with a new service coming online in my company, I had 12 vlan portgroups to add to over 30 ESXi machines. Simple you say, just pipe your hosts into a new virtualswitch query then into a new virtual port group command.

Did i mention the virtual switch has a different name per host? Its vswitch0 on some, vswitch1 on others, and even vswitch2 on one.Arse.

after a few hours of various queries, below is the little scripty I was left with. I did consider putting this into a function, but I didnt know where to begin when it came to a name…

add-PortGroupInSwitchWhereOtherPortGroupExists? … bleh.

Below the variables are pretty self explanatory and it works flawlessly. Remember to install the powercli commands, import the module and connect to the vi server first!

#Variables
 $findportgroupname="GWA4"
 $NewPortGroupName="Citrix7"
 $NewPortGroupVlanId="306"

foreach ($portgroup in get-virtualportgroup | where {$_.name -eq $findportgroupname}){
 get-vmhost -id $portgroup.vmhostid |
  get-virtualswitch -name $portgroup.virtualswitchname |
   new-virtualportgroup -name $NewPortGroupName -Vlanid $NewPortGroupVlanId
 }

Hopefully I soaked in enough of the course through partial listening while reading the powercli help references to pass my exam today!

Retrieve and Apply DRS recommendations:

get-drsrecommendation | Apply-DrsRecommendation

Find all vm’s with e1000 network cards, for upgrade to vmxnet:

get-vm | Get-NetworkAdapter | where {$_.type -match “e1000″} | select-object parent,networkname,name,type

power off all vm’s with “test” in their names:

get-vm test* | stop-vm -confirm:$false

Move all vm’s with “test” in their names:

get-vm | where {$_.name -like “*test”} | move-vm -destination destinationhostname

Remove all vm’s with “test” in their name:

get-vm test* | remove-vm -confirm:$false

retrieve a list of vm’s with thinly provisioned disks:

get-vm | select HardDisks -expandproperty HardDisks | where {$_.storageformat -match “Thin”} | select-object parent,name,capacitykb,filename

A function to report on physical resources vs virtual commitment:

function get-commitment {
 $objreport=@()

 get-vmhost | % {

 $intvmcommitmemmb=$null
 $intvmcommitcpu=$null

 get-vm -location $_ | % {
 $intvmcommitcpu += $_.numcpu
 $intvmcommitmemmb += $_.MemoryMB
 }#end vm

 $objOutput = New-Object PSObject -Property @{
 VMHost = $_.name
 VMMaxCpu = $_.NumCpu
 VMCommitCPU = $intvmcommitcpu
 VMMaxMem = $_.MemoryTotalMB
 VMCommitMem = $intvmcommitmemmb
 }#end object
 $objreport += $objoutput 
 }#endhost

 return $objreport
}#endfunction

get-commitment

A function to report all machines with snapshots:

function get-snapshots {
 $i=$null 
 $result=@()
 $objAllservers = get-vm
 foreach ($server in $objAllservers){
 $i++
 $intsize = $intsize + $objallservers.length
 Write-Progress -activity "Gathering snapshot report ($server)" -status "Percent complete: " -PercentComplete (($i / $objAllservers.length) * 100)
 $result += get-snapshot $server}

 return $result
}

get-snapshots | select-object name,created,sizemb,iscurrent,vm,vmid,Id,Uid

pass the vcp exam: (work in progress)

get-coursenotes |
select-object salespitch,minimums,maximums,configurationlimitations |
commit-tobrain | out-exampaper