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PowerCLI @ VMworld 2011

Alan — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 16:00:10 +0000

I have to say, 2011 I think was my best VMworld yet – probably because I now work for VMware and was involved in so much cool stuff but hey – it was Awesome !

Whilst at VMworld I notice a lot of activity on the PowerCLI front, to capture this rather than a normal blog post I wanted to share with you a short video I created, it not only shows you what happened at VMworld but also gives you some great detail on what people are using PowerCLI for.

Thanks to everyone I spoke to and everyone I had a drink with. Also a big special thanks to my co-presenter Luc Dekens (featured at the end of the video).

PowerCLI @ VMworld 2011 is a post from: Virtu-Al.
Virtu-Al is one of the authors of VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration"

Buy it now from: Amazon USA Amazon UK Sybex

PowerCLI at VMworld Europe ‘11

Alan — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 20:29:15 +0000

I have just had a quick chat with my good friend PowerCLI-Man and he wanted me to let you know that despite rumours he will be attending VMworld Europe in Copenhagen 2011 – I for one am pleased about this and hope I will finally get the chance to meet him.

He said it was important to point out a couple of sessions to you which apparently will be fantastic:

He also wanted me to pass on this spoiler:

PowerCLI at VMworld Europe ‘11 is a post from: Virtu-Al.
Virtu-Al is one of the authors of VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration"

Buy it now from: Amazon USA Amazon UK Sybex

ESXi 5.0 Reference Poster

Alan — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 08:22:19 +0000

During VMworld most people I talked to were either moving to ESXi or excited by the new features of vSphere 5 and were investigating what they would need to do to upgrade and get the latest and greatest.

Those who attended the Hands on Lab were lucky enough to grab a poster bought to you by VMware Technical Marketing, this year VMware were giving out two posters, the first is the “VMware Management with PowerCLI 5.0” poster which can be downloaded here.

The second was a new poster which was designed to help you move to ESXi 5.0, this is called the “VMware ESXi 5.0 Reference” poster, it includes handy quick references to advise people of common tasks like upgrading to the latest version…

Or the new ESXCLI name spaces…..

How do I get the new poster ?

The new “VMware ESXi 5.0 Reference” poster can be downloaded as a PDF from the ESXi Chronicles blog, While you are there I suggest you subscribe to the RSS feed, from here: http://blogs.vmware.com/esxi/2011/09/vsphere-50-cli-reference-poster.html

Or if you dont have a large enough printer and will be at VMworld Europe in Copenhagen make sure you visit the Hands on Labs for your chance to grab this great reference poster already printed and ready to hang on your office wall.

ESXi 5.0 Reference Poster is a post from: Virtu-Al.
Virtu-Al is one of the authors of VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration"

Buy it now from: Amazon USA Amazon UK Sybex

VMworld Script Club / Developer / Admin Meet up

Alan — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 14:22:57 +0000

If your attending VMworld Las Vegas this year and are interested in chatting with Scripter’s, Developers and general admins wanting to automate their life make sure you attend the chat detailed here and below:

Date: Tuesday – August 30^th

Time: 11:30 – 13:00

Location: VMworld Community Lounge, located just outside the entrance to the solution exchange

There will be a host of people attending and ready to answer questions so come along and take full advantage, topics will include – but are not limited to:

vSphere APIs/SDKs with Pablo Roesch, Mahesh Ramachadran
vSphere Java APIs with Steve Jin
PowerCLI / Auto Deploy / Image Builder with Alan Renouf and Luc Dekens
VI Perl with William Lam
vCLI/vMA/ESXCLI with Kyle Gleed
vFabric with Carter Shanklin, Justin Murray
Java on vSphere with Emad Benjamin
SaaS architecture with Gilbert Lau
vCO with development team
Service automation tooling with Budianto Bong
Any other devops topics on your mind

This I am sure will be one of the highlights of VMworld, I know there are going to be many this year !

