Arnim van Lieshout

Output type changes in PowerCLI 4.1In PowerCLI 4.1 VMware changed the namespaces of the output types. According to VMware, this was done to improve the internal structure and enable other VMware teams to write cmdlets for the products they develop. You can read all about it in the vSphere PowerCLI blog article Output type changes in PowerCLI 4.1

Today when building a script I had to declare a variable using the full namespace path. Since I was building and testing the script in a PowerCLI 4.0 environment, all went fine until I ran the script in a PowerCLI 4.1 test environment. The script failed because of the namespace mismatch.

VMware provided a full listing of the namespace changes and a PowerShell script to check for scripts which use incompatible types.  I didn’t want to edit all my scripts one at a time, so I decided to build a little function called Fix-Namespace to do the hard work for me.

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Whenever you need to install a new box with ESX, there’s the struggle with matching physical ports to VMware devices. Which network adapter becomes vmnic0?, Which hostbus adapter becomes vmhba1?, etc. Especially when you have a lot of network adapters this can be confusing and you can’t connect to the device over the network unless you have the right patching and physical switch port configuration. For the record my last box had 10 nics!

First thing to understand is that it’s important to know the PCI bus numbering, because ESX numbers the devices in ascending PCI bus number order. The network adapter with the lowest PCI number will become eth0/vmnic0.

How to do this:

• Use the hardware vendor’s specification sheet and learn which expansion slot has which PCI bus number. If you have a network adapter with multiple ports, the lowest port number will be the first device detected. From here sort everything in ascending PCI bus number order.
• Use the VMware provided tool “vmkvsitools“. Go to the console and issue the command “vmkvsitools lspci“. This command returns a list of all PCI devices in your system, equal to just running the “lspci” command, but adds the VMware device name at the end of each line.
  
  vmkvsitools also displays PCI numbers in decimal format.

If you are only concerned about network adapters, you could also use “esxcfg-nics“. Go to the console and issue the command “esxcfg-nics -l“. This command generates a list of network adapters and their PCI number.

Whenever I need to install a new type of hardware I use the vmkvsitools method to document my host before it’s going into production. There’s nothing more important than having your documentation 100% in place. I know it’s quite some work to document everything, but whenever a problem arises you don’t need to search for information and this relieves stress J

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Watching the twittersphere for vExpert announcements, I was intrigued by the need for people to be on a list. A lot of people contacted me that they were missing from the vExpert twitter avatar list on my vExpert 2010 post. I also saw many people ask Maish Saidel-Keesing to include them on his VMware vExpert 2010 Twitter list and even people contacted William Lam to include a link to their own vExpert post in William’s vExpert 2010 Crew.

This made me decide to create another list and dedicate a page to it. May I present to you the VMware vExpert 2010 Directory.

Today I woke up and found out that I was rewarded as a VMware vExpert 2010. I’m deeply honored to be designated for this award and to become part of this selected group of great minds. I want to thank VMware and the vExpert judges for selecting me. A special Thank You goes to John Troyer, the man who puts an enormous effort into making this vExpert program a reality.

The VMware vExpert Award is given to individuals who have significantly contributed to the community of VMware users over the past year. vExperts are book aut.hors, bloggers, VMUG leaders, tool builders, and other IT professionals who share their knowledge and passion with others. These vExperts have gone above and beyond their day jobs to share their technical expertise and communicate the value of VMware and virtualization to their colleagues and community.

Also congratulations to all other vExperts 2010

This list is not complete. If you’re missing please leave a comment.

Vizioncore just released the newest version of the vEcoShell (Virtualization EcoShell). As a user and developer of VMware PowerCLI scripts I almost use the vEcoShell on a daily basis. The amazing thing about the vEcoShell is that you don’t need any scripting experience to use PowerCLI scripts and examples found on the web. If you haven’t done so, give it a try. You will like it! That’s a promise!

Starting with the 1.2.6 release of vEcoShell, it will no longer be referred to as beta! vEcoShell is finally an officially sanctioned product from Vizioncore. The product is still a Freeware offering with online community support only.

The landing page now also includes a link to the Community PowerPack for even more power. This Community PowerPack demonstrates the full potential of the vEcoShell and gives the virtualization administrator a crucial tool for administering the virtual environment. It has a wide range of nodes for every aspect of your virtual environment. If you find anything missing or want to contribute code, just let us know.

What’s New with 1.2.6

• Completely rewritten PowerPack to support VMware PowerCLI 4.0 Update 1 and its ability to manage connections to multiple $viServer objects.
• Ability to copy and paste code from “PowerShell Code” tab directly into standalone PS1 files (Will still need to Add-PSSnapin and Connect-VIServer for script to function).
• Ability to copy and paste code snippets from the internet and they will work without needing to add our $managedHost.connection code everywhere.

