Using VMware PowerCli Part 1

Since VMware 6.0 I have started to use VMware PowerCli module to automate task and checks that I do daily or for large task that would take a long time to do manually. I am going to go through installing PowerCli and some of the useful command and script that can be use to check VMware.

To install PowerCli there are some pre-req’s

OS Type	64-Bit
Server	Windows Server 2012 R2 Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1
Workstation	Windows 10 Windows 8.1 Windows 7 Service Pack 1

Windows PowerShell 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, or 5.1
.NET Framework 4.5, 4.5.x, 4.6, or 4.6.x

I would recommend installing the latest version of PowerShell which is currently 5.1

To check current version of PowerShell run $PSVersionTable Pcli

To install the latest version install the latest Windows Management Framework 5.1 link to download page is below.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=54616

Step 1 is to install PowerCli

The old PowerCli was a PowerShell snap in and required downloading an exe to install, the new version is module based and can be installed directly from the PowerShell console. To install run the below command.

Install-Module VMware.PowerCli Pcli1

If you need to update the module to a new release run

Update-Module VMWare.PowerCli Pcli2

If a path is not specified the default location that the module files will be placed in is

C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules

Once the install has finished to verify that PowerCli is installed run the below command Pcli3

Step 2 is to connect to vCenter

To connect to vCenter open an elevated PowerShell console and import the VMware Module

Import-Module VMware.PowerCli Pcli4

Connect-VIServer lab-VC vCenterServer Pcli5

Once connected we can now start to run command against vCenter.

To get host information run

Get-VMHost

Pcli6

To find all VM’s that have snapshots over a certain date. I want to get all snapshots older than 1 day to change this just edit the $date variable.

$date = (Get-Date).AddDays(-1)
$Snapshot = get-vm | get-snapshot
$Snapshot | where {$_.Created -lt $date} Pcli7

To check datastores you can run

Get-Datastore

Pcli8

To get additional info you can do some math’s and use arrays to get % free space of the datastores. The below will get all datastores that have less than 25% free space.

Get-Datastore | select Name,@{N=”UsedSpaceGB”;E={[math]::Round(($_.CapacityGB),2)}},

@{N=”FreeSpaceGB”;E={[math]::Round(($_.FreeSpaceGB),2)}},

@{N=”%Free”;E={[math]::Round(($_.FreeSpaceGB)/($_.CapacityGB)*100,2)}} |

where %Free -lt “25”

VMware 6.5 Migrate From vSS To vDS

Migrating from standard vSwitches to distributed vSwitches has a lot of advantages. I have listed a few below.

Central management for all host in the vDS
Uniform configuration for all hosts
Easily add new port groups

The one major disadvanatage is if vCenter is down you cannot manage the vDS.

To use vDS you will need to have Enterprise or Enterprise Plus VMware licences.

To migrated from vSS to vDS go to networking in the VMware web client and right-click on vCenter server and go to distributed switch.

VDS1

Give the vDS a suitable name

VDS2

Select the version of ESXi you have in production if you select a newer version than you have running in vCenter the host will show as incompatible VDS3

The defualt number of uplinks is 4. I only had two uplinks so I changed this to two. VDS4 VDS5

After the vSwitch has been created I usually add a port group for management and vMotion VMkernel networks.

To migrated from the standard switch right-click on the vDS and go to Add and Manage Hosts.

VDS7

Select add hosts. VDS8

Select the host that you want to add to the vDS VDS9

The next page is where you manage the physical uplinks. Click assign uplinks and assign to the vDS. VDS10

Next we can migrate the VMkernel adapters. I only have a management network but this is the same process if you have vMotion or any other VMkernel adapter. Click assign port group and select the relevant port group in my case it was dv_Managment. VDS11

Last step is to migrate VM’s. If you have multiple networks / port groups you migrated each individual VM to its own port group I only have one so I assigned each VM to the same port group. VDS12

VDS13

Once the task have completed you should now see the Host and VM’s running on the new port group. VDS14 VDS15

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.

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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

OVF parameter chunkSize with value “XXXXXXXXXX” error in vCenter Server 6.5

I was trying to deploy some of my old Linux ovf but I was getting an error about ovf chunkSize.

