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7 Replies Last post: May 19, 2008 12:41 PM by gpeck29

Changing Disk Persistence posted: Apr 30, 2008 7:17 PM

gpeck29

29 posts since
Sep 12, 2006

I need to change the disk persistence of some VMs for patching and software updates. Any ideas how to go about this? I haven't found a straightfoward way to do this.

Re: Changing Disk Persistence

1. Apr 30, 2008 7:56 PM

in response to: gpeck29

gpeck29

29 posts since
Sep 12, 2006

Looks like I should hvae dug a little deeper....

$vm = get-vm -name <vmname>
$vm | shutdown-vmguest
$vm | get-harddisk | set-harddisk -persistence nonpersistent
$vm | start-vm seems to work.

Now if I can figure out how to use a CSV file of VM's or even a list of VMs in an Active Directory OU to perform this operations for, I'll be set. I also need to figure out how to wait till the VM is offline before setting the disk persistence.

Re: Changing Disk Persistence

2. Apr 30, 2008 8:18 PM

in response to: gpeck29

kjb007

5,476 posts since
Sep 18, 2006

You should be able to use wait-task, to wait until the vm is down, or just loop until the state returns poweredOff, and then continue on with your other code.

-KjB

Re: Changing Disk Persistence

3. May 1, 2008 5:32 AM

in response to: gpeck29

halr9000

808 posts since
Jun 7, 2007

gpeck29 wrote:
Now if I can figure out how to use a CSV file of VM's or even a list of VMs in an Active Directory OU to perform this operations for, I'll be set.

$process = import-csv need_maint.csv
$process | foreach-object {
    $vm = $_.name | get-vm # assumes there is a Name column in the CSV
   # the rest of your steps
}

For AD, check out Quest's AD cmdlets. There is one called Get-QADComputer that will do the trick very nicely. You can specify an OU or LDAP query to it and then for example assign those results to the $process variable above.

Hal Rottenberg
Co-Host, PowerScripting Podcast (http://powerscripting.net)

Re: Changing Disk Persistence

4. May 8, 2008 8:32 PM

in response to: gpeck29

stephen.ng

12 posts since
Apr 4, 2008

Hmm, this doesn't work for me. I'm using ESX 3.

(Get-HardDisk -VM (Get-VM -Name MyVm)) | Set-HardDisk -Persistence persistent

No matter whether I set it to "persistent" or "nonpersistent", the disk is not independent. How can I configure the disk to be independent using the API?

Thanks,

Steve

Re: Changing Disk Persistence

5. May 9, 2008 12:37 AM

in response to: stephen.ng

LucD

2,384 posts since
Oct 31, 2005

As far as I know there is no cmdlet that allows you to change the mode of a hard disk to independent.

You can use the SDK API to configure this.
See here for the different options you have.

An example of this is the add-HD function in Adding an existing hard disk.

Re: Changing Disk Persistence

6. May 9, 2008 9:46 AM

in response to: LucD

stephen.ng

12 posts since
Apr 4, 2008

Yeah, I wound up going to the underlying API. Kind of a pain but it works.

Steve

$vm = Get-View(Get-VM $NewVmName).ID

$vdcs = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualDeviceConfigSpec
$vdcs.Device = $vm.Config.Hardware.Device10
$vdcs.Operation = 'edit'
$vdcs.Device.Backing.diskMode = "independent_nonpersistent"
$vmcs = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineConfigSpec
$vmcs.DeviceChange = $vdcs
$vm.ReconfigVM($vmcs)

Re: Changing Disk Persistence

7. May 19, 2008 12:41 PM

in response to: stephen.ng

gpeck29

29 posts since
Sep 12, 2006

Stephen,

I'm getting errors that indicate that the diskmode property cannot be found for this object. Can you repost your script again, in a code block?

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