Summary

vCheck is a vCenter checking script, the script is designed to run as a scheduled task before you get into the office to present you with key information via an email directly to your inbox in a nice easily readable format.

This script picks on the key known issues and potential issues of the virtual infrastructure and reports it all in one place so all you do in the morning is check your email.

One of they key things about this report is if there is no issue in a particular place you will not receive that section in the email, for example if there are no datastores with less than 5% free space (configurable) then the disk space section will not show in the email, this ensures that you have only the information you need in front of you when you get into the office.

This script is not to be confused with an Audit script, I don’t want to remind you that you have 5 hosts and what there names are and how many CPU’s they have each and every day as you don’t want to read that kind of information unless you need it, this script will only tell you about problem areas with your infrastructure.

So What’s new in 6.0

vCheck 6.0 has been updated to be more community driven and easier to expand, the checks have been removed and put into separate plugins which make it easier for people to contribute. Make sure you check out the plugins page for a list of the plugins and what they check for.

The HTML output has been reformatted to work with newer versions of Outlook. (Lots of previous comments on this!)

A Setup Wizard has been added for easy setup and no more need to reference the vCenter address as a parameter of the script.

As the plugins have been moved out it makes this HTML report framework easy to adapt to other PowerShell enabled products like

• VMware vCD (Already started this one)
• Sharepoint
• Exchange
• vShield
• VMware View
• SQL
• Active Directory
• and more.

Please contact me if your interested to start your own using this template.

A header image has been added to the HTML report to make the report more customizable..

And much much more including lots of speed enhancements.

Big Thanks

Lastly I want to add a big thanks to everyone who has ever run this script and continues to use it, I hope you will find this version as useful as the previous versions.  Thanks to the Beta testers, I couldn’t have done it without you, you all came up with some great ideas and additions which made it hard for me to finish developing and releasing – I think I have enough for v7 !

And lastly thanks to anyone who writes a plugin themselves and sends it through to me to include on the plugins page.  Keep an eye out soon for some information on how you can easily add new plugins and check your current plugins.

Download

As always, please head over the the vCheck page on this site to download the script.

vCheck 6.0 released 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

Mainly I use PowerShell to manage my VMware environment but last night I broke from my comfort zone and took some time to see what I was able to do with Internet Explorer – Did you know you can programmatically browse the web with PowerShell ?  Well you can!

The Reason

First thing I needed was a reason, at the moment there is a poll for top virtualization blogs, last year I surprisingly did very well in this and would like to thank anyone who voted for me.  This year as I was filling it out and selecting some of my favorite blogs from the list.  People like Duncan Epping, Eric Sloof, William Lam, Luc Dekens, Jonathan Medd, Frank Denneman the list goes on and on and then I found my blog tucked away near the bottom amongst the other blogs beginning with V… as this is a virtualization top list you can imagine there were a few beginning with V!

Anyway, I thought there must be an easier way to allow people to vote for me than to hope they find me amongst the V’s and don’t get bored along the way and choose others so here it is:

The below script is not a cheating script, it will not make you vote for me 1000 times it will simply start internet explorer, browse to the survey and select my site for you, one this has done you are free to deselect me if you wish and also select the other 9 participants you would like to vote for.  After this just follow on through the survey and click Submit to finish.

Obviously with PowerShell I could have just added my favorite bloggers to this script and completed the survey for you but that would be cheating and I believe in the freedom to vote!

So if you have not yet voted then simply paste the following code into a PowerShell window and watch it control internet explorer and automatically select Virtu-Al from the list, the other choices are up to you!

$URL = "http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/786135/Top-VMware-virtualization-blogs-2012"
$ie = New-Object -com InternetExplorer.Application
$ie.visible=$true
$ie.navigate($URL)
while($ie.ReadyState -ne 4) {start-sleep -m 100}
$ie.Document.getElementById("sg_NextButton").click()
$ie.Document.getElementById("sgE-786135-1-27-10906").Click() # Click Virtu-Al

Using PowerShell with Internet Explorer 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

Details

Sign up here: http://www.myvmug.org/e/in/eid=273

Thursday, 26 January 2012

Time: 10:00 – 17:15
London Chamber of Commerce and Industry
33 Queen Street
London, EC4R 1AP
Directions

Time: 17:15
Pavilion End,
23 Watling Street, EC4M 9BR
Directions

Agenda

London VMUG – Thu 26th Jan 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

Today I came across a similar app for the android and also iPhone and wanted to share it.

vPowerCLI5 Reference is an app for Android which can be downloaded from here:

Android: http://droidmill.com/vpowercli5-reference-405917.html#.Txgq7ZiE6-8

iPhone: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vpowercli5-reference/id489731144?mt=8

This tool is to be used for referencing the VMware vSphere PowerCLI cmdlets. vSphere PowerCLI is a command-line and scripting tool built on Windows PowerShell, and is used for managing and automating vSphere.

It looks like this is a Android/iPhone friendly version of the online PowerCLI help which can be found here:

http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/PowerCLI/PowerCLI501/html/index.html

This post was updated to include iPhone app.

