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Category Archives: General

Improving PowerCLI Support with Get-ErrorReport

I am always surprised at the shock some people have when it comes to PowerCLI being supported by VMware! We highlighted this in a prior blog post: PowerCLI Support Breakdown However, in that blog post, there was one item that wasn’t covered which can really help streamline the process of receiving support. This item is a cmdlet by the name of Get-ErrorReport and it received a big update as part of PowerCLI 11.

Let’s walk through an example of creating a PowerCLI support bundle using Get-ErrorReport.

Receiving an Error

The first thing we need to do is receive an error! In this case, I’ll be using a known issue with the Move-VM cmdlet which occurs when attempting to move a VM into a vApp.

The error we received was:

Move-VM : 11/14/2018 1:12:31 PM Move-VM         A specified parameter was not correct:
PlacementSpec.relocateSpec.pool

1 2	Move-VM : 11/14/2018 1:12:31 PM Move-VM A specified parameter was not correct: PlacementSpec.relocateSpec.pool

This is a pretty straightforward issue where the Move-VM cmdlet is not operating in the way which was been documented. We can now open a support request!

PowerCLI Support Bundle

Normally, when you open a support request, the first ask is for a support bundle from either the vCenter, an ESXi host/s, or even all of the above. Since this is a PowerCLI issue, those standard support bundles may not help. Plus, some of the more advanced PowerCLI troubleshooting options are not easy, or not readily available, in most environments. One example of which would be to use a tool like Fiddler or Wireshark to sniff the network traffic in order to determine what API methods are being used under the covers and hopefully identify the issue.

Instead of going through the process of installing Fiddler or Wireshare, we can retrieve all the required information by making use of the Get-ErrorReport cmdlet!

The Get-ErrorReport cmdlet has a couple important parameters we’re going to be making use of:
Note: If you’ve used Get-ErrorReport before, these parameters have changed

Destination	Location of where the PowerCLI support bundle will be placed
IncludeServerLogs	Specify whether we want to pull logs from the connected server
ProblemDescription	Provide a description and/or support number
ProblemScript	Scriptblock which contains the cmdlet causing the error

Continuing with our Move-VM example, we can use the following code to create our support bundle:

$errorCode = {
  $appsvr = Get-VM -Name appsvr02
  $vapp = Get-VApp -Name DemovApp
  Move-VM -VM $appsvr -Destination $vapp
}
Get-ErrorReport -ProblemScript $errorCode -Destination .\Documents\ -ProblemDescription "Using Move-VM to place a VM into a vApp"

$errorCode = {

$appsvr = Get-VM -Name appsvr02

$vapp = Get-VApp -Name DemovApp

Move-VM -VM $appsvr -Destination $vapp

}

Get-ErrorReport -ProblemScript $errorCode -Destination .\Documents\ -ProblemDescription "Using Move-VM to place a VM into a vApp"

We can now take that output and upload it to our support request!

Support Bundle Examination

If you happen to be curious about what information is contained within the support bundle, like I was, we can unzip the bundle and read through the contents fairly easy. Note: this section is purely educational as the support engineer will handle the actual diagnosis.

The support bundle contains the following files:

PowerCLI-Main-Log.svclog
Powershell-Debug-Stream.txt
Powershell-Error-Stream.txt
Powershell-Info-Stream.txt
Powershell-Verbose-Stream.txt
Powershell-Warning-Stream.txt

The contents of those files should be fairly straight forward, with the exception of the first one. The PowerCLI-Main-Log.svclog is a collection of diagnostic traces. These traces contain all of the pertinent information about the cmdlets being used, how it is being interpreted by PowerShell, and then the underlying call to the vCenter. The svclog file can be opened with the Microsoft Service Stack Trace Viewer. This application is available as part of the Windows SDK, available here: Windows SDK Archive

The following screenshot is a look at the actual exception being returned by the API service:

We can see the server response was an internal server error, which has a status code of 500. We can then further read through the individual trace to see the properties and methods being used. We also have the option to look at the traces before and after the call happened to see each of the steps being performed as part of the code entered in our $errorCode scriptblock.

Summary

PowerCLI is supported by VMware and the Get-ErrorReport cmdlet was recently improved in PowerCLI 11. The upgrade helps to streamline the support experience by creating a PowerCLI support bundle which can be provided to VMware support. This support bundle includes all of the required environmental information that VMware support will need to start troubleshooting the issue being reported.

