLI Modules

We’re now ready to download the PowerCLI modules. This task will require a system with internet access. This section has a couple of variables which depend on the version of PowerShell available on your online system and whether or not you’ve ever accessed the PowerShell Gallery previously by way of the PowerShellGet module.

The easiest way to figure out which version of PowerShell you have is by using the PSVersionTable variable. Based on the output of that, follow the set of instructions below that matches the output.

Online System with PowerShell 5.x:

Open PowerShell
Use the ‘Save-Module’ cmdlet to download the PowerCLI modules locally. Example:

PowerShell

Save-Module -Name VMware.PowerCLI -Path C:\Path\To\Destination\Folder

1

Save-Module -Name VMware.PowerCLI -Path C:\Path\To\Destination\Folder
- If requested, update the NuGet provider
- If requested, trust the ‘Untrusted repository’ that is named PSGallery
  Note: This is a local system trust, not something that has something to do with an SSL certificate
Copy those downloaded module folders to a location that can be made accessible to the offline system.
Example: USB Flash Drive, Internal File Share, etc.

Online systems with the older PowerShell versions of 4.0 or 3.0, may need to have an additional module installed to access the PowerShell Gallery. The module is called ‘PowerShellGet’. We can verify whether the online system has the ‘PowerShellGet’ module available with the following command:

Get-Module -Name PowerShellGet -ListAvailable

1	Get-Module -Name PowerShellGet -ListAvailable

If there’s a response, you have it already! If there’s no output, you’ll need to make it available. Depending on the output, follow the instructions below.

Online System with PowerShell 4.0 or 3.0 with the PowerShellGet module:

Open PowerShell
Use the ‘Save-Module’ cmdlet to download the PowerCLI modules locally. Example:

PowerShell

Save-Module -Name VMware.PowerCLI -Path C:\Path\To\Destination\Folder

1

Save-Module -Name VMware.PowerCLI -Path C:\Path\To\Destination\Folder
- If requested, update the NuGet provider
- If requested, trust the ‘Untrusted repository’ that is named PSGallery
  Note: This is a local system trust, not something that has something to do with an SSL certificate
Copy those downloaded module folders to a location that can be made accessible to the offline system.
Example: USB Flash Drive, Internal File Share, etc.

Online System with PowerShell 4.0 or 3.0 without the PowerShellGet module:

Download and install the ‘PowerShellGet’ module by way of the PackageManagement PowerShell Modules MSI.
Open PowerShell
Use the ‘Save-Module’ cmdlet to download the PowerCLI modules locally. Example:

PowerShell

Save-Module -Name VMware.PowerCLI -Path C:\Path\To\Destination\Folder

1

Save-Module -Name VMware.PowerCLI -Path C:\Path\To\Destination\Folder
- If requested, update the NuGet provider
- If requested, trust the ‘Untrusted repository’ that is named PSGallery
  Note: This is a local system trust, not something that has something to do with an SSL certificate
Copy those downloaded module folders to a location that can be made accessible to the offline system.
Example: USB Flash Drive, Internal File Share, etc.

Adding PowerCLI to the Offline System

It’s now time to put the PowerCLI modules on to the offline system. To take advantage of the magic that is module auto-loading, we’ll want to copy and paste those downloaded folders in one of the locations listed in the PSModulePath variable.

By default, the PSModulePath variable contains the following directories:

$home\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules
$pshome\Modules

When everything is all said and done, you should have one of the directories listed above looking a bit like this:

That’s it! Open a PowerShell session and start using your PowerCLI commands as you did before!

Wait… It’s Not Working For Me!

What happens when you go through the above instructions and it’s not working?

The most common scenario we’ve come across is where the ‘Save-Module’ cmdlet was used with an online system that has PowerShell version 5.x. When this happens, there are an additional level of folders created between the top-level module folder and the module files themselves. This is extremely beneficial because we can then have multiple versions of the same module available on the local system. The issue though, older versions of PowerShell do not recognize those folders and therefore cannot load the modules.

When I say issue, I truly mean it. Jake Robinson, the PowerCLI Product Manager, actually created a GitHub issue for PowerShellGet calling out this problem: Offline installation of modules from Save-Module does not work on PS <5.x

Good news though, there are a couple workarounds available!

First option: Upgrade your version of PowerShell on the offline system to 5.x with Windows Management Framework 5.0.
Second option: Find an online system that has PowerShell versions 4.0 or 3.0 installed and use ‘Save-Module’ on that system.

Those two options are simple enough, but generally in an ‘easier said than done’ manner. With that said, I’m very excited to show off a third option. This option doesn’t require installing any software or powering on that older VM you hadn’t decommissioned quite yet. This option is a simple script that is run on the offline system. The script simply looks for the folders that already exist in any of the PSModulePath listed directories, searching specifically for PowerCLI module folders, and then removes that additional nested level of version-based folders.

The script is openly available on the PowerCLI Community Repository and is named: PowerCLI_FixNestedFolders.ps1

Here’s an example of the script in action:

Here’s an example of the results: (Left is the before, right is the after)

Wrap-Up

PowerCLI has seen a lot of success on the PowerShell Gallery. A set of modules with over 2,000,000 combined downloads is pretty impressive! However, there’s still a lot of questions over the installation process for systems that are offline. This blog post walked us through the offline installation process, covers the most common issue users hit, and provides a new solution to help overcome that issue.

Don’t delay, upgrade your version of PowerCLI on all your systems to ensure you’re getting access to the most up-to-date features, performance improvements, and bug fixes today!

If you’re looking to install PowerCLI and have direct internet access, use the following link: PowerCLI – Online Walkthrough
If you’re looking to install PowerCLI on a MacOS based system, use the following link: PowerCLI – MacOS Installation Walkthrough

PowerCLI is the best tool for automating management and configuration of VMware vSphere

About Kyle Ruddy

Create a File-Based Backup

Create a Scheduled File-Based Backup

Summary

Summary

Introduction

Determining the Desired EVC Mode

Assigning EVC Mode

Putting It All Together

Community Module

Summary

Updated Support

New Module

New Auto Deploy Cmdlets

General Updates

Wrap-Up

PowerCLI Poster

Geting Started

Summary

Prerequisite: Installing PowerShell Core – Package

Prerequisite: Installing PowerShell – Homebrew

Installing PowerCLI

Couple Things to Keep in Mind

Wrap-Up

Multi-Platform Support

Default Certificate Handling

Deprecated Cmdlets and Property

Resolved Issues

Summary

Getting Started

Summary

Preparing the Offline System

Accessing the PowerCLI Modules

Online System with PowerShell 5.x:

Online System with PowerShell 4.0 or 3.0 with the PowerShellGet module:

Online System with PowerShell 4.0 or 3.0 without the PowerShellGet module:

Adding PowerCLI to the Offline System

Wait… It’s Not Working For Me!

Wrap-Up