PowerCLI Essentials

Chris Halverson

• Editorial: Packt Publishing
• Año: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781785881770
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Ciencia de la computación
• Categoría: Virtualización

Simplify and automate server administration tasks with PowerCLI

About This Book

• Automate VMware's VSphere environment by learning the essentials of PowerCLI
• Impress your peers by developing scripts to perform administration tasks
• Discover the intricate workings of PowerCLI through simple and real-life examples

Who This Book Is For

PowerCLI Essentials is focused toward virtualization professionals and system administrators who want to discover and learn about the automation techniques associated with PowerCLI for complex virtual environments.

What You Will Learn

• Download and install PowerCLI and its basics as well as the basics of PowerShell
• Enchance your scritping experience
• Build longer scripts and simpler reports
• Relate a task in VMware administration to a PowerCLI script
• Discover methods to acquire and change information remotely
• Set up orchestrator to manage your workflow

In Detail

Have you ever wished you could automatically get a report with all the relevant information about your VMware environments in exactly the format you want? Or that you could automate a crucial task that needs to be performed on a regular basis? Powerful Command Line Interface (PowerCLI) scripts do all these things and much more for VMware environments. PowerCLI is a command-line interface tool used to automate VMware vSphere environments. It is used to handle complicated administration tasks through use of various cmdlets and scripts, which are designed to handle certain aspects of VSphere servers and to help you manage them.

This book will show you the intricacies of PowerCLI through real-life examples so that you can discover the art of PowerCLI scripting. At the start, you will be taught to download and install PowerCLI and will learn about the different versions of it. Moving further, you will be introduced to the GUI of PowerCLI and will find out how to develop single line scripts to duplicate running tasks, produce simple reports, and simplify administration. Next, you will learn about the methods available to get information remotely. Towards the end, you will be taught to set up orchestrator and build workflows in PowerShell with update manager and SRM scripts.

Style and approach

Each and every topic in this book is explained in a very easy-to-follow fashion with real-life, simple examples so you'll get an idea not only about working with PowerCLI, but will also get an idea about scripting.

PowerCLI Essentials

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Table of Contents

PowerCLI Essentials

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewer

www.PacktPub.com

eBooks, discount offers, and more

Why subscribe?

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. An Introduction to Essential Administration with PowerCLI

Why this book, and why now?

Understanding PowerShell versions

The basic structure of PowerShell

Why is version understanding important?

v2 or v3 – what's the difference?

Installing PowerShell v3 on a Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2 machine

Understanding PowerCLI

Getting PowerCLI versions

The PowerCLI change log

Getting PowerCLI

Pre-requisites before getting PowerCLI

Downloading PowerCLI

Installing PowerCLI

Getting help

Setting up the PowerCLI installation

Summary

2. Comparing Point and Click Administration to PowerCLI and Scripting

Getting started

Where do we begin?

Where do we find scripts and snippets that are safe to run?

VMware communities

VMware blogs

VMware flings

PowerGUI

Notepad++

PowerShell Scriptomatic

Microsoft TechNet Script Center

Programming interfaces

Writing the script

Planning the purpose

Thinking through a script

Planning the output

Making the script

Final script

Report-VMHostConfigStatus

Starting with the inputs

Getting the current configuration

Output of data

Getting the same information through PowerCLI

Network

Storage

Output

Final script of the report

Summary

3. Enhancing the Scripting Experience

Code repositories – why would I need that?

Building an internal repository

Using a third-party tool for code check-in and check-out

Send it to the cloud! Publicly accessible script repositories

Conclusions

Scripting with the intention to reuse

Functions, functions, functions – the fun with functions

Example of a multifunctional script

Using modules

Calling other scripts within the script

Example of a framework script

Building a framework that others can build upon

Running a workflow

Quality control, consistency, and simplification

Revisiting documentation

Script simplification

Error handling

Verification testing

Version control and keeping previous versions

What signifies a major version versus a minor version

Storing versions

Building a VM script using all the pieces

Summary

4. Windows Administration within VMware Administration

What is DevOps?

Starting a DevOps practice

Defining the roles

An example process

Duties of the Automation Engineer

Building the script

Mixing PowerCLI and standard PowerShell

Building a Windows script host

Using commands to enable remote desktops on a Windows 2012 R2 server

Running PowerCLI and Windows Administration

A script example

Thinking through the script

Building the script

Invoke-VMScript configuration

Running remote on a Linux guest

Basic BASH

Invoke-VMScript configuration

Introduction to vRealize Orchestrator

Summary

5. Workflows and vRealize Orchestrator

Workflows

The beginning of a workflow

The planning stage

The design phase

The implementation phase

The testing phase

Promotion or closeout

vRealize Orchestrator

Architecture and history

Sample environment

Where to get it?

Prerequisites to installation

Installation

Installing the standalone instance

Configuring and integration

Summary

6. Running Workflows with Other VMware Products

Orchestrating VMware products

Orchestrating with Orchestrator

Workflows

Orchestrating the integration of NSX

NSX conceptual overview

PowerCLI and NSX

Orchestrating the integration of Site Recovery Manager

PowerCLI and SRM

Running PowerShell scripts in a Recovery Plan

Orchestrating the integration of Monitoring (vROps)

Connecting to the vRealize Operations Manager

PowerCLI and vROps

Performance tools

Orchestration of Storage (VSAN)

VSAN and PowerCLI

Summary

Index

PowerCLI Essentials

Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

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First published: April 2016

Production reference: 1210416

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

35 Livery Street

Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78588-177-0

www.packtpub.com

Credits

Author

Chris Halverson

Reviewer

Tom Franken

Acquisition Editor

Divya Poojari

Content Development Editor

Onkar Wani

Technical Editor

Menza Mathew

Copy Editor

Merilyn Pereira

Project Coordinator

Bijal Patel

Proofreader

Safis Editing

Indexer

Mariammal Chettiyar

Graphics

Disha Haria

Production Coordinator

Arvindkumar Gupta

Cover Work

Arvindkumar Gupta

About the Author

Chris Halverson is a senior consultant for VMware in the Professional Services Organization in Canada. He specializes in the full Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) stack, architecting, designing, and deploying customer solutions. He has been active in the VMware community as a VMUG leader for the past 4 years and prides himself as an active...