PowerCLI Android and iPhone App 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

Its great as a portable app, I have it in my DropBox folder and its syncd between my PC’s as well as being on a USB key so I can use it from anywhere.

I like the way you can resize the window and it resizes the buffer and the copy and paste is also enhanced from the normal console.

I have packaged my settings and logos up so you too can see what I see, just download the settings file from below and Console2 from here and extract them into the same folder.

Console2 Settings

Eye Candy

Using Console2 with PowerShell and PowerCLI 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

But how do you create your new image profile ?

An Image profile normally consists of a base ESXi image downloaded from VMware and then some custom software packages added in to ensure you have all the third party addons, drivers and utilities needed for the host to work with your infrastructure.

An example of this is the EMC PowerPath Software Package or the HP ESXi Proliant offline bundle, others may include the software package needed for the vCD Agent.

Once these software packages have been added to your image profile you are then able to export it back as an offline zip file, ISO file or use it in you Auto Deploy rule-set.

But when it comes to updating you need to remember which software packages you added to which build of ESX and repeat this procedure, this can be time consuming.

Introducing Update-ESXImageProfile

Did you know that VMware has an online repository of up to date versions of ESXi Software Depots ?  You can easily add this to your Image Builder session with the following line of code:

Add-EsxSoftwareDepot https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml

Using this online depot I was able to create a script which would download any newer software packages from the base ESXi Software Depot online and compare these against your current image profile, once this has been done it will add these latest versions to your image profile ensuring you have an up-to-date Image Profile.

Of course you will need to make sure you export this as a zip again so you can use it in the future and also add it to your Auto Deploy rule-set and reboot your hosts.

See it in action

The Script

Function Update-ESXImageProfile ($ImageProfile, $tools){
	if ($ImageProfile.Readonly) {
		Write-Host "Your ImageProfile is read-only and therefore cannot be updated, please use a custom ImageProfile"
	} Else {
		Write "Loading online Software Depot"
		$SD = Add-EsxSoftwareDepot -DepotUrl https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml
		If ($tools) {
			$NEWIP = Get-EsxImageProfile -Vendor "VMware, Inc." | Sort ModifiedTime -Descending | Where { $_.Name -notlike "*tools" } | Select -First 1
		} Else {
			$NEWIP = Get-EsxImageProfile -Vendor "VMware, Inc." | Sort ModifiedTime -Descending | Where { $_.Name -like "*tools" } | Select -First 1
		}
		Write-Host "New Image Profile found called $($NEWIP.Name)..."
		Write-Host "Checking for updated packages which do not exist in $ImageProfile"
		$Compare = Compare-EsxImageProfile -ReferenceProfile $ImageProfile -ComparisonProfile $NEWIP
		$Updates = ($Compare | Select -ExpandProperty UpgradeFromRef)
		If ($Updates) {
			Foreach ($SP in $Updates) {
				$UpdatedPackage = Get-EsxSoftwarePackage | Where {$_.Guid -eq $SP}
				Write-Host "Adding $($UpdatedPackage.Name) to $ImageProfile"
				$Add = Add-EsxSoftwarePackage -ImageProfile $ImageProfile -SoftwarePackage $UpdatedPackage
			}
		}
		$OnlyInComp = ($Compare | Select -ExpandProperty OnlyInComp)
		If ($OnlyInComp) {
			Foreach ($SP in $OnlyInComp) {
				$UpdatedPackage = Get-EsxSoftwarePackage | Where {$_.Guid -eq $SP}
				Write-Host "Adding $($UpdatedPackage.Name) to $ImageProfile"
				$Add = Add-EsxSoftwarePackage -ImageProfile $ImageProfile -SoftwarePackage $UpdatedPackage
			}
		}
		If ((-not $OnlyInComp) -and (-not $Updates)) {
			Write-Host "No Updates found for $ImageProfile"
		}
	}
}

Update-ESXImageProfile -ImageProfile "CustomImageProfile" -Tools $true

Updating your Image Profile 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

Now I had the API details I knew I could easily write some PowerShell code in the form of an advanced function to work with the API, the first piece of code I wrote was a generic function which allowed me to GET, PUT, DELETE and POST to a proprietary Web-RPC based Restful API. I know PowerShell v3 will include cmdlets for this but I didn’t want to wait or add a dependency on something which wasn’t available as yet.

With this completed the rest of the advanced functions were easily created, it was just a case of sending the correct parameter to my function and the correct URL and my results would be returned.

So why would we want to do this ?

Automation is a powerful tool, with automation we can not only make our lives as administrators easier and less cumbersome but also enable products to do things automagically that they never could do before.

I will add more and more posts for this module to show you what I mean but first things first I just wanted to get the module out here and available for feedback and general usage.

Don’t forget my other posts around automating vShield here:

• PowerShell automated install of vShield 5
• Automated install of vShield Services

Requirements

• PowerShell v2
• PowerCLI (Latest Version)
• vShield Module (See Downloads area on this page)
• vShield Manager 5.0
• vCenter

Download

You can download the module here:

Download

Install and Usage

The below video will take you through the install and give you enough to get started:

Feedback

If there is anything you have ever wanted to automate with vShield but didn’t know how then please let me know, the cmdlets are easily adjusted.

