Powershell and VMware: "Get the list of all Virtual machines on VMware VSphere Server using PowerCLI.

 

HI,

In my first post about "Getting Started with VMware Vshpere PowerCLI" i already showed how to connect with VMware server.

Our today's task is simple. you get the list of all Virtual machines, and then we search for all "Powered ON" machines and after that all "Power off" machines.

Nothing complicated here. this is just a simple task and again the basic usage of Powershell is applies here. and we have some good "best friend " cmdlets those always with us. these cmdlets are "where-Object", "Select-Object".

Let's Start

Connect to your VMware server first using Connect-VIServer cmdlet. Once you successfully connected.

Run the Get-VM cmdlet.

That will show you the list of all Virtual machines including their "Power State"

 

If you want to see all the properties of Virtual Machines, run the below cmdlet.

Get-VM | Format-List *

Now you can see that we have detailed information about virtual machines.

 

And in case you want to know about a single Virtual Machine , use Get-Vm  and -Name of the machine and then Piped it to fl *

Get-Vm -Name "Dummy-Windows7" | fl * 

 

As i mentioned in the starting that our original target is to find the list of all Up and Running Virtual machines. To achieve that we can use Where-Object and show that Virtual machines whose status is equal to "Powered ON".

Get-vm | where { $_.PowerState -eq "PoweredOn"}

 

Finally i got he list of all "Power ON " server and  i am happy now :)

 

Thanks for reading.

Thanks!

Aman Dhally

   

How to find “Stopped” windows Services, whose start up mode is set to “Automatic” using PowerShell.

Hi,
I called these services as “Problematic services”. The start-up mode of these services are “Automatically” so that whenever windows starts or reboot these services should start automatically.
So logically if any of windows services start mode is set to “Automatic” then the Window Service should be running not “stopped”
we are using WMI query language to find these “Problematic Services”
Cmdlet use: Get-WmiObject, Where-Object , Select-Object, Format-List
we are using Win32_Service WMI call to retrieve the list  and status of the services.

   1: Get-WmiObject win32_Service

above command will show the list of all windows services.



Let’s check the all properties of a single “Service”

Get-WmiObject win32_Service  | select -First 1 | fl *

we are piping the result of “Get-WmiObject win32_service” to select-Object cmdlet and choosing -first 1 single Service and then piping further to “Format-List” cmdlet and using * wildcard to show everything.

In below properties we are interested in Name,Status, StartMode, and State property of services.

Get-WmiObject win32_Service  | where {$_.StartMode -eq "Auto" -and $_.State -eq "stopped"}

we are piping the previous command to Where-Object cmdlet and filtering to show  only those services whose “StartUp” mode is “Automatic” and “Status” is “Stopped”

oh!!! we have three problematic services. Okkk!!!



Let’s filter a little bit more

Get-WmiObject win32_Service  | where {$_.StartMode -eq "Auto" -and $_.State -eq "stopped"} |  Select Name,StartMode,State

now we are piping all the previous command to Select-Object cmdlet and choose to show only Name, StartMode, and State property.

Now it seems little bit formatted.

Now you can start these service manually .



Thanks

Aman Dhally