Name: Automate VMware vSphere with PowerCLI / PowerShell
Rating: 4.8 (158 reviews)

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Created byScript Force

Last updated 8/2022

English

What you'll learn

Manage VM's, Snapshots, vDisks and VMware Tools with PowerCLI
Automate VM rollout / Rollout of multiple VM's at once
PowerShell Basics
Creation of (HTML-) Reports with PowerShell

Course content

4 sections • 28 lectures • 3h 3m total length

Introduction3:13

PowerShell Basics8:56
Difference between PowerShell 7 and Windows PowerShell 5.1
Which development environment should you use (PowerShell ISE vs. Visual Studio Code)?
Installation of PowerShell 7 and Visual Studio Code (Windows)
Structure of PowerShell cmdlets and parameters
Installation PowerCLI Module2:02
What are Modules in PowerShell?
How to Install the VMware PowerCLI Module
Help System2:33
Introduction of the cmdlets get-help and get-command
How do you find the appropriate cmdlet and how can you use it (Parameters, etc.)?

Connect to vCenter (Connect-ViServer)4:42
Connect to VMware vCenter with Connect-ViServer cmdlet
Set preferences with Set-PowerCLIConfiguration
What is the confirm parameter?
How to Query Virtual Machines (Get-VM)18:53
Querying virtual machines with get-vm
Explanation of PowerShell classics like...
Wildcard
pipeline
select-object
get-member
Comparison operators
where-object
sort-object
Start and Stop VMs3:31
How to Start, Shutdown, and Reboot VMs with PowerCLI
Snapshots9:33
How to create VM Snapshots with PowerCLI
Practical use of the help function
How to find stale Snapshots (using the Get-Date cmdlet and the AddDays method)
How to delete Snapshots
Reverting VMs to the time of the snapshot creation
Remote Guest OS Management (Invoke-VMScript + Copy-VMScript)9:18
Explanation of...
Copy-VMGuestFile: Copying files from local machine to VM with PowerCLI (or vice versa).
Invoke-VMScript: Remote execution of PowerShell, Bat or Bash code inside VMs via remote PowerCLI session.
Get-Credential: Creation of credentials objects.
Manage Virtual Disks (Get-HardDisk + Set-HardDisk)8:55
How to Query and Expand Virtual Disks with PowerCLI (Windows)
Introduction of the ExpandProperty parameter (select-object)
Use case of Invoke-VMScript in practice
Create Virtual Disks (New-HardDisk)6:56
How to create new vDisks with the New-HardDisk cmdlet
Explanation of yellow PowerCLI warnings
How to automatically initialize a hard disk and create a partition on the operating system level (Windows)
Create VMs - Part 1 (New-VM)15:32
How to create and delete virtual machines using PowerCLI
Introduction of the "WhatIf" parameter
Create VMs - Part 2 (New-VM)7:04
Simultaneous creation of multiple VMs using an Excel/CSV file as the data source (bulk import)
Create VMs - Part 3 (New-VM)3:33
Bulk creation of multiple similar VM's using a for loop
Create VMs - Part 4 (New-VM)15:45
Increasing the level of automation by using VM Customization Specifications (automatic domain join, Windows activation, setting the time zone, etc.)
Automatic selection of the datastore with the most free space
VMware Tools7:56
Updating outdated VMware tools via PowerCLI
Introduction Nested attributes

Export Data to Excel2:07
How to export data with the PowerShell cmdlet Export-CSV
HTML Report Part 1 - Intro4:15
Introduction to creating HTML reports
Group sets of PowerShell code into regions
HTML Crash Course - Explanation of Tags
HTML Report Part 2 - CSS3:54
Basic CSS Crash Course
How to embed CSS code into PowerShell code?
Explanation of code for HTML report
Walk through the code of the actual PowerCLI report
HTML Report Part 3 - Snapshots9:10
Exercise: Query all snapshots in your vCenter that are older than 3 days
Creating the Basic Structure with ConvertTo-HTML
How to Export the Report with the PowerShell Cmdlet Out-File
HTML Report Part 4 - ISO Files3:51
Locating ISO files that are connected as a CD drive
How to disconnect the ISO files with PowerCLI
HTML Report Part 5 - Datastores7:27
Querying all Datastores with less than 20 percent free space + Adding them to the HTML report
Explanation of Calculated Properties in PowerShell
Rounding numerical values with PowerShell
HTML Report Part 6 - vCenter Information5:00
Adding general information about the VMware vSphere environment to the report (e.g. number of hosts, clusters, templates, etc.)
Introduction of PSCustomObjects
Output on console with write-host
HTML Report Part 7 - VMware Tools3:11
Querying VMs with no VMware Tools or with an outdated version
HTML Report Part 8 - Improvements3:01
Improvement of script quality:
Clean disconnect from vCenter (Disconnect-ViServer)
Appending the creation date to the report (Parameter Postcontent)
Adding the date to the file name + manipulation of date formats with PowerShell
HTML Report Part 9 - Send via Mail3:18
Sending the HTML report via mail
Introduction to the Send-MailKitMessage module
HTML Report Part 10 - Save Credentials5:28
Secure way to save credentials with PowerShell
Advantages and disadvantages of Export-CliXML
HTML Report Part 11 - Schedule Script Execution4:44
Daily Automatic Execution of PowerShell script using Windows Task Scheduler
Explanation of the PowerShell ExecutionPolicy

Requirements

Basic VMware vSphere knowledge required
vSphere Test Environment is an advantage
NO PowerShell skills required

Description

Learn PowerShell/PowerCLI to automate boring, repetitive workflows (e.g., roll out new virtual machines and update VMware tools).

What is PowerCLI?

The PowerCLI is a free PowerShell module that contains over 700 cmdlets (commands), which can be used to manage and automate VMware vSphere environments.

Course Overview:

Despite learning the PowerShell basics, this 3-hour long course will teach you how to use the PowerCLI module to make your day-to-day work as a VMware vSphere administrator easier. Specifically, you'll learn how to connect the shell to your vCenter, manage existing virtual machines, and roll out new ones. Especially by automating the VM creation process you can save a lot of time. I will also show you how to manage the virtual disks of VMs. There is a big advantage compared to the GUI: We can connect from the PowerShell session, through which we enlarge or create the hard disk, to the guest operating system of the VM. Here we can extend or initialize the partition on the operating system side via the command line. We will look at this using a Windows server as an example. Also, you will learn how to keep VMware tools up to date and how to find and clean up old snapshots. The highlight of the course is the creation of an HTML report. Here you will learn how to use PowerCLI to get the data you want from your vCenter or ESXi host. During the course, I will show you tips and tricks that you won't find in the documentation. So, what are you waiting for? Take your career to the next level and enroll in the course today.

Who this course is for:

VMware Administrators that want to save time by automating recurring tasks

What you'll learn

Explore related topics

Course content

Introduction1 lecture • 3min

PowerShell Basics3 lectures • 14min

Administration and Automation with PowerCLI12 lectures • 1hr 52min

Reporting12 lectures • 55min

Requirements

Description

Who this course is for: