As you may be aware, VMware’s Update Manager (VUM) does a great job of remediating vSphere hosts when they’re in DRS-enabled clusters. You select the cluster you want to remediate, verify the correct baselines are attached, and click Remediate. VUM will automatically evacuate each host in turn, then patch, reboot, repeat as necessary until the entire cluster is remediated.
[Read more…] about Automating VMware cluster remediation without DRS: PowerCLI
PowerCLI
Cluster Evacuation & Reboot without DRS: PowerCLI
If you’ve upgraded to vSphere 4.1 and have Standard licensing, you may have noticed that vMotion is now supported at that licensing level. Previously, vMotion was only available with Enterprise licenses and above. (Storage vMotion is still a feature only available with Enterprise & Enterprise Plus.)
One of the nice features about rebooting hosts in DRS-enabled clusters is that you can use the -Evacuate parameter with Restart-VMHost. That parameter, however, will not work in non-DRS enabled clusters. So what do you do if you need to reboot an entire cluster? Or more than one cluster? You could do it manually: that is, selecting a host, vMotioning all the VM’s to other hosts in the cluster, placing it in maintenance mode, rebooting it, waiting for it to come back online, and then exit maintenance mode. Rinse, repeat, gag at the hundreds of mouseclicks you need to endure. ๐
[Read more…] about Cluster Evacuation & Reboot without DRS: PowerCLI
DHCP Scope changes with PowerShell, PowerCLI, and netsh
Scenario: You administer multiple physical locations, all with their own DNS and DHCP servers, hosted on VMware. Due to architectural changes to the environment, you need a quick & efficient way to make changes to the DNS Server options in DHCP.
[Read more…] about DHCP Scope changes with PowerShell, PowerCLI, and netsh
ESX(i) NTP Server settings: PowerCLI
I read a great post by Roger Lund today that discussed timekeeping in VMware virtual machines. That got me thinking, “How would this be handled with PowerCLI?” A blog post was born. ๐
[Read more…] about ESX(i) NTP Server settings: PowerCLI
Pinging multiple VM’s: PowerCLI
This script might not be handy for everyone, but in specific cases it can help you quickly determine which VM’s are not responding on the network. This is a slight modification from my Windows 2008 Guest Networking: PowerCLI article.
[Read more…] about Pinging multiple VM’s: PowerCLI