VMware has released what at first looks like a minor update to their PowerShell snapin, PowerCLI to version 5.01. Although just a .01 release which brings the usual changes and bug fixes which are listed here, the big news is that VMware has added a whole bunch of cmdlets for managing vCloud Director.
A whole new snapin has been created called VMware.VimAutomation.Cloud and this initial release focuses more on the reporting side, so being able to retrieve information from vCD rather than setting things but also does have cmdlets for importing VMs, Templates and .OVFs from vSphere into your vCD environment. This is a great step forward as cloud computing relies so much on automation and having PowerCLI also available means you have so many more options to tie together your automation workflows.
You are able to connect to specific cloud servers, search for objects and then retrieve catalogs, providor VDCs, roles, users, vApps, vAppTemplates, VMs, external networks, media and organisations with their networks and VDCs.
Here are the cmdlets available:
| Name | Synopsis |
|---|---|
| Connect-CIServer | Connects to the specified servers. |
| Disconnect-CIServer | Disconnects from the specified cloud servers. |
| Get-Catalog | Retrieves the specified cloud catalogs. |
| Get-CIRole | Retrieves roles in the cloud. |
| Get-CIUser | Gets cloud users. |
| Get-CIVApp | Retrieves virtual appliances in the cloud. |
| Get-CIVAppTemplate | Retrieves virtual appliance templates. |
| Get-CIView | Returns cloud views by Id. |
| Get-CIVM | Retrieves the virtual machines on the cloud. |
| Get-ExternalNetwork | Retrieves cloud external networks. |
| Get-Media | Retrieves cloud medias. |
| Get-Org | Gets cloud organizations. |
| Get-OrgNetwork | Retrieves cloud organization networks. |
| Get-OrgVdc | Retrieves organization VDCs. |
| Get-ProviderVdc | Retrieves the specified cloud provider VDCs. |
| Import-CIVApp | Imports a virtual machine from vSphere to a cloud. |
| Import-CIVAppTemplate | Imports a virtual machine or an OVF package from a vSphere server to the vCloud as a virtual appliance template. |
| Search-Cloud | Searches the cloud for objects of the specified type. |
This will allow cloud providers to initially improve their own internal reporting capabilities and potentially also allow organisations to write their own PowerCLI scripts to feed into their reporting as well.
I’m sure this will be extended soon in a future release as VMware already has a vCenter Orchestrator Plug-in for vCloud Director so extending this API to PowerCLI must be the next logical step to be able to fully provision organisations, networks, vApps etc.