VMware PowerCLI Blog

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

Category Archives: Book

New Release: Learning PowerCLI – Second Edition Book

Recently, the new book Learning PowerCLI – Second Edition was published by Packt Publishing. Learning PowerCLI – Second Edition contains 517 pages of PowerCLI goodness. The book starts with downloading and installing PowerCLI. It continues with basic PowerCLI concepts, and working with PowerShell objects. Managing vSphere host, virtual machines, virtual networks, storage, high availability, clusters, and vCenter Server are the following topics. After patching ESXi hosts and upgrading virtual machines using vSphere Update Manager, managing VMware vCloud Director and vCloud Air, using Site Recovery Manager, vRealize Operations Manager, and REST API to manage NSX and vRealize Automation, the book finishes with a chapter about reporting.

If you are new to PowerCLI or have some PowerCLI experience and want to improve your PowerCLI skills, Learning PowerCLI – Second Edition will teach you to use PowerCLI to automate your work!

What’s New

Compared to the first edition, the following new topics are added in Learning PowerCLI – Second Edition:

Importing OVF or OVA packages
Using Tags
Using VMware vSAN
Using vSphere storage policy-based management
Configuring enhanced vMotion compatibility (EVC) mode
Patching ESXi hosts and upgrading virtual machines
Managing VMware vCloud Director and vCloud Air
Using Site Recovery Manager
Using vRealize Operations Manager
Using REST API to manage NSX and vRealize Automation

Learning PowerCLI – Second Edition is available exclusively from Packt Publishing: https://www.packtpub.com/virtualization-and-cloud/learning-powercli-second-edition

About the Author

Learning PowerCLI – Second Edition is written by Robert van den Nieuwendijk. Robert is a freelance system engineer living and working in the Netherlands. He is a VMware vExpert since 2012 and a moderator of the VMware VMTN Communities. Robert has a blog at http://rvdnieuwendijk.com. You can follow Robert on Twitter as @rvdnieuwendijk.

New Book: PowerCLI Essentials by Chris Halverson

2 Replies

What angle does this book give on PowerCLI?

The book covers where to get PowerCLI and its history, including version differences and their change logs. Developing single line scripts into longer ones, reusable code and how to document your scripting.

Bridging scripts that pull key components of VMware scripting and incorporating Windows based calls in the same script, an introduction to vRealize Orchestrator and PowerShell Workflows and lastly incorporating PowerShell into other VMware products.

Who should buy this book, beginners, experts or all?

As this is an essentials book, the intended audience is the beginners to intermediate skill set, although I hope some points will be useful to even the most seasoned PowerShell scripter. This being said the ideal reader will be the VMware Administrator or the Windows Administrator that works with VMware products on a daily basis.

Where do we find the book

Updated Book: PowerCLI Book 2nd Edition

1 Reply

9781118925119.pdf There is a new book on the market for PowerCLI, well I say new but really I mean updated but that does not by any means make it less valuable! The first edition of this book was a great success and I personally often ran into many people who would use this as the go to place to learn about real world examples of how to achieve common tasks with PowerCLI and how to take their PowerCLI knowledge even further.

Now there is a second edition of the book with a star studded list of authors, some of which have changed since the first edition. With names like Luc Dekens, Jonathan Medd, Glenn Sizemore, Brian Graf, Andrew Sullivan and Matt Boren this book should take pride of place on any good VMware Admins desk who wants to achieve automation and make their lives easier.

So what’s changed?

Well, firstly the VMware products! The first version was written in in 2010 and published in 2011, since then PowerCLI and also the VMware products have been enhanced dramatically to include new versions and new features which all need automation. Secondly the skills of the people writing it, I know personally that when I go back and look at scripts I may have written a couple of years ago I cringe and wish I had time to go back and use the latest version of PowerShell and my updated PowerShell super powers to ensure the scripts are bang up to date an as efficient as they need to be. This book has certainly done that, its been updated so that you can automate the latest and greatest features and use the latest and greatest PowerShell versions with all then enhancements it provides. For example, the addition of the following product areas in the book make the 2nd edition a must for even those who own the first edition:

vCloud Director
vCloud Air
vRealize Orchestrator
Site Recovery Manager
PowerActions
and an introduction to DevOps topics

Where can I buy this awesome book?

The following links can be used to purchase the book:

Amazon USA

Amazon UK

Wiley

More Information

Jonathan has written a great blog post on not only the book but also an insiders perspective on what it took to update the book. Personally as I was unable to give the time needed to update this book I can only congratulate the authors for an awesome job and the time they dedicated. Read Jonathans post here: http://www.jonathanmedd.net/2016/01/powercli-book-2nd-edition-is-now-available.html

The sample scripts that are written in the book can be found on the Wiley page here: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118925114.html

New PowerCLI Book–Mastering PowerCLI by Sajal Debnath

5 Replies

There is a new PowerCLI Book on the market and recently I had a chance to talk to the writer, Sajal Debnath, we asked him a few questions about the new book, make sure you check out the below Q&A with Sajal where he explains more about PowerCLI, why you should use it, the book and more about him.