I have just re-worked an old script which I created to check each VM to ensure they are using the correct HAL based on the amount of processors they have installed, as it turns out I managed to get this into a nice one-liner:

Get-VM | Where {$_.PowerState -eq "PoweredOn"} | Sort Name | Select Name, NumCPU, @{N="OS HAL";E={(Get-WmiObject -ComputerName $_.Name -Query "SELECT * FROM Win32_PnPEntity where ClassGuid = '{4D36E966-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}'" | Select Name).Name}}

Or to break it down so it fits on my blog…

Get-VM | Where {$_.PowerState -eq "PoweredOn"} |
Sort Name |
Select Name, NumCPU, @{N="OS HAL";E={(Get-WmiObject -ComputerName $_.Name -Query 
"SELECT * FROM Win32_PnPEntity where ClassGuid = '{4D36E966-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}'" |
Select Name).Name}}

Output:

Most of my work with the VI Toolkit has been scripts so far, well the work that I  have added to this blog anyway, I use one-liner’s on a daily basis to make my job easier.

It was suggested to me that I should add some one-liners to my blog as I’m going to be busy over the next couple of weeks so I had a quick tinker.

This one-liner is quite a simple but long one-liner just to get started:

View the top 10 VM’s which have been using memory for the last 48 Hours:

Get-Stat -Entity (Get-VM | Where {$_.PowerState -eq "PoweredOn"}) -Start ((Get-Date).AddHours(-48)) -Finish (Get-Date) -Stat mem.usage.average | Sort-Object Value -Descending | Select-Object Entity, Value -First 10

Continue reading →

I was asked by my friend Duncan if it was easy enough to set the Memory Management Unit (MMU) for each of his VM’s.  Read his post here for more information on what he was working on.

He was about to set this by hand for 50+ VM’s which would take a while, so with the power of the VI Toolkit he can now take it easy whilst PowerShell does the hard work:

Get-VM -Name "MyVM" | Get-View | foreach {
    $spec = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineConfigSpec
    $spec.flags = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineFlagInfo
    $spec.flags.VirtualMMuUsage = "on"
    $taskMoRef = $_.ReconfigVM_Task($spec)
}

Get-VM | Get-View | foreach {
    $spec = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineConfigSpec
    $spec.flags = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineFlagInfo
    $spec.flags.VirtualMMuUsage = "on"
    $taskMoRef = $_.ReconfigVM_Task($spec)
}

Get-Cluster "MyCluster" | Get-VM | Get-View | foreach {
    $spec = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineConfigSpec
    $spec.flags = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineFlagInfo
    $spec.flags.VirtualMMuUsage = "on"
    $taskMoRef = $_.ReconfigVM_Task($spec)
}

To list each of the VM’s and their current MMU setting use this one-liner:

Get-VM | Get-View | ForEach {Write "$($_.Name) - $($_.Config.Flags.VirtualMmuUsage)"}