VMworld Script Club / Developer / Admin Meet up is a post from: Virtu-Al.
Virtu-Al is one of the authors of VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration"

Buy it now from: Amazon USA Amazon UK Sybex

VMworld PowerCLI–What to expect

Alan — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 11:33:36 +0000

Last years sessions by Luc and I had to be the highlight of my year and judging by the comments and scores we received it didn’t go down that badly with the attendees either. So this year we want to “raise the bar”, we have some fantastic sessions planned and hope you will come and see some of the things we have organised.

If i had to use one word to describe our sessions this year it would be “Super”, after you have seen the sessions you will understand why.

So to give you an idea of what we have planned we decided to give you a quick outline of the sessions and also a mention of the other PowerShell and PowerCLI based sessions at VMworld….

VSP1882 Managing VMware ESXi with VMware vSphere PowerCLI

Time: Tuesday 1:00 PM

In this session we will not only show you how to manage ESXi with PowerCLI but also we will take you through some new VMware technologies released in V5.0 including Image Builder and Auto Deploy, fun filled and full of demos this session is sure to bring a smile to the attendees faces.

Who should attend ?

Anyone who is managing ESXi in the future or is interested in the new Auto Deploy and Image Builder features within vSphere 5.0.

VSP1883 VMware vSphere PowerCLI Best Practices

Time: Tuesday 4:00 PM & Wednesday 2:30 PM

In this session Alan and Luc will show you a number of tips, tricks and gotchas they discovered on their long journey through PowerCLI land.

This session will not be a PowerCLI introduction, visit the “PowerCLI 101” session by Cody and Glenn for a good intro. The Best Practices session will show you how to avoid many of the common pitfalls on your path to PowerCLI glory.

Some questions this session will answer:

How do I schedule my scripts and make sure they will run ?
What’s up with these hidden vSphere folders ?
How to make my script fast, faster, fastest ?
How to customize your PowerCLI objects ?

Who should attend ?

Anyone who wants to take it one step further and become their organisations super hero in automation and PowerCLI |

More PowerCLI

As well as these sessions there are also a number of other great sessions which include PowerShell or PowerCLI, see below for a full list of sessions and of course do not forget the lab !

VMworld PowerCLI–What to expect is a post from: Virtu-Al.
Virtu-Al is one of the authors of VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration"

Buy it now from: Amazon USA Amazon UK Sybex

2 Men, 2 Sessions, 1 CLI

Alan — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 15:13:07 +0000

2 Men, 2 Sessions, 1 CLI is a post from: Virtu-Al. Virtu-Al is one of the authors of VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration" Buy it now from: Amazon USA Amazon UK Sybex

2 Men, 2 Sessions, 1 CLI is a post from: Virtu-Al.
Virtu-Al is one of the authors of VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration"

Buy it now from: Amazon USA Amazon UK Sybex

VMworld 2011 session

Alan — Wed, 11 May 2011 00:49:38 +0000

Following last years successful session which Luc Dekens and I presented 5 times at the San Francisco and Copenhagen VMworld’s we thought we would again submit another PowerCLI session this year.

But wait, we have not submitted just one for your viewing pleasure but two sessions !

Some of the feedback last year showed that there were some enhancements we could make to our session, taking this on board we have submitted two sessions which hopefully you will find interesting enough to vote for.

In Session 1882 we want to show you how you can use PowerCLI to manage your ESXi servers.

Remember that the COS will be gone in the next release. But as we will show you in this session that will not be a problem when you use PowerCLI.

Session 1883 is a PowerCLI Best Practices session. We will show you all the tips and tricks we collected over the years in the PowerCLI Community, on our blogs and while writing our PowerCLI book.

Vote Now

So if these sessions interest you and you would like to know more please head over to VMworld.com to vote for our sessions and hopefully we can make it as much of a hit as last year !

