Knowledge Base (Posts about vmware)

Rename VM via PowerCLI

bgstack15 — Sat, 27 Apr 2019 13:21:24 GMT

After a Get-VIServer -Server vcenter101 , of course.

Get-VM -Name test1 | Set-VM -Name test2 -Confirm:$false

References

Shamelessly ripped from Rename VM via PowerCLI |VMware Communities

Install PowerShell and PowerCLI on CentOS 7 Linux

bgstack15 — Mon, 15 Apr 2019 13:28:47 GMT

I never thought I'd be doing this, but here's how to install PowerShell (yes, that Powershell) on our beloved GNU/Linux. I need it because I want to automate some VMware tasks and PowerCLI is available for Linux through powershell.

curl https://packages.microsoft.com/config/rhel/7/prod.repo -o- | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/microsoft.repo
sudo yum install -y powershell

Now powershell is installed, on GNU/Linux! Let's contain our horror and keep moving forward. Open powershell and install the PowerCLI components.

pwsh
Set-PSRepository -Name "PSGallery" -InstallationPolicy "Trusted"
Find-Module "VMware.PowerCLI" | Install-Module -Scope "CurrentUser" -AllowClobber
Import-Module "VMware.PowerCLI"

List what is available now with

Get-Module "VMware.*" -ListAvailable | FT -Autosize

And most VMware instances I've seen don't have pristine ssl certs, so you might want to run:

Set-PowerCLIConfiguration -InvalidCertificateAction:Ignore

Maintenance tasks include updating the PowerCLI modules.

Update-Module "VMware.PowerCLI"

References

Weblinks

Deploying Linux guests from template in VMware

bgstack15 — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 13:22:37 GMT

If you do automated deployments from template in VMware and you take advantage of the hypervisor's ability to update the guest configured hostname and IP address and other OS configurations, you need to install perl. I wasted 1.5 hours troubleshooting before I searched the Internet and found the VMware doc right away that solved my problem.

Linux get vmware tools version

bgstack15 — Tue, 31 Oct 2017 16:57:41 GMT

$( { find /sbin /usr/sbin /usr/local/bin /bin /usr/bin -name 'vmtoolsd'; echo /bin/true; } | head -n1 ) -v

Regardless of deployment method (RHEL6 by inserting the virtual disc, or RHEL7 rpm for open-vm-tools), this should work for you.

Update on 2019-08-20

And from PowerCLI:

get-vm | % { get-view $_.id } | select Name, @{ Name="ToolsVersion"; Expression={$_.config.tools.toolsVersion}},@{ Name="ToolStatus"; Expression={$_.Guest.ToolsVersionStatus}}

References

Original research
Powercli – How to get Vmware tools version – Virtual Me