OVF3

I had a quick look and found this VMware KB and the error is due to VMware no longer supporting ChunkSize in vSphere 6.5. To fix this issue I had to extract the ovf, I used 7-zip.

OVF4

If there are multiple disks you may have to combine them using command like the below.

copy /b vmName-disk1.vmdk.000000 + vmName-disk1.vmdk.000001 + ….. + <until the last fragment> vmName-disk1.vmdk

I only had one disk so I used the below.

copy /b Linux-VM-disk1.vmdk.000000000 Linux-VM-disk1.vmdk

OVF6

Once the file copy command has completed I needed to edit the Linux-VM.ovf file to remove the ChunkSize. I used Notepad ++ to edit this. You can search for chunksize.

OVF8

Below is the updated ovf file with the ChunkSize removed.

OVF9

After making the change I tried to import the ovf again. To import use the individual files.

OVF10

I then got a new error.

OVF11

This was due to the manifest file the Linux-vm.mf not matching the updated ovf file. To get the filehash run the below command in Powershell. The hash has to be in lower case so use the .tolower to convert the response to lower case.

(Get-FileHash .\Linux-vm.ovf -Algorithm SHA1).hash.tolower()

OVF12

I then had to edit the Linux-vm.mf file.

OVF13

Change the SHA1 Linux-VM.OVF file hash, To the new hash that has been export from PowerShell.

OVF14

Below if the updated .mf file.

OVF16

After this I was then able to complete the OVF import.

OVF15

Once Imported we can then export the file to an OVA again so that it can be imported when needed.

Installing and configuring vCSA 6.5

VMware are moving away from using Windows vCenter server to only using the vCenter Server Appliance as this give simpler management, lower licensing cost and it integrates VMware update manager (VUM) as part of the appliance. You can still currently download a Windows vCenter server but this is being deprecated and will be removed in the next major release after 6.7. To deploy the vCSA requires the ISO to be downloaded and for the device that will launch the install to have network connectivity with the ESXi host that will run vCenter appliance.

The system requirements for my deployment which is the tiny version is

Disk: 120GB
Memory: 8GB
2 vCPU

A Tiny Environment can have up to 10 Hosts, 100 Virtual Machines.

Link to download the vCSA is below.

https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?productId=614&downloadGroup=VC65U2C

To deploy the vCSA mount or extract the ISO for 6.5. Go to drive letter for the mounted ISO or the extracted folder and then in to vcsa-ui-installer\win32\ and run the installer.exe.

VC1

Select install VC2

Click next on stage 1 screen, Accept the licence agreement and click next.

Since this is a lab I just went with an embedded PSC and vCenter server. If you want to test enhanced link mode you will need to use an external PSC. VC5

Select the ESXi host that the appliance will be deployed to. VC6

Select the VM name and the root password. VC7

Select the deployment size I went with tiny as I will only have a few nested hosts. VC8

Select the datastore to be used. VC9

Assign VM Network, a static IP address, System name and DNS server. If a FQDN is used for the appliance name and is not registered in DNS the deployment will fail. So make sure it is done before proceeding with the install. VC10

Next screen is just to confirm all settings are correct. VC11

VC12

The deployment should promt to start stage 2 of the deployment.

If the appliance doesn’t show the continue screen you can go to stage 2 of the deployed using the admin page for vCenter

go to https://vCentersystemname5480 or https://vCenterIPAddress:5480 and click on set up vCenter server appliance.

VC13

Set IP settings for the Embedded PSC. VC14

Set the SSO domain and site-name with administrator password. VC15

last page will be to confirm details for embedded PSC VC16

Click finish and the appliance will start to deploy. VC17

Once completed the URL’s to access will be presented on-screen. You can access either the vSphere web client Flash version or HTML5. HTML5 is not full functional in version 6.5 so certain task will need to be run from the Flash client. VC18

The logon will be the account and password that was set on the PSC SSO setup. In my case the logon name is administrator@vsphere.local. To logon to vCenter either go to

https://vCentersystemname or https://vCenterIPAddress