VMware vShield PowerShell Module 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

A slight spin on that is a Start-Up script, I was asked by a couple of people if I had one of these, it also becomes more relevant with the vCenter Virtual appliance, no need for HA and DRS rules or to manually search for the vCenter Virtual Appliance if there is a power outage.

The script below will connect to all hosts you define at the start, these could obviously be read from a csv, xml file or a database etc but I just define them in a variable for ease of the script.

The script will firstly connect to each of these hosts in turn, once connected it will search for the first VMs, in my case this is a couple of domain controllers, it could be database servers or any other infrastructure servers which need to come up before vCenter.   Once these VMs have been found the script will start them and wait for their tools status to be ready, this is an easy way to check that the VM is started completely.

Once the infrastructure servers are started it will then search for your vCenter VM, this could be on any of the connected hosts, it will start it and again wait until the tools return as being completely started.

The Script

$MyHosts = "192.168.0.101", "192.168.0.102"
$username = "root"
$password = "p@$$w0rd"
$DomainSRV = "DOMAIN01", "DOMAIN02"
$VirtualVC = "vCenter01"

$AllowMultiple = Set-PowerCLIConfiguration -DefaultVIServerMode Multiple -Confirm:$false

$MyHosts | Foreach {
Write-Host "Connecting to host: $($_)"
$connection = Connect-VIServer $_ -User $username -Password $password
}

$VM = Get-VM $DomainSRV
$VM | Foreach {
Write-Host "Starting $($_.name) found on $($_.VMHost)"
$StaringVMs = Start-VM $_ -Confirm:$false -RunAsync
}

$VM | Foreach {
do {
$VM = Get-VM $_
$Toolsstatus = $VM.ExtensionData.Guest.ToolsRunningStatus
Write-Host "Waiting for $VM to start, tools status is $Toolsstatus"
Sleep 7
} until ($Toolsstatus -eq "guestToolsRunning")
}

$StartVC = Get-VM $VirtualVC | Start-VM -Confirm:$false

do {
$VM = Get-VM $VirtualVC
$Toolsstatus = $VM.ExtensionData.Guest.ToolsRunningStatus
Write-Host "Waiting for $VM to start, tools status is $Toolsstatus"
Sleep 7
} until ($Toolsstatus -eq "guestToolsRunning")

Write-Host -ForegroundColor Yellow "vCenter Server started, please connect as normal"

In Action

VM Start-up script 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

Just released on the VMware Flings site is a fling which is designed to help when you make the move from ESX to ESXi, this tool will help you check hardware software and also that there are no lingering scripts or locally stored VMs etc.

A great tool to download and run against your environment to ensure you have caught everything before the move to the next version of ESXi.

From the official description:

The ESX System Analyzer is a tool designed to help administrators plan a migration from ESX to ESXi. It analyzes the ESX hosts in your environment and, for each host, collects information on factors that pertain to the migration process:

• Hardware compatibility with ESXi
• VMs registered on the ESX host, as well as VMs located on the host’s local disk
• Modifications to the Service Console
  • RPMs which have been added or removed
  • Files which have been added
  • Users and cronjobs which have been added

This tool also provides summary information for the whole existing environment

• Version of VMware Tools and Virtual Hardware for all VMs
• Version of Filesystem for all datastores

By having this information, administrators can determine what tasks need to be done prior to the migration. Examples include:

• Relocate VMs from local datastores to shared datastores
• Make note of what agent software has been added to the host and obtain the equivalent agentless version
• Replace cronjobs with equivalent remote scripts written with PowerCLI or vCLI

Download

Make sure you visit the fling site here and use this fling against your environment:

http://labs.vmware.com/flings/esx-system-analyzer

Migrating ESX to ESXi 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

But did you know you can already use PowerShell with vCD ?  It should be no surprise to anyone who uses PowerShell to know that PowerShell does a great job with XML manipulation and API calls.

As part of vCD 1.0 there was obviously an API, this was based on REST which is essentially calls to web pages and sending/receiving data, so with the knowledge that this API is available and that PowerShell is a great way to communicate with this API all that was left was for someone to tie all this together and create some advanced functions which can be used against the vCloud API…. enter Jake Robinson.

Jake has been doing some great work recently, personally I have spoken to him a couple of times and had the privilege of meeting him at VMworld 2011 Las Vegas, he is a great guy and very knowledgeable about both PowerShell and vCD so the perfect guy to create some advanced functions.

The functions can be downloaded from here:

Download: https://github.com/jakerobinson/vCloud-Powershell

I would also recommend checking out his great video on what he has created and some examples of how these can be used published here on his blog (add to your RSS feed) and also embedded below.

Overall I think these are a great start and something VMware should be looking very closely at when creating the cmdlets for vCD 1.5

Great job Jake !

vCloud Director 1.0 PowerShell Advanced Functions 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