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Datastore and storage information from PowerCLI

Sep 3, 2010

Here are some PowerCLI single line scripts for getting some storage and datastore information: Find the Number of VMs on all Datastores Get VM Guest Disk Free Information Get the 10 VM Guest disks with the least amount of free space Get combined size of each VMs Disks Get Disk Path, Capacity, Free and Used space

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Disk timeout settings in registry for VMs using PowerCLI

Sep 1, 2010

One of NetApp's best practices is to increase the disk timeout settings for VMs to 190 seconds so VMs don't blue screen if they temporary lose connectivity to their disks say during a cluster failover. This is done by amending the Disk Timeout registry value: HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesDiskTimeoutValue to DWord 190. I'm sure you'd love to go through all your VMs and load reged...

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Amending NTP Servers with PowerCLI

Aug 27, 2010

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ESX 4.1 breaks HP Flex-10 Smart Link

Aug 25, 2010

It looks like the continuing HP Blade / VMWare compatibility issues with the Broadcom Nic drivers are ongoing as ESX 4.1 now can't use HPs Smart Link and DCC. In my ( I listed the Flex-10 ESX pre-requisites which was for ESX 4.0 and works with Smart Link and DCC. ( Let me explain how one of the components of Flex-10 was designed for network failover. Flex-10 switches have a great sounding featu...

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Getting VM Time Zone settings with PowerCLI and WMI

Aug 23, 2010

VM performance troubleshooting is something every VM Admin needs to do. Often these can be related to agents running within a VM and often these are set to run at a particular local time. VDI deployments often have people from different time zones working different shifts connecting to VMs in a central site with the idea that a particular agent task will always run out of hours from when people...

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Logged on users with Powershell

Aug 20, 2010

Hugo Peeters has a great function for using WMI to get Logged on Users: ( This can be easily used in PowerCLI. This can be very useful when you need to do some VM maintenance in a VDI environment and need to find out who is currently logged on and know which VMs are not in use and can be worked on.

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VMware VIOPS proven practices

Aug 18, 2010

( website is an unfortunately underknown yet fantastic resource to find proven practice documents, vetted installation documents and plenty of other tips and tricks for various VMware products written by gurus from not only VMware but the community. Definitaly worth having a look... (

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Exporting all that useful VM information with PowerCLI

Aug 16, 2010

There are many occasions when you may need to produce a report showing some aspect of your VM environment. Many companies have various types of inventory databases which grab information from various sources to provide tracking and reporting of the various IT assets. An example of a database could be one which pulls information from the software inventory system, patch management system, anti-v...

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Tracking down those connected CD-ROMS with PowerCLI

Aug 13, 2010

Here are some handy script lines for working out what CDs you have connected which can cause Vmotion to fail. You don't always want to disconnect all CDs. If you have .ISOs on shared storage Vmotion will be fine as long as the hosts can both see the .ISO files. Get the names of VMs with connected CD drives: Get the names of VMs with connected .ISOs Disconnect all VMs where the CD Drive is conne...

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Pimping your Powershell Profile

Aug 11, 2010

I have 3 at the moment, ( ( and ( Each one installs slightly differently and then runs separately which is a pain. VMware vSphere PowerCLI installs a PSSnapin and creates this shortcut: Citrix XenServer PowerShell SnapIn installs a PSSnapin and creates this shortcut: NetApp's Data ONTAP PowerShell Toolkit requires you to copy files to the Module Path and then use Import-Module to load the snap-in.

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