powershell

Script to generate JSON file from Excel Workbook for VMware Cloud Foundation

As you know, I prefer to use command line or API to do things. It’s faster, repeatable, and consistent.

The problem I have with VMware Cloud Foundation is the API or PowerVCF module won’t let you use the vcf-ems-deployment-parameter.xlsx parameter workbook, you must supply a JSON file.

I have another script I plan on releasing that is a fully automated deployment of VCF from start to finish, including monitoring ESXi deployment in the hardware OEM’s tooling, then deploys CloudBuilder, and leverages this portion to generate the JSON file, but I digress. That’s for another post.

In order to use this script you must have an existing CloudBuilder appliance running and know the admin & root passwords. It is a first edition, you must enter/change the variables to suit your environment. It doesn’t do any validation, will continue on error.

I’ve added the file to my GitHub VCF Preparation repo as generate-json.ps1 here: https://github.com/ThepHuck/VCF_Preparation/blob/main/generate-json.ps1

Thanks & happy scripting!

Script to add an NVMe Controller and Disks to a VMware VM

I was trying to find a way to add an NVMe controller & disks to a VM, which there doesn’t seem to be PowerCLI cmdlets to do this. If I missed them, please tell me!

I did some googling, didn’t find much. I checked the API and found endpoints for the vCenter, but not ESXi.

I’m targeting ESXi directly because I want to build a nested vSAN ESA environment, which is why I was trying to add an NVMe controller & disks.

A friend suggested using the code capture function of vCenter in the developer center, and that was enough to point me in the right direction.

With that, I created a script called New-NVMeDisk.ps1 and published it on GitHub. Feel free use it, just maybe link to this blog or my github if you use it in a script.

GitHub link: https://github.com/ThepHuck/ThepHuck/tree/master/New-NVMeDisk

Host prep scripts for deploying & redeploying VCF

Hello! Long time, no scripting! I’ve been blowing through VCF, deploying, redeploying, and built some scripts to help me with this. Sharing is caring, read on to see what I’ve done…

Played with PowerShell Parameter Sets and Dynamic Parameters

I’m writing a script to deploy Azure VMware Solution (AVS) and ran into a situation many of us likely have: Some parameters depend on other parameters.

I started with Parameter Sets where I did have several parameters participating in multiple Parameter Sets, but that didn’t work how I thought it would (or should).

Here’s what didn’t work:

[CmdletBinding(DefaultParametersetName="cli")]
param(
[Parameter(ParameterSetName="cli")][Parameter(ParameterSetName="createVNET")][Parameter(Mandatory,ParameterSetName="VMInternet")][switch]$createVNET,
[Parameter(ParameterSetName="cli")][Parameter(Mandatory,ParameterSetName="createVNET")][Parameter(Mandatory,ParameterSetName="VMInternet")][string]$vNetIPSubnet,
[Parameter(ParameterSetName="cli")][Parameter(Mandatory,ParameterSetName="createVNET")][Parameter(Mandatory,ParameterSetName="VMInternet")][string]$vNetGatewaySubnet,
[Parameter(ParameterSetName="cli")][Parameter(Mandatory,ParameterSetName="createVNET")][Parameter(Mandatory,ParameterSetName="VMInternet")][string]$vNetBastionSubnet,
[Parameter(ParameterSetName="cli")][Parameter(Mandatory,ParameterSetName="createVNET")][Parameter(Mandatory,ParameterSetName="VMInternet")][string]$vNetManagementSubnet

[Parameter(ParameterSetName="cli")][Parameter(ParameterSetName="VMInternet")][switch]$EnableVMInternet,
[Parameter(ParameterSetName="cli")][Parameter(Mandatory,ParameterSetName="VMInternet")][string]$vNetFirewallSubnet,
[Parameter(ParameterSetName="cli")][Parameter(Mandatory,ParameterSetName="VMInternet")][string]$vNetHubSubnet
)

[CmdletBinding(DefaultParametersetName="cli")]

param(

[Parameter(ParameterSetName="cli")][Parameter(ParameterSetName="createVNET")][Parameter(Mandatory,ParameterSetName="VMInternet")][switch]$createVNET,

[Parameter(ParameterSetName="cli")][Parameter(Mandatory,ParameterSetName="createVNET")][Parameter(Mandatory,ParameterSetName="VMInternet")][string]$vNetIPSubnet,

[Parameter(ParameterSetName="cli")][Parameter(Mandatory,ParameterSetName="createVNET")][Parameter(Mandatory,ParameterSetName="VMInternet")][string]$vNetGatewaySubnet,

[Parameter(ParameterSetName="cli")][Parameter(Mandatory,ParameterSetName="createVNET")][Parameter(Mandatory,ParameterSetName="VMInternet")][string]$vNetBastionSubnet,

[Parameter(ParameterSetName="cli")][Parameter(Mandatory,ParameterSetName="createVNET")][Parameter(Mandatory,ParameterSetName="VMInternet")][string]$vNetManagementSubnet

[Parameter(ParameterSetName="cli")][Parameter(ParameterSetName="VMInternet")][switch]$EnableVMInternet,

[Parameter(ParameterSetName="cli")][Parameter(Mandatory,ParameterSetName="VMInternet")][string]$vNetFirewallSubnet,

[Parameter(ParameterSetName="cli")][Parameter(Mandatory,ParameterSetName="VMInternet")][string]$vNetHubSubnet

)

My intention was to have additional mandatory parameters based on additional switches. For instance, if you add “-createvNet”, the script needs four additional parameters. Also, if you used “-EnableVMInternet” without “-createvNET”, the script will also need to recognize that wasn’t supplied and make the parameters with it mandatory. Spoiler: that didn’t work.