VMworld 2011 session is a post from: Virtu-Al.
Virtu-Al is one of the authors of VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration"

Buy it now from: Amazon USA Amazon UK Sybex

Interview with Dimitar Hristov – VMware vSphere PowerCLI Engineering Team

Alan — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 17:06:04 +0000

I think I must have missed this interview when I was at VMworld Copenhagen but recently came across this and gave it a quick listen.

John Troyer does a great job interviewing Dimitar Hristov from the PowerCLI engineering team, there is some great information in here to do with getting started and the future of PowerCLI, definitely worth a watch.

Interview with Dimitar Hristov – VMware vSphere PowerCLI Engineering Team is a post from: Virtu-Al.
Virtu-Al is one of the authors of VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration"

Buy it now from: Amazon USA Amazon UK Sybex

VMWorld: PowerCLI is for administrators !

Alan — Tue, 25 May 2010 10:01:20 +0000

The voting is nearly over for this years VMworld Sessions but I thought I would let you know that Luc Dekens (Lucd.info) and I have a session which you can help become a reality just by spending a few moments clicking on a button, if you have ever used a script by Luc and I and wondered how you could pay us back for the time we have spent (Cheques/cash/beer tokens are very welcome) then please hit the button now and come say Hi if you are at VMworld too !

A brief summary of the session

In larger organisations administrating a vSphere environment can cause headaches.

Some of the burning questions you surely recognize

Who gave that VM 4 CPU’s ?
Who connected the NIC to the DMZ PortGroup and when ?

In this session, Luc Dekens and Alan Renouf will show you how to automate the answers to these questions with the help of PowerCLI. The solutions presented will show you how the combined strengths of the rich PowerShell command set and the PowerCLI snapin provide you with powerful tools to make this all happen.

Alan and Luc will show you how to take PowerCLI beyond the listing and reporting stage. They will show you how to write and use scripts that will inform you when problems actually.

This session will show several aspects of working with PowerCLI. The classic PowerCLI approach but also the use of the SDK methods when execution speed is required and the use of third party products like PowerGUI, PowerWF or Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) to integrate the solutions even better into the corporate environment.

Luc and Alan will show several practical demos to highlight this integration. One of the demos will show for example how easy it is to use Active Directory to find a users email address and send him a message to tell him that his guest is using too many snapshots. If the mail stays unread, the script can try to reach the user via a Tweet.

How do I vote ?

1. Go to http://www.vmworld.com/ and login (free regestration), next click the “Vote Today” button as below:

2. Click on “Technology and Architecture” from the side menu as below:

3. Click the Vote next to “PowerCLI is for administrators !”

4. Relax knowing the VMware world is a better place and that you helped to make it that way !

VMWorld: PowerCLI is for administrators ! is a post from: Virtu-Al.
Virtu-Al is one of the authors of VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration"

Buy it now from: Amazon USA Amazon UK Sybex

PowerCLI: APIs made easy “Project Onyx”

Alan — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 23:05:48 +0000

For those of you who are living on Mars it is VMworld, No I am not there but I am trying to keep up with all the information coming from VMworld.

One of the coolest things I have seen is “Project Onyx”

Onyx is a cryptocrystalline form of quartz, but apart from that its also a code name for a cool new app the VMware PowerCLI team are working on.

Project Onyx basically allows you to record what you are doing in the virtual infrastructure client and turn it into PowerCLI scripts, so all those things you wanted to script but never knew how can now be achieved.

The PowerCLI team will be giving this new tool to a select few at VMworld to test as it is still in beta, hopefully a wider beta will be released at some point in the future.

For the meantime why don’t you check out the PowerCLI Blog for more information here (Love the paperclip reference)

Make sure you check out the YouTube video of it in action…

And also the VMware recorded interview with Carter and Hal…

PowerCLI: APIs made easy “Project Onyx” is a post from: Virtu-Al.
Virtu-Al is one of the authors of VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration"

Buy it now from: Amazon USA Amazon UK Sybex