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What's new in VMware vSphere PowerCLI 5.0

By Julian Wood
powerclipowershellvcentervmware-2

Today’s the day that vSphere 5 has officially been released.  There are going to be a million other blog posts talking at length about the full release of vCenter, ESXi, new licensing etc. so I’ll avoid repeating what everyone else is saying.

However, as part of the vSphere 5 release, vSphere PowerCLI 5.0 has also been released and since the vSphere 5 announcement, I haven’t noticed anything written as yet about the new PowerCLI. VMware is consolidating their API

vSphere PowerCLI 5.0 can be downloaded from here.

The changelog has a detailed list of all the changes but it’s probablky a little easier to see the Release Notes:

Supported Platforms

vSphere PowerCLI 5.0 works on the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the following operating systems:

  • Windows 7
  • Windows 2008 Server
  • Windows Vista
  • Windows XP Service Pack 2
  • Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2

The following PowerCLI features are supported only on the 32-bit versions of the supported operating systems.

  • New-OSCustomizationSpec and Set-OSCustomizationSpec
  • New-VM and Set-VM (only when used for applying customization specifications)
  • Invoke-VMScript
  • Copy-VMGuestFile
  • New-VMGuestRoute, Get-VMGuestRoute, and Remove-VMGuestRoute
  • New-VMGuestNetworkInterface and Set-VMGuestNetworkInterface
  • Set-HardDisk ( only when used for resizing guest disk partitions)

vSphere PowerCLI 5.0 supports the following VMware environments:

  • VMware ESXi 5.0
  • vCenter Server 5.0
  • VMware ESX 4.1 / vCenter Server 4.1
  • VMware ESXi 4.1
  • VMware ESX 4.0 Update 2 / vCenter Server 4.0 Update 2
  • VMware ESX 4.0 Update 1 / vCenter Server 4.0 Update1
  • VMware ESX 4.0i Update 1
  • VMware VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 6
  • VMware ESX 3.5 Update 5
  • VMware ESXi 3.5 Update 5
  • VMware ESX 3.0.3 Update1

New Features

This release of vSphere PowerCLI introduces the following new capabilities:

  • Cloning templates with New-Template.
  • Copying files and folders from and to the guest operating system through the Copy-VMGuestFile cmdlet.
  • Joining domains through the Get-VMHostAuthentication and Set-VMHostAuthentication cmdlets.
  • Joining ESX hosts (version 4.1 and later) into an active directory through the Get-VMHostAuthentication and Set-VMHostAuthentication cmdlets.
  • Retrieving vCenter Server users and groups through the Get-VIAccount cmdlet.
  • Support for vCenter Servers in linked mode through the Connect-VIServer cmdlet.
  • Retrieving object properties through the Get-VIProperty cmdlet.
  • Moving virtual appliances through the Move-VApp cmdlets.
  • Importing compressed and chunked files through the Import-VApp cmdlet.
  • Importing and exporting virtual appliances in OVA format.
  • Support for the SSPI passthrough feature of VIX.
  • Support for storage DRS: creating virtual machines and hard disks on datastore clusters and defining anti-affinity rules.(experimental)

Additional Snapins

vSphere PowerCLI 5.0 introduces three additional snapins of cmdlets that cover specific vSphere functionalities:

  • VMware.VimAutomation.License : The Licensing snapin contains the Get-LicenseDataManager cmdlet for managing VMware License components..
  • VMware.ImageBuilder : The Image Builder snapin contains cmdlets for managing depots, image profiles, and VIBs.
  • VMware.DeployAutomation : The Auto Deploy snapin contains cmdlets that provide an interface to VMware Auto Deploy for provisioning physical hosts with ESXi software.

Discontinued Support

Support for PowerShell 1.0 will be removed in the next PowerCLI release.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what new innovation will come from this latest release.