PowerCLI script to migrate clusters to new vCenter

Hey scripters! I recently had a task of migrating an entire virtual datacenter from one vCenter to another. It sounds like a pretty simple task, but manually recreating the cluster(s) could cause some human errors. I decided to write a script that would look at a specific vDatacenter and get all it’s clusters, then recreate that tree in the new vCenter. It’s pretty simple, really, it pulls all the clusters, then creates new clusters with the same attributes. When moving over the hosts, it first disconnects them from the original vCenter, then removes them from inventory.

I thought about disabling HA & DRS on the source vCenter cluster right before hand, but manually disconnecting & removing shouldn’t be an issue. If you add the host to the new vCenter without first removing from the old vCenter, that’s when you’ll get some HA weirdness because the old vCenter doesn’t know what just happened.

What does it do?

PowerShell User Management script for Windows Server 2012 Core

This post is long over due. I’ve been playing with Windows Server 2012 without the GUI (aka Core) for a while and one thing that irks me is that without the Graphical Management Tools, you’re really stuck using old school “net user” commands. Sure, you can use another GUI 2012 server’s Server Manager to connect and manage your core server, but what if you only have one core server you’re testing? Or, what if you simply want to do things the ~~hard~~ PowerShell way?

I had some ideas, since 2012 Core has the SConfig thing, I decided to do something similar and create a user-management script specifically for this scenario.

So what does it do? Some pretty basic tasks: create & delete users, create & delete groups, as well as edit users. Editing users includes changing the password, enable & disable, and adding & removing group membership. All done from a nice little PowerShell window!

Here’s a screenshot:

Added VMware’s PowerCLI cmdlets to the powershell.php for WP-Syntax & GeSHi

I added a bunch of cmdlets for VMware’s PowerCLI to the cmdlets array in the powershell.php file.

So you don’t have to export and copy & paste them in to yours, I attached it to this post.

This is for the WP-Syntax plugin for WordPress that uses GeSHi to highlight certain things in the pre tag.

powershell.php

Just thought I’d share…

PowerCLI one liner to move all VMs on one datastore to another and convert to thick or thin

I wrote this post a while back on how to use the API to convert VMs from thin to thick, which you could also go from thick to thin using it. I had written it because I was trying to use the inflate function, which isn’t allow against powered on VMs.

It was pointed out by a reader that I could have simply used Move-VM to accomplish the same task. This is great, shows how a second set of eyes and a different perspective can help you solve the problem. You could simply do

Move-VM vmservername -Datastore datastorename -DiskStorageFormat thick

1	Move-VM vmservername -Datastore datastorename -DiskStorageFormat thick

and it will move your VM to the specified datastore and convert to thick. You could use either thin or thick.

If you wanted to move every VM on a datastore, say Datastore1, to a new datastore, say Datastore2, and convert all of them to either thin or thick, you could do it like this:

Get-VM -Datastore Datastore1 | Move-VM -Datastore Datastore2 -DiskStorageFormat thick

1	Get-VM -Datastore Datastore1 \| Move-VM -Datastore Datastore2 -DiskStorageFormat thick

You cannot specify the current datastore as the destination datastore, though. It will complete, but it will not convert your VM’s disk format, you have to actually Storage vMotion the VM to a different datastore. It basically validates the destination datastore is where it currently resides and exits without trying to convert your vmdk.

You could then take it a step farther and make a function that supports parameters, like if you wanted to move VMs on multiple datastores, or a given list of VMs to a specific datastore. For instance, you could create something like “convert-vms.ps1” and run it like this

convert-vms.ps1 -vms ("vm1",vm2","vm3","vm4") -destination datastore2 -thick

1	convert-vms.ps1 -vms ("vm1",vm2","vm3","vm4") -destination datastore2 -thick

and it would move all four VMs to datastore2 and convert them to thick in the process. Or something like

convert-vms.ps1 -source ("datastore1","datastore2") -destination datastore3 -thin

1	convert-vms.ps1 -source ("datastore1","datastore2") -destination datastore3 -thin

That would move all VMs from datastores 1 & 2 and thin provision them on datastore3.

If anyone’s interested in the actual script/function, let me know and I can put one together fairly quickly.

Easy way to check if your PowerShell variable is an array or not

I had a script that assumes something was an array, then failed when it wasn’t, so I needed a little checking:

$variable -is [system.array] will say True if it is an array, or False if not. You can also do $variable -isnot [system.array] and expect the exact opposite.

I chose to do this:

if($variable -isnot [system.array]){do some code expecting the $variable is not an array}

1	if($variable -isnot [system.array]){do some code expecting the $variable is not an array}

if($variable -is [system.array]){do some other stuff with $variable[0] being an array}

1	if($variable -is [system.array]){do some other stuff with $variable[0] being an array}

Use Powershell to change SCCM cache directory & cache size

Some of our older servers are running out of disk space on C:, so I needed to change the SCCM cache directory to D:. By default, this is where I wanted it anyway on our servers, leaving C: only for OS-related files. My OSD Task Sequences all have SMSCACHEDIR set to a folder on D in the client configuration step, but I noticed it wasn’t actually working. You know I had to find a way to fix that using powershell :D It actually ended up being really REALLY easy to do…