Deploy Multiple VM’s using PowerCLI and VMware Template

I wanted to create a few different VM’s so I can test a VMware daily report script. This can be done using deploy VM from template using the vSphere web client but this can take a long time.

I decided to write a quick PowerShell script to deploy the VM’s use PowerCLI and a CSV file. First we need to get the template that are available in vCenter server.

Connect to to vCenters server using PowerCLI and then run Get-Template to list all templates and then copy the name of the template. This will be added to the csv file.

Since I am going to be using a csv file to create the VM’s this needs to be created with headings that will be called in the script.

Below are the heading I used in the csv, these can either be used as is or the script can be updated using different headings.

Name

Datastore

Template

Cluster

Below is the completed csv file I will be using.

Below is the script I used you just need to update the $vms variable with the path that has the csv file.

$vms = Import-Csv -Path D:\Scripts\VMware\Deploy_VMs\Deploy_VMs.csv
foreach ($vm in $vms) {
Write-Warning "Creating $($vm.Name) in $($vm.cluster)"
New-VM -Name $vm.Name -Datastore $vm.Datastore -Template $vm.Template  -ResourcePool $vm.Cluster
}

To confirm the VM’s are being created we can check vCenter Server for running tasks.

The deployment can take awhile depending on the size of the template.

I then used the below command to get the list of VM’s and their datastores just to confirm all VM’s have been created and are in the correct datastore.

Get-VM -Name LAB-Linux* | Select Name,@{N="Datastore";E={(Get-Datastore -Id $_.DatastoreIdList)}}

This is just a quick example of deploying a VM using a template