About vEcoShell

vEcoShell is a freeware desktop application that simplifies the daily administration of increasingly complex virtual environments. Powered by PowerGUI by Quest Software, vEcoShell leverages Windows PowerShell and VMware PowerCLI to enable administrators to easily administer their environments with virtualization PowerShell scripts.

vEcoShell currently supports the following hypervisors:

• VMware VI3 / VirtualCenter 2.5
• VMware vSphere / vCenter 4.0
• Microsoft Hyper-V

Today I noticed a memory limit on a vm. After investigating my environment using the vEcoShell and the Community PowerPack, I found more vms with memory limits set. It turned out that there was a template which had the limit set. I could easily reset all limits using the GUI, but I thought I rather do it with PowerCLI. 

Alan Renouf did a post already on a oneliner to reset all cpu and memory limits back in july 2009. After trying that code I found it rather slow. If you want to speed up things in PowerCLI you need to use the Get-View cmdlet. After some digging in the vSphere API Reference, I came up with a different peace of code that is much faster. 

First Alan’s code:

Get-VM VM001 | Get-VMResourceConfiguration | Set-VMResourceConfiguration -MemLimitMB $null

This took 18.43 seconds to complete in my environment 

My code:

$spec = new-object VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineConfigSpec
$spec.MemoryAllocation = New-Object VMware.Vim.ResourceAllocationInfo
$spec.MemoryAllocation.Limit = -1
$vm = get-view -ViewType VirtualMachine -Filter @{"Name"="VM001"}
$vm.ReconfigVM_Task($spec)

This took only 1.10 seconds to complete. 

You may notice that my code doesn’t wait for the task to complete (async) while Alan’s code does (sync), but completing the task took only 4 seconds. That makes my code still 14 times faster. 

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If you are looking for migrating your Windows-based computer to a virtual environment (P2V), vice versa (V2P) or even to another hardware platform (P2P), you might want to have a look at Virtualization Manager 9.5 Personal edition from Paragon software.

Virtualization Manager 9.5 Personal allows you to:

• Migrate a Windows-based computer to a virtual environment (P2V)
• Migrate from a virtual environment to physical (V2P)
• Virtualize system from its backup image (P2V)
• Migrate from one virtual environment to another (V2V)
• Recover the OS startup ability after system migration to a different hardware or unsuccessful virtualization by a 3rd party tool (P2P and P2V Adjust)
• Clone a partition or an entire hard disk
• Exchange data between your physical environment and the virtual one, or between a virtual disk and its snapshots
• Accomplish virtual drive partitioning (create, format, delete, move, resize etc.)

Key Usage Scenarios:

This software, normally priced at $29.95, can now be obtained free of charge from Paragon Free portal starting Friday May 21, 09:00 AM (EST) till Monday May 24, 09:00 AM (EST).  Please note that it requires registration.

Grab your copy now before it’s too late!

Before upgrading my Virtual Center 2.5 server to vCenter Server 4.0, I decided to temporarily disable HA and DRS. This is just a precaution taken to avoid waiting for cluster reconfigurations right after the upgrade. Because I hate doing things more than once by hand, I used PowerCLI for this.

Although no rocket science you can use the following PowerCLI oneliner to disable HA and DRS on all clusters:

Get-Cluster | Set-Cluster -HAEnabled:$false -DrsEnabled:$false -Confirm:$false

Warning:

Disabling DRS will delete any resource pool on the cluster without warning!!!
(Thanks to Daniel M (@dmVI) for pointing this out in the comments)

To enable HA and DRS again use:

Get-Cluster | Set-Cluster -HAEnabled:$true -DrsEnabled:$true -Confirm:$false

On April 8th we had a very good DutchVMUG meeting, which was totally dedicated to using PowerCLI and The VESI (Virtualization EcoShell Initiative). Although setting up the environment is straightforward, I wanted to do a small write-up which leads you through the install process and includes all download links needed.

Installation Overview

The complete setup of the PowerCLI/The VESI environment includes 3 steps:

1. Installation of Windows PowerShell
2. Installation of VMware PowerCLI
3. Installation of The Virtualization EcoShell

It’s important that these steps are executed in this specific order. For a complete overview of download links and other interesting PowerShell/PowerCLI links, please visit my PowerCLI page.

Step 1 – Installation of Windows PowerShell

Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 en Windows Server 2008

• First install the Microsoft .NET framework. I advice to install .NET framework 3.5 Service Pack 1, because this is needed if you want to use the out-gridview cmdlet.
  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=AB99342F-5D1A-413D-8319-81DA479AB0D7
• Next install Windows PowerShell 2.0, which is part of the Windows Management Framework
  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968929

Windows 7 en Windows 2008 R2

• No installation required, because Windows PowerShell is already pre-installed with these Windows versions.

