In my mind, the secret sauce to the SDDC is automation. In this session we learn about the new features of PowerCI 6.5, plus a primer on vSphere DSC.

The session is hosted by Alan Renouf and Luc Deakins, both well established in the PowerCLI arena.

Please note: the following is blogged live whilst in the session. Please excuse any spelling or grammatical errors.

There is a disturbance in the force…

Windows guys love PowerCLI. Non-Windows admins are not feeling the love at the moment. Some times they have to spin up a Windows box just to use PowerCLI…

That’s about to change.

Microsoft Powershell was open-sourced a few weeks back, and is now available for Linux and Mac.

Alan Renouf and Luc Deakins began the session with three-window demo, showing PowerCLI commands running simultaneously on Windows, Linux and Mac.

This is seriously awesome.

PowerCLI Core

VMware released PowerCLI Core on Tuesday 18 October and is available from https://labs.vmware.com/flings/powercli-core.

Get-Stat3

Luc has improved on get-Stat2 with additional parameters. It uses PerformanceManager API methods, and is interchangeable with Get-Stat2 cmdlets.

Get-Stat3 has been rewritten and is now 55% faster than previous versions.

Powershell Tech Preview is essentially an Alpha release and does not support parallelism.

The Visual Studio Code (VS Code) Editor is available on multiple platforms.

VMware PowerCLI 6.5 R1

PowerCLI is the glue the binds the SDDC. Current modules include:

PowerCLI 6.5 is also now available. New features include:

• New name – VMware PowerCLI
• No more snapins
• Adjustments to core components
• Even more storage components
  • Additional VSAN cmdlets
  • Improved disk management cmdlets
  • VVOL Replication cmdlets
• Horizon View Module

One of the biggest number of additional cmdlets is for VSAN.

VSAN Demo

Alan demonstrates enabling VSAN – include defining networking, claiming disks, enabling VSAN on the cluster and verifying this has worked as expected. Fault Domains can also be created using VSAN, as well as assigning storage policies. Finally the health check service can be enabled.

Improved virtual disk management

This new feature enables the ability to treat virtual disks like first class citizens. VVOL Replication is also covered in VMware PowerCLI 6.5

PowerCLI for Horizon View

Horizon View cmdlets have now been completely revamped and comes installed by default – PowerCLI is not required to be installed on the View server.

Horizon View cmdlets will also be fed into the PowerCLI Github repository. The API documentation will also be made available to customers.

Alan then performs another demonstration, this time listing available View Connection Servers and their associated health. Licence information can also be retrieved.

vSphere 6.5

Get-View grants access to the updated 6.5 API. Functions now exist for:

• Encrypted vMotion
• Enhanced VM overrides
• VM Encryption

Get-CISService allows management of the Appliance API

vSphere DSC Module

The DSC module is a long-running project for Luc.

“Treat your servers like cattle, not pets”

-Jeffery Snover

Desired State Configuration gives admins the ability to ensure their environment remains constant, and that changes are auto-remediated.

vSphereDSC:

• WMF 5 – classes (based on Powershell 5)
• Config files use regular .ps1 files
• Ability to use source control

Luc is working to reverse-engineer DSC, so that it can export your environment in preparation to be ported to others.

Takeaways

• PowerCLI Core is now available to download
• Your code is never really finished
• DSC provides the Infrastructure as Code for your SDDC