PowerCLI Group Discussion

VMworld PowerCLI Group Discussion–Part 2–Resources

ResourcesFollowing Part 1 of these posts where we discussed getting started in PowerCLI I now give you Part 2 of the note taking by Nigel Boulton at VMworld in the PowerCLI Group Discussion.

In this part of the session we discussed what resources were available to people using PowerCLI.

As with the previous post I will expand on the notes taken and give you the complete list below.

If you have more resources make sure you add a comment and share them with others.


The other posts in this series can be found below:

  1. Blogs, there are lots of great blogs out there, some are focused only on PowerCLI and others have a mix of VMware and PowerCLI posts, others have a mix of PowerShell and PowerCLI post… in all seriousness here google is our friend, google PowerCLI and the phrase for something you want to do and you are more than likely to find a useful response.
  2. Books, there are a few PowerCLI books and two more coming out soon, check out Amazon for a full list here.  Remember, PowerCLI was based on PowerShell so read up on some of the PowerShell fundamentals, a great place to start here is “PowerShell in a month of lunch breaks” by Don Jones. Other PowerShell books are available and a lot of them are very good.
  3. The PowerCLI Blog and Community is a fantastic resource, make sure you check it out, a lot of questions have already been answered and even if its not exactly the question you had, you can still take the code for something like what you need and adjust it to your needs.  Don’t forget to share your code, its not just for questions but also for examples!  Feed back into the community and help others.
  4. Copy the code snippets from the PowerCLI community and use them to create your own scripts.
  5. I am more of a visual learner, if you are too then check out the PowerCLI Trainsignal video collection, they are a great place to watch and try out for yourselves.
  6. Check out the VMware HOL, try PowerCLI for yourself on a real working system, I have told people this before (I probably shouldn’t) but you don’t have to stick to the manual, remember you will get a complete system to play with, the down point here is that you wont be able to copy the scripts in and out but it’s a great resource for learning and also trying things out.
  7. Use a script editor, they have cool features like colour coding and features to help you create the script and discover objects within PowerShell, there are many script editors.  Google them to find them or use the ISE which comes with Windows and can be added as a feature.  Personally I still refer PowerGUI Script editor available from PowerGUI.org  You cant beat the variables pane and step by step running of the code.
  8. PowerCLI comes with a user guide, a PDF is available from the start menu once you have installed PowerCLI, give it a read, its very good!

4 thoughts on “VMworld PowerCLI Group Discussion–Part 2–Resources

  1. Pingback: VMworld PowerCLI Group Discussion–Part 3–Launching and Using - Virtu-Al.Net

  2. Pingback: VMworld PowerCLI Group Discussion « Nigel Boulton's Blog

  3. Pingback: VMworld PowerCLI Group Discussion–Part 1–Getting Started | Virtu-Al.Net

  4. Pingback: VMworld PowerCLI Group Discussion–Part 4–Advanced tools and scripting | Virtu-Al.Net

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