From the monthly archives: August 2008

Are your names in sync? (Helpful Script of the Day)

By On August 29, 2008 · 12 Comments

Do you ever rename a server? Sure, in Windows that’s pretty easy. But having virtualized most of your servers, renaming brings along some new challenges.

When you first create a virtual machine, you enter a name for the machine. But that’s before you even started installing Windows on it. You might not even use the [...]

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Set-SoftPowerOff

By On August 28, 2008 · 9 Comments

Helpful function of the day:

This one was requested by jfk8680 on the VMware Toolkit Community.

It allows you to change what happens when you press the power off button for a vm. It sets it to “soft” which means a gentle Guest OS Shutdown. Usage: Set-SoftPowerOff $VMs , where $VMs is a collection of one [...]

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Helpful scripts of the day: HTML Overview of VMs and Datastores

By On August 26, 2008 · 19 Comments

Today’s helpful scripts are ready to use scripts that generate an overview of your VM’s and your Datastores and save it to a HTML file. Great for reporting purposes. Easy to modify to meet your needs. Give them a try:

Get-DatastoreSizes (Rename to .ps1)

This one shows datastores with Used [...]

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Helpful Function of the Day: Get-LocalAdmins

By On August 21, 2008 · 4 Comments

The following function uses the ADSI provider and some tricks to determine the members of the local Administrators group on any of your Windows Servers. Check it out:

function Get-LocalAdmins
{
param([string]$serverName)
 $ErrorActionPreference = “Stop”
 If ($serverName -eq “”)
 {
  Write-Host “Usage: Get-LocalAdmins “`
  -ForegroundColor yellow

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Remote Registry with Powershell (PLUS: Create-ListBox function)

By On August 21, 2008 · 2 Comments

Until the powers of remoting arrive in Powershell v2, accessing a remote registry is a bit more cumbersome than a local registry. As you no doubt know, Powershell allows you to browse through the local registry as if it was a filesystem. The folling function should help you with accessing a [...]

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Gather NIC properties (including Speed and Duplex)

By On August 20, 2008 · 45 Comments

Gathering all sorts of server information with Powershell is rather easy, using the Get-WmiObject cmdlet.

In order to get NIC settings, the following little script returns a LOT of information:

$serverName = Read-Host “Enter server name”
$NicConfig = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration -ComputerName $serverName
$NicConfig | Format-List *

The one thing I [...]

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To Disconnect(-VIServer) or not to Disconnect

By On August 20, 2008 · 4 Comments

With the release of VI Toolkit v1.0, the bèta-cmdlet Get-VIServer has been renamed to Connect-VIServer, which more accurately describes the action. The opposite action is now also available in the form of Disconnect-VIServer. Every script you start with Connect-VIServer should end with Disconnect-VIServer if you’d like to keep the amount of open sessions [...]

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Virtual Center Server Settings revealed by Powershell (2)

By On August 20, 2008 · 10 Comments

VI Toolkit Product Manager Carter Shanklin pointed out in the VMware Communities that the script I posted yesterday can be significantly shortened. They have intrduced the shortcut:

Get-View ServiceInstance

So the script I posted yesterday can be reduced to:

$SI = Get-View ServiceInstance
$LicMan = Get-View $SI.Content.LicenseManager
$LicMan.Source.LicenseServer

Here’s [...]

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Virtual Center Server Settings revealed by Powershell

By On August 19, 2008 · 1 Comment

I’ve got a powerfull snippet of code for you today! Sure, we’ve already had lot’s of fun using the VI Toolkit to find and manipulate all sort of settings. But do you know where to find the Virtual Center Server settings, which you access in the VI Client through the menu Administration -> [...]

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Powershell Oneliner #6

By On August 19, 2008 · 4 Comments

Today’s oneliner is an incredibly fast way to check the usage of your VMware datastores. You should first connect to Virtual Center in the following way:

$VC = Connect-VIServer “YourVCServerName”

Here comes the oneliner:

Get-Datastore | Sort-Object Name | %{Get-View $_.Id} | Format-Table @{Label=”Name”;Expression={$_.info.name}}, @{Label=”NumVMs”;Expression={$_.vm.length}}

Only interested in datastores that are not used? [...]

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