Thanks for the reply, we have not performed any work on the database and people do run individual snapshots on machines, but this has affected 20+ machines. I would think that a snapshot would not affect the annotation. We did have a VM report script that ran, and here it is. I removed certain information from the script before posting; the script runs fine and it does not appear to erase data.
I know some powershell, so I can understand what the script is doing generally, but someone else wrote it, and one portion is from the "Who created that VM" script that was posted before.
I had someone else look at it and it appears to be working just fine. I actually ran the script again (after the erased data) and it did not remove any data.
# This IF codeblock will load the VMware PowerShell extensions
# if they are not found to be loaded already
if ( (Get-PSSnapin -Name VMware.VimAutomation.Core -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) -eq $null )
{
Add-PsSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core
}
function Get-VMReport($VMname) {
# create a new object to fill with the information for the report
$thisVMReportItem = New-Object PSObject
$currentVM = Get-VM $VMname
# create a property "Name" and populate with the Virtual Machine's name
$thisVMReportItem | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "Name" -Value $currentVM.Name
$thisVMReportItem | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "OSFullName" -Value $currentVM.Guest.OSFullName
if ($currentVM.guest.ipaddress.count -gt 0)
{
# get the first reported assigned IP address and add to the report information
$thisVMReportItem | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "IPAddress" -Value $currentVM.Guest.IPAddress[0].toString()
}
else
{
# if there is no IP address information found, populate IPAddress with "unknown"
$thisVMReportItem | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "IPAddress" -Value "unknown"
}
# Retrieve the list of "Annotations" on each VM, loop through them
$Annotations = $currentVM | Get-Annotation
ForEach ($Annotation in $Annotations)
{
# if this specific Annotation is labelled "Assignee", add the value of that Annotation
# to the report information
if ($Annotation.Name -eq "Assignee")
{
$thisVMReportItem | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "Assignee" -Value $Annotation.Value
}
if ($Annotation.Name -eq "Z Version")
{
$thisVMReportItem | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "Z Version" -Value $Annotation.Value
}
}
return $thisVMReportItem
}
# creates an empty collection object that will be filled with the information regarding each VM
$AllVMReport = @()
# Get a list of all of the VMs managed by the vCenter instance
# sorted by name, then feed that list of objects into the ForEach
# loop
# connect to a VMware server (vCenter or ESX hypervisor host)
connect-viserver
$vms4report = @()
get-vm -location | foreach-object {$vms4report += $_}
get-vm -location | foreach-object {$vms4report += $_}
get-vm -location | foreach-object {$vms4report += $_}
foreach ($vm in $vms4report)
{
$AllVMReport += Get-VMReport($vm.Name)
}
disconnect-viserver -force -Confirm:$False
connect-viserver
$vms4report = @()
get-vm -location 1 | foreach-object {$vms4report += $_}
get-vm -location 2 | foreach-object {$vms4report += $_}
get-vm -location 3 | foreach-object {$vms4report += $_}
foreach ($vm in $vms4report)
{
$AllVMReport += Get-VMReport($vm.Name)
}
disconnect-viserver -force -Confirm:$False
# HTML header information to provide formatting to the HTML output
$htmlformatting = "<style>"
$htmlformatting = $htmlformatting + "BODY{background-color:white;}"
$htmlformatting = $htmlformatting + "TABLE{border-width: 1px;border-style: solid;border-color: black;border-collapse: collapse;}"
$htmlformatting = $htmlformatting + "TH{border-width: 1px;padding: 0px;border-style: solid;border-color: black;}"
$htmlformatting = $htmlformatting + "TD{border-width: 1px;padding: 0px;border-style: solid;border-color: black;}"
$htmlformatting = $htmlformatting + "</style>"
$today = get-date
$AllVMReport | select Name,Assignee,IPAddress,ZVersion | sort-object -property Name | ConvertTo-HTML Name,Assignee,IPAddress,ZVersion -head $htmlformatting -body "<H2>VM Information collected on $today</H2>" | Set-Content C:\Scripts\report.html