The next time you need to open a support ticket on PowerCLI, make sure to use Get-ErrorReport and let us know your feedback!

Updating PowerCLI Local OS Support

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VMware PowerCLI has gone through quite a few changes over the past couple years. This includes what operating systems (OS) PowerCLI can run on! The most significant update was the addition of MacOS and Ubuntu. However, as the PowerCLI team continually evaluates which OSes we should support, there are also times where OSes need to be removed. With that said, in a future release, PowerCLI will be deprecating local OS support for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

It is important to note that this update will not impact whether or not PowerCLI can operate on those deprecated OSes. We are simply removing them from our testing process.

With that said, in a future release of PowerCLI, the local OS support will be updated to be the following:

OS Type	Version (64-Bit)
Server	Windows Server 2016
Server	Windows Server 2012 R2
Workstation	Windows 10
Workstation	Ubuntu 16.04
Workstation	MacOS 10.12

If you’re interested in more information about the PowerCLI testing process, I would highly recommend checking out the following VMworld session recording: Development at VMware: A Look at How PowerCLI Has Evolved Over the Years

New Release: PowerCLI 11.0.0

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PowerCLI has been moving at quite the rapid pace over the last 2 years. In 2018, we’ve been releasing roughly every other month to make sure we get the latest features, performance improvements, and updates available as quickly as possible. Well, it’s been two months and we’re not going to break this trend. Today, we are releasing PowerCLI 11.0.0!

PowerCLI 11.0.0 comes with the following updates:

Added a new Security module
Added new cmdlets for Host Profiles
Added a new cmdlet to interact with NSX-T in VMware Cloud on AWS
Support for vSphere 6.7 Update 1
Support for NSX-T 2.3
Support for Horizon View 7.6
Support for vCloud Director 9.5
Multiplatform support for the Cloud module
Updated the Get-ErrorReport cmdlet
Removed the PCloud module
Removed the HA module

Let’s take a more in-depth look at some of these updates.

New Security Module

There has been a tremendous amount of improvements around security for vSphere lately. The new VMware.VimAutomation.Security module ensures you have the ability to automate these new features.

The Security module includes the following cmdlets:

Get-SecurityInfo
Get-VTpm
Get-VTpmCertificate
Get-VTpmCSR
New-VTpm
Remove-VTpm
Set-VTpm
Unlock-VM

Also, thanks to the Security module (with a little help from the Storage module), several other cmdlets are receiving enhancements as well:
New-VM has added the following parameters:

KmsCluster
StoragePolicy
SkipHardDisks
StoragePolicy
ReplicationGroup
StoragePolicyTarget

Set-VM has added the following parameters:

DisableEncryption
KmsCluster
SkipHardDisks
StoragePolicy

Set-VMHost has added the following parameter:

KmsCluster

Set-HardDisk has added the following parameters:

DisableEncryption
KmsCluster
StoragePolicy

New-HardDisk has added the following parameters:

KmsCluster
StoragePolicy

Host Profile Updates

There have been a lot of requests coming in for updates to the set of cmdlets available to manage Host Profiles. The VMware.VimAutomation.Core module has some updates you’ll want to check out!

The following cmdlets have been added to help manage Host Profiles:

Get-VMHostProfileUserConfiguration
Set-VMHostProfileUserConfiguration
Get-VMHostProfileStorageDeviceConfiguration
Set-VMHostProfileStorageDeviceConfiguration
Get-VMHostProfileImageCacheConfiguration
Set-VMHostProfileImageCacheConfiguration
Get-VMHostProfileVmPortGroupConfiguration
Set-VMHostProfileVmPortGroupConfiguration

Storage Module Updates

The VMware.VimAutomation.Storage module has grown by leaps and bounds in the last couple releases. This release adds two new cmdlets and quite a few updates to existing cmdlets. Some of the improvements include an update to support predefined time ranges when using Get-VsanStat. Get-VsanDisk has some additional properties which are returned, such as: capacity, used percentage, and reserved percentage. Also receiving an update is the Get/Import/Export-SpbmStoragePolicy cmdlets, as they now support storage policy components.

The following cmdlets have been added to help automate vSAN:

Get-VsanObject
Get-VsanComponent

More details on these updates for vSAN can be found on the Virtual Blocks blog, by Jase McCarty: More vSAN Cmdlets in PowerCLI 11!

vCloud Director Updates

This update is another direct result from feedback. There has been an impressive amount of people requesting updates to the VMware.VimAutomation.Cloud module. With this release, we are updating the module to support vCloud Director 9.5. There are also a couple of new cmdlets being added.

