Anne Jan Elsinga
pyvmomi: Cross platform scripting for VMware
There is a lot of attention for PowerCLI for the day to day automation of your VMware infrastructure. But what if you don’t have or want Windows machines? When you are using your Mac or Linux machine for maintenance you have to create a virtual…
Linux Desktops with Horizon
Since version 6 Horizon has the possibility to use Linux desktops for VDI. There are other ways to access your Linux, like VNC,NX, X-terminals, or even SSH if you only need a text based session. By using Horizon to deliver your Linux desktop you get…
PowerShell Friday: Load PowerCLI from your own script
When you want to start your PowerCLI scripts or just use the cmdlets for VMware, you can start VMware vSphere PowerCLI from your start menu. From the window you get you can use all PowerCLI cmdlets that you need or your own scripts. But what if…
PowerShell Friday: Retrieving IP addresses for VMs
As I explained in the article about ExtensionData each VM object has a lot of information stored. If you want to know the IP addresses of a particular VM you can use PowerCLI to get those properties. You can get the IP addresses for VMs…
Upgrade to vRealize Log Insight 3.3
vRealize Log Insight 3.3 was released in March. Now that the first update for Log Insight (3.3.1) was released last week it is time to upgrade to the latest version. Log Insight 3.3 gives you some long awaited features and more IPv6 goodness. If you didn’t…
PowerShell Friday: ExtensionData
Did you know that VMware stores a lot of information about your virtual machines? And that you can retrieve all that data with PowerCLI? When you retrieve an object from vCenter or your ESXi host you get a lot of information. When you use Get-VM…
PowerShell Friday: Enabling SSH with PowerCLI
Even if you have all the graphic tools that you want to manage your virtual environment, sometimes you still want to use command line utilities for maximum control or for something that isn’t really supported. There are more than one way to enable SSH on…
PowerShell Friday: Setting Reservations with PowerCLI
When configuring your virtual machines sometimes you want to set reservations. Like I said in the article about adding memory: You can go into the vSphere Client to change the configuration, but where is the fun in that? Why not do everything from the command line? And preferably…
Installing the Linux agent for Log Insight
As I explained in an earlier post all systems push their data to the central server, or by an agent in the operating system. Just like the Windows agent you can download the Linux agent from the Log Insight interface. Go to the admin->Administration panel -> Agents. In…
PowerShell Friday: Christmas Special
Tomorrow is Christmas, so this post is a day early, but I wanted to give you something you can play with when you’re done eating, drinking and getting merry. That’s the reason I won’t be giving you PowerShell or PowerCLI scripts that have anything to do…
PowerShell Friday: Adding Memory with PowerCLI
Just before the holidays we’ve got a small PowerCLI onliner for you. Nothing fancy, but still useful. There are times that your virtual machine doesn’t have enough memory. Yes, you can go into the vSphere Client to change the memory configuration, but where is the fun…
PowerShell Friday: Adding CPU’s with PowerCLI
Sometimes you need to add CPUs to your virtual machines. Adding CPU’s is easy on a virtual machine. Of course you can do this from the vSphere Client, where you can select the number of CPUs and the number of cores per CPU. If you…
Installing the Windows agent for Log Insight
Log Insight can collect data from various sources as I explained earlier. All systems push their data to the central server, or by an agent in the operating system. There are two agents available for deployment, a Linux agent and a Windows agent. Both agents…
PowerShell Friday: Snapshots
Virtual machine snapshots are useful for sysadmins, since they preserve the state of a virtual machine’s virtual disk and, optionally, virtual memory before upgrading an application for example. VM Snapshots are also taken by a lot of backup applications for VMs at the start of the backup and…
PowerShell Friday: stopping VMs
This weeks PowerShell Friday is about stopping VMs with PowerCLI. If you want to gracefully shutdown your VM, which I think you will do most of the time you are better of using Shutdown-VMGuest . This will use the VMware tools to gracefully shutdown your VM. Just as…