PowerCLI one liner > Check last time VM was powered On/Off/Restarted

[Scottie]

Anyone know how to check when a VMs in a cluster were last powered on/off/restarted, via a one line PowerCLI script? Googled and found a few examples of functions, but was hoping for something far simpler.

Something very vanilla, with output like > VM1 Last powered on 0129/2015 0450 HA restart

Finding out why the VM was last powered on/off would be nice as well.

Thanks.

[Zsoldier]

Best way I can think of is searching for an event type of poweredon.  It is however, limited by how much data the vCenter actually retains.  So if vCenter prunes @ 180 days (typical), then if the VM were powered on 181 days ago, you'll have no events to know.

I use my own custom module to get events (very much like LucD's)  zPowerCLI/Get-VIEventsFaster.ps1 at master · Zsoldier/zPowerCLI · GitHub

For example:

Import-Module Get-VIEventsFaster.ps1 #Assuming you downloaded and run it from the same directory.

$VMinQuestion = Get-VM thisGuyRightHere

$VMinQuestion | Get-VIEventsFaster -EventType @("VmPoweredOnEvent","DrsVmPoweredOnEvent")

Event Types are case sensitive, so watch out for that.

This'll return you all events associated w/ a powered on event and a powered on event handled by DRS.

Other event types you probably want:

VmGuestRebootEvent

VmGuestShutdownEvent

VmStoppingEvent

VmResettingEvent

You can find full list (related to VMs) here:

VMware vSphere 5.1

Other types, reference the "Extended by" Section:

VMware vSphere 5.1

[roconnor]

Sorry don't have a  one liner, I use this, give it a speed test - get-view is lighting fast - 500 vms in 5 seconds

<pre># Script to extract the last boot time of vms

# russ 11/08/2015

# Credits http://vmware-scripts.blogspot.com.es/2012/08/script-to-get-uptime-of-each-vm-in.html

# Create array to select the cluster

Clear      

    # Getting Cluster info  

    $Cluster = Get-Cluster

    $countCL = 0 

    Clear  

    Write-Output " "

    Write-Output "Clusters: "

    Write-Output " "

    foreach($oC in $Cluster){ 

        Write-Output "[$countCL] $oc"

        $countCL = $countCL+1 

        } 

    $choice = Read-Host "On which cluster do you want to check the vm uptimes ?"

    $cluster = get-cluster $cluster[$choice]

    Write-Output "$cluster `n............................................................"

# variable to associate date with boot time

$LastBootProp = @{

  Name = 'LastBootTime'

    Expression = {

     ( Get-Date )  - ( New-TimeSpan -Seconds $_.Summary.QuickStats.UptimeSeconds )

}

}

# code; limits search for vms within cluster,

# filters for powered on vms,  and sorts boot time in descending order

Get-View -ViewType VirtualMachine -SearchRoot (