The following cmdlets have been added to help automate vCloud Director networking:

Get-EdgeGateway
New-OrgVdcNetwork
Remove-OrgVdcNetwork
Set-OrgVdcNetwork

Other Improvements and Updates

There are also a handful of updates which are all due to community feedback! There has been an update to the output when using New-VM combined with the ‘Confirm’ parameter so that the output matches that of the created VM. An update to Get-View has been added to help resolve a Vim error being received when the ‘Property’ parameter was specified. Another fix was when Get-VM would result in an error of ‘Value cannot be null’. The last big issue, there has been an update to the way Get-NetworkAdapter outputs a NSX-T logical network backed portgroup.

Summary

PowerCLI 11.0.0 has been released and there are a ton of fantastic new additions. Over 20 new cmdlets have been added to help automate vCloud Director networking, virtual TPM settings, Host Profile configurations, and VMware Cloud on AWS networking. More than 10 cmdlets have been enhanced to add newly released features. Plus, a handful of updates to improve the overall quality and reliability.

For more information on changes made in VMware PowerCLI 11.0.0, including improvements, security enhancements, and deprecated features, see the VMware PowerCLI Change Log. For more information on specific product features, see the VMware PowerCLI 11.0.0 User’s Guide. For more information on specific cmdlets, see the VMware PowerCLI 11.0.0 Cmdlet Reference.

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

Let us know in the comments what you’re most excited about!

Introducing Code Capture

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I am extremely excited to announce a new feature that’s been added to the vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling. This new feature is called Code Capture. While the name might not sound familiar, hopefully you’re already acquainted with its predecessor – Onyx, which is currently the most requested feature on the PowerCLI Feature Requests site!

Code Capture gives you the ability to take actions you’ve completed in the vSphere Client and outputs usable code. Once you have the vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling installed, it’s just as simple as hitting the red ‘record’ button on the top menu, performing your activities, then hitting the red ‘stop’ button. At this point, you’ll be taken to the Code Capture section where you can browse your code and even copy or download the code as well!

Before jumping to download the fling, we should discuss what a VMware Fling really is. Flings are projects that are built by our engineers and made available for general consumption. These flings are distributed under the Technical Preview License and, therefore, are recommended to not be run on production environments. This also means there is no ability to open a VMware support request. However, you can open a bug against the fling itself using the ‘Bugs‘ tab. Also, I would like to point out the ‘Comments‘ tab where you can submit feedback. We would greatly appreciate any and all feedback you have!

Now, let’s checkout Code Capture!

Code Capture in Action

Now let’s take a more in-depth look.

Code Capture Output

In the example above, we can see that we are shutting down a system by the name of ‘app01’. Once we click on the ‘stop’ button, it shows us the PowerCLI.NET code. This is important because, at first glance, the output may not be quite as you expect.

For example, you may have expected to see a command like Shutdown-VMGuest -Name app01 Instead, we saw low-level PowerCLI calls. Walking through the code, it created a VirtualMachine object, which referenced the app01 VM by MoRef, followed by the usage of a method named ‘ShutdownGuest’ that is called directly against the VM object. More information about this specific method: ShutdownGuest()

Code Output:

#----------------- Start of code capture -----------------

<#
.SYNOPSIS
Gets VI server connection by a given server uuid.

.DESCRIPTION
Gets VI server connection by a given server instance uuid from the default connected VI servers collection.
#>
function Get-VcConnection([string]$VcInstanceUuid) {
    $DefaultVIServers | Where-Object {$_.InstanceUuid -eq $vcInstanceUuid}
}

#---------------ParentVApp---------------
$_this = Get-View -Id 'VirtualMachine-vm-626' -Server (Get-VcConnection -VcInstanceUuid '87b30cb3-72b0-46f1-afb2-556824647b85')
$_this.ParentVApp

#---------------ShutdownGuest---------------
$_this = Get-View -Id 'VirtualMachine-vm-626' -Server (Get-VcConnection -VcInstanceUuid '87b30cb3-72b0-46f1-afb2-556824647b85')
$_this.ShutdownGuest()

#----------------- End of code capture -----------------

#----------------- Start of code capture -----------------

.SYNOPSIS

Gets VI server connection by a given server uuid.

