Add a VMware Exam Blueprint Guide recommended readings to iTunes using PowerShell

July 31, 2011 Leave a comment

PowerShell logoAlthough I have been working as a VMware vSphere systems admin for more than two years now, I still don’t hold any VMware certification. The main reason for this was, that I didn’t take any VMware training course. And you won’t be VMware certified, if you haven’t at least followed one VMware training. In june I took the “VMware vSphere: Troubleshooting” class. So the reason for not doing a VMware exam was gone. And now I need to get prepared for the VMware VCP4 exam.

As you might now, if you want to prepare yourself for a VMware exam, you need to start with downloading the Exam Blueprint Guide. This guide describes what you should know to pass the exam. In this guide there are references to VMware documentation you should read before taking the exam. And I would love to read all these documents on my iPad. Being a PowerShell scripter I didn’t want to download all these documents and add them to my iTunes library manually. So I wrote a Powershell function to do that for me. Read more of this post

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Filed under Certification, iTunes, PowerShell, VMware, vSphere Tagged with , , , ,

How to run VMware vSphere CLI perl scripts from PowerCLI

July 21, 2011 12 Comments

PowerCLI logoWith the announced VMware vSphere version 5.0, ESX servers will be history. Only ESXi servers are left over. And as you might now, the main difference between ESX and ESXi is the service console that ESX has and is removed from ESXi.

To be able to manage ESXi servers, VMware is promoting the VMware vSphere Command-Line Interface (vCLI). And also the vSphere Management Assistant, which is a Linux virtual appliance with the vCLI installed in it. There is also a Microsoft Windows version of the vCLI. That runs in a Windows Command Prompt.

As a PowerShell user I don´t like writing scripts for the Command Prompt anymore. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could run the vCLI commands from PowerCLI? Read more of this post

Filed under PowerCLI, PowerShell, vCLI, VMware, vSphere Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

How to use VMware vSphere PowerCLI to find a virtual machine by MAC address

July 18, 2011 10 Comments

PowerCLI logoSometimes you need to find a virtual machine by MAC address. This can be very time consuming if you have to do this by hand using the VMware vSphere Client. PowerCLI can do this task for you in only a few seconds. The script presented in this blogpost will retrieve the virtual machine that has a certain MAC address. Read more of this post

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How to use VMware vSphere PowerCLI to find an ESX/ESXi server by MAC address

July 17, 2011 4 Comments

PowerCLI logoIn “Virtual machine failed to power on” Monique Vanmeulebrouk describes a problem where in one stage she needed to find an ESX server that has a certain MAC address. Of course you can log in to all your ESX servers and issue the “ifconfig | grep -i hw” command as described in the VMware Knowledge base article “Identifying the ESX Service Console MAC address”. But this method takes a lot of time. You can do this much easier with VMware vSphere PowerCLI. Read more of this post

Filed under PowerCLI, PowerShell, SDK, VMware, vSphere Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

How to add a PowerShell script to your WordPress.com blogpost

July 16, 2011 4 Comments

WordPress logoAfter starting this blog two weeks ago, I wrote a post that contains a PowerShell script. But I still have not published this post, because I could not find a good way to include the PowerShell script in my post.

I saw that a lot of other blogs use the SyntaxHighligter plugin by Alex Gorbatchev. But I thought that you needed to have a WordPress.org blog to be able to upload plugins. And this is a WordPress.com blog where uploading plugins is not possible. Read more of this post

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Valid values for the ViewType parameter of the PowerCLI Get-View cmdlet

July 4, 2011 Leave a comment

PowerCLI logoThe ViewType parameter of the PowerCLI Get-View cmdlet needs a Managed Object Type as value. A list of these Managed Object Types can be found in the VMware vSphere API Reference Documentation.

However not all the Managed Object Types are valid as a value for the Get-View -ViewType parameter. The Get-View documentation doesn’t show you which Managed Object Types you can use. But if you use a Managed Object Type that is not valid, like “Alarm”, you will get an error message that shows you the valid types. Read more of this post

Filed under PowerCLI, PowerShell, SDK, VMware, vSphere Tagged with

Not designated as a VMware vExpert 2011

July 3, 2011 2 Comments

AvatarThis morning I received the following e-mail from John Troyer:

I’m sorry to inform you that you were not designated as a VMware vExpert 2011. Read more of this post

Filed under vExpert, VMware

Introduction

July 2, 2011 Leave a comment

AvatarIn this new blog I will try to write about VMware vSphere, Microsoft Windows PowerShell and probably most about the combination of these two technologies: VMware vSphere PowerCLI.

The past two years I have been working full time with VMware vSphere and PowerCLI. I’m studying for the VCP exam. And this year I will attend VMworld for the first time. I want to write about the things that keep me busy in my job. But you can also expect to read about VMworld and my VCP study.

I hope you will enjoy reading my blog.

Filed under General

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