I want to share my latest automation scripting, i am in a project where we are in-sourcing from a hosting company. We have connected the hosts to the outsourcers NFS share, of course with powerCLI, when doing it this way i get the datastores on all servers in our cluster, without the risk of differences between the hosts datastores.

# Create NFS shares on all hosts
#
# Niklas Åkerlund /RTS
$NFSdatas = Import-Csv -Path "nfsdatastores.csv" -Delimiter ";"
$VIHosts = get-cluster -Name Cluster1 | get-vmhost | where {$_.ConnectionState -eq "Connected"}
foreach ($VIHost in $VIHosts){
foreach ($NFSdata in $NFSdatas){
$NFSHost = $NFSdata.Host
$NFSshare = $NFSdata.Share
$NFSShareName = $NFSdata.ShareName
if (($VIHost | Get-Datastore | where {$_.Name -eq $NFSShareName -and $_.type -eq "NFS"}-ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) -eq $null){
Write-Host "Monterar NFSstore $($NFSShareName) på $($VIHost)"
New-Datastore -Nfs -VMHost $VIHost -Name $NFSShareName -Path $NFSshare -NfsHost $NFSHost
}
}
}

Now when we have this in place, during the transitions the hosting company shut down the VMs on their hosts that we are going to take over.  And we add the VM to the inventory on our vCenter, when doing this the vmdk got a different datastore id in the config, also some settings should be updated to the corporate standard for the virtualization platform at the customer.

# Script to update VM with vmdk and right settings
#
# Argument in is VM name
# Niklas Akerlund / RTS AB 2011

$VMname = $args[0]
if ($VMname -ne $null){
$VM = Get-VM $VMname
$Datastore = Get-Datastore -VM $VM
$HDDs = Get-Harddisk -VM $VM

# Remove incorrect hdd referenes

Remove-HardDisk -HardDisk $HDDs -Confirm:$false

foreach ($HDD in $HDDs){
$HDDname = $HDD.Filename
$HDDsNames = $HDDname.Split("/")
$count = $HDDsNames.count
$VMdkName = $HDDsNames[$count-1]
#Write-Host $VMdkName
$diskpath = "[" + $Datastore.Name + "] " + $VM.Name + "/" + $VMdkName

#Write-Host $diskpath

New-HardDisk -VM $VM -DiskPath $diskpath
}

# Reconfigure VM Settings

$spec = new-object VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineConfigSpec
$spec.MemoryAllocation = New-Object VMware.Vim.ResourceAllocationInfo
$spec.MemoryAllocation.Limit = -1
$spec.CpuAllocation = New-Object VMware.Vim.ResourceAllocationInfo
$spec.CpuAllocation.Limit = -1
$spec.tools = New-Object VMware.Vim.ToolsConfigInfo
$spec.tools.toolsUpgradePolicy = "manual"
$spec.swapPlacement = "inherit"

$VM = $VM | get-view
$VM.ReconfigVM_Task($spec)
}

After this we start up the VM and later we do a storage vMotion of the VM to the customers FC-SAN

Get-VM theVM | Move-VM -Datastore fcdatastore1

I have had the opportunity to do some PowerCLI scripting on an installation where we have  vDS (virtual Distributed Switch). In the PowerCLI there is not so much cmdlets for the distributed switches, that is kind of awkward as there is so many cmdlets for everything else.. Luckily LucD had made some nice functions for me to use when creating the port groups.

I used his function for creating port groups, as the customer had about 20 vlans that needed to be added it was a perfect match to do it by powerCLI because setting up this manually is boring! So i had a csv file with the name and vlan id which i ran through in a foreach loop, then all was done.

# Create Distributed virtual portgroups for each VLAN
# Niklas Åkerlund / RTS AB 2011-09-09
#

$Datacenter = "datacenter"
$vDSName = "dvswitch01"
$vDSPortGroupPorts = 128

# Call Functions from motherscript
. .\Set-vDS-Porgroup-functions2.ps1

$vDS = Get-dvSwitch -DataCenterName $Datacenter -dvSwitchName $vDSName
#Write-Host $vDS
$vlans = Import-Csv vlan.csv -Delimiter ";"

foreach ($vlan in $vlans){
$name = $vlan.Name
$vlanid = $vlan.VLAN
if ($name -ne ""){
Write-Host $name
New-dvSwPortgroup $vDS $name -PgNumberPorts $vDSPortGroupPorts -PgVlanType "VLAN" -PgVlanId $vlanid
}
}

But then we realized that we needed to change some settings with both the security and load balancing so i had to remove all my port groups and start over.. I did not want to remove them manually and the powerCLI cmdlet that removes standard port groups could not be used on a vDS, I did not find the code from LucD in his blog to remove a vDS port group so i came up with the brilliant idea to use Onyx, it is a tool from VMware Labs that interprets the traffic between the vSphere Client and the vCenter and transform it to powerCLI code or .Net or SOAP or Javascript.

I then after starting this tool connected to my vCenter and through the vSphere Client removed a vDS port group, i got the powerCLI code (which I probably could have found out being a bit smarter in powershell/powerCLI without Onyx, but now I´m not :-P) So i did a small script to find all my vDS port groups and remove them.. Note that i cannot remove a vDS port group that already has been populated with connected VM´s.

# Remove vds port groups
#
# Niklas Åkerlund / Real Time Services AB

$vlans = Import-Csv vlan.csv -Delimiter ";"

$PGs = Get-VirtualPortGroup

foreach ($vlan in $vlans){
foreach ($PG in $PGs){
if ($vlan.Name -eq $PG.Name){
$destroy = $PG.Id
#Write-Host $destroy
$pek = Get-View -Id $destroy
$pek.Destroy_Task()
}
}
}

And now i could run the add script again with the added parameters for more security and load balancing.

New-dvSwPortgroup $vDS $name -PgNumberPorts $vDSPortGroupPorts<code>
-PgVlanType "VLAN" -PgVlanId $vlanid -SecPolMacChanges:$false</code>
-SecPolForgedTransmits:$false -TeamingPolicy "loadbalance_loadbased"