.DESCRIPTION

Gets VI server connection by a given server instance uuid from the default connected VI servers collection.

function Get-VcConnection([string]$VcInstanceUuid) {

$DefaultVIServers | Where-Object {$_.InstanceUuid -eq $vcInstanceUuid}

}

#---------------ParentVApp---------------

$_this = Get-View -Id 'VirtualMachine-vm-626' -Server (Get-VcConnection -VcInstanceUuid '87b30cb3-72b0-46f1-afb2-556824647b85')

$_this.ParentVApp

#---------------ShutdownGuest---------------

$_this = Get-View -Id 'VirtualMachine-vm-626' -Server (Get-VcConnection -VcInstanceUuid '87b30cb3-72b0-46f1-afb2-556824647b85')

$_this.ShutdownGuest()

#----------------- End of code capture -----------------

It’s worth noting, at this point in time, all of the returned code is going to be in this manner. There are on-going investigations to add the translation from this code into high-level PowerCLI cmdlets. If this type of conversion is important to you, please add a comment to the following PowerCLI Feature Request: Onyx support for HTML5 and REST APIs

Using the Output

If I were to power on the app01 VM, I could then use the code in a PowerShell session (where I’m already connected to the vCenter Server) to shutdown the app01 system. To make this easier, Code Capture includes a ‘Copy’ button which easily copies the entirety of the code to our clipboard. We can now paste this into our PowerShell session to accomplish the task!

Example:

Another option to extract the code from our browser is with the ‘Download’ button. Clicking ‘Download’ will, depending on your browser configuration, save a file named ‘power-cli-script.ps1’ to your Downloads folder. We can then call that file just like any script from our PowerShell session to accomplish the action.

Example:

Summary

The next generation of Onyx is here and it’s called Code Capture, which is only available in the vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling! Using the start and stop button on the main menu bar, Code Capture allows you to take your actions in the vSphere Client and output them to PowerCLI code. The code output can also easily be copied and/or downloaded from your browser session using the dedicated buttons in the Code Capture area.

Get started by heading over to the vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling page and downloading the latest version today!

New Release: PowerCLI 10.2.0

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It’s new release day! Even though we’re counting down the days to VMworld, we still have a fresh version for you with PowerCLI 10.2.0!

Speaking of counting, this marks the 4th release of PowerCLI this year. I remember when getting 2 updates in a single year was a major event, much less four! A big shout-out to the PowerCLI engineering team for all the work that’s been done to make this process faster and easier. If you’d like to know more details, VMworld session DEV3504BU will take an in-depth look at the PowerCLI development process. It’s a session I’m super excited for!

On to the updates!

PowerCLI 10.2.0 Updates

PowerCLI 10.2.0 comes with the following updates:

Support for NSX-T 2.2
Deprecation of the PCloud module, so look for this module to be removed in the future
Update to Get-VIEvent to resolve the issue when receiving: Error in deserializing body of reply message for operation ‘RetrieveProperties’

For more information on changes made in VMware PowerCLI 10.2.0, including improvements, security enhancements, and deprecated features, see the VMware PowerCLI Change Log. For more information on specific product features, see the VMware PowerCLI 10.2.0 User’s Guide. For more information on specific cmdlets, see the VMware PowerCLI 10.2.0 Cmdlet Reference.

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

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.

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

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A new Fling has been released for PowerCLI! The PowerCLI Preview for NSX-T Fling adds 280 high-level cmdlets which operate alongside the existing NSX-T PowerCLI module.

What do I mean by ‘high-level’ cmdlets? There are generally two forms of cmdlets available through PowerCLI, high-level and low-level. High-level cmdlets abstract the underlying API calls and provide an easy to use and understand cmdlet, like Get-LogicalSwitch. Based on that, you can assume the output will be logical switches. However, every API call does not have a corresponding high-level cmdlet and that’s where the low-level cmdlets come into play. Low-level cmdlets interact directly with the API and therefore have complete coverage of the available API calls. An example of a low-level cmdlet would be Get-View, or in the case of the NSX-T module it would be Get-NsxtService. More information about the low-level cmdlet usage of the NSX-T module is available in the following blog post: Getting Started with the PowerCLI Module for VMware NSX-T

Why is this being released as a fling? This module is still being developed and we need your feedback! 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! The preference is to leave the feedback on the fling’s comments section. However, if you post it as a comment here, I’ll make sure the right people receive it.

With that said, let’s get started using this new module!

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!