Step 2 – Installation of VMware PowerCLI

The installation of VMware PowerCLI is very straightforward, just follow the next, next saga.
http://www.vmware.com/download/download.do?downloadGroup=sdkwin40u1

For security reasons PowerShell doesn’t allow for the execution of scripts at all by default. This mode is the “Restricted” execution policy, in which PowerShell operates as an interactive shell only. In order to execute scripts we need to change this execution policy to “RemoteSigned” to allow for the execution of our own scripts and downloaded (or remote) scripts only if they are digitally signed by a trusted publisher.

• Start PowerCLI. Go to Start > Programs > VMware > VMware vSphere PowerCLI > VMware vSphere PowerCLI
  
• Set the execution policy to “RemoteSigned” by running the following in a PowerShell prompt
  Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned


Step 3 – Installation of The Virtualization EcoShell

To install The Virtualization EcoShell just follow the next, next saga again.
http://thevesi.org/servlet/KbServlet/download/2352-102-4064/VESI.1.2.0.154.msi

Before you can run scripts inside the Virtualization EcoShell you have to add one or more managed hosts. This can be a vCenter server or just a standalone ESX server.

• Select Start>Programs>Virtualization EcoShell> Virtualization EcoShell
  
• Expand the VMware node
• Select Managed Hosts
  
• Select Add Connection
  The “Add Connection” window is displayed.
  
• Click the selection icon
  The “Select Values” window is displayed.
  
• Enter the IP address or the fully qualified domain name of a vCenter server or an ESX server.
• Click Add followed by OK
• Close the “Add Connection” window by clicking OK.

Using this procedure you can add multiple Managed Hosts. After adding Managed Hosts we need to connect to one or more before we can run a script.

• Select the Managed Host
• Click Connect
  The “Windows PowerShell Credential Request” window is displayed.
  
• Log in using a user account that has permissions on the selected Managed Host.
• After successfully connecting to the Managed Host, the “Connected” property is set to “True”.
  

PowerPack Installation

To use the full potential of the Virtualization EcoShell you have to install a PowerPack. The included VMware PowerPack already contains some powerful scripts, but there’s another mandatory PowerPack in your Virtualization EcoShell installation and that is the VMware Community PowerPack. This new PowerPack was announced on the PowerCLI/TheVESI DutchVMUG meeting by Alan Renouf and it’s the new version of his former Virtu-Al.Net PowerPack.
http://www.powergui.org/servlet/KbServlet/download/2551-102-4110/Virtu-Al.net%20Scripts.powerpack

• Select File>PowerPack Management
  
• Click Import
• Select the “Virtu-Al.net Scripts.Powerpack” file
• Click Open
  The PowerPack and its version information is shown in the “PowerPack Management” window. From here the PowerPack can also be updated when the new version becomes available.
• Click Close to close the “PowerPack Management” window.

On the left side there’s now a new “VMware Community PowerPack” node, which can be expanded to explore all those great scripts inside. Just click on a script to execute it and have it reveal that valuable information from your virtual infrastructure.

Have Fun!

Everybody backups their environment, but how many do actually test if the backup can be restored? When you do, you know how time consuming this process is and even when you do a test restore, you are actually only testing that particular backup. You can’t possibly test every backup in your environment.

Veeam, an industry leader in backup technology, has come to the rescue. Today they introduced their latest SureBackup technology. This SureBackup technology will allow you to verify the recoverability of every backup, for every virtual machine, every time.

How does it work

The actual contents of the backup files are presented to an ESX host as a NFS datastore, which is automatically connected to the ESX host. VMs are created in an isolated environment and run directly from the backup. There is no need to extract the backup first. Each VM is then started and checked. A report is generated that shows if the OS is running fine and even if applications are functioning properly and data is intact.

It also supports multiple scripting languages that are available to the VM’s OS for incorporating custom scripts for verification. The differences files for the VMs can be stored on any available ESX datastore, which can be defined during the setup using the SureBackup wizard.

Universal application-item recovery

This new technology enables you to recover any virtualized application. Because of the image level backup, it’s fully OS agnostic. No special backup agents are required. It doesn’t matter which OS or even which (custom) application you are running. You can just start your VM from a backup and retrieve the items you need. Because the complete environment is started, you can use the application’s native management tools.

Availability

This new technologies will be delivered in Veeam Backup & Replication version 5.0. This is version due to be released in Q3 2010, so we have to be patient for a little while.

Visit http://www.veeam.com/surebackup for the latest developments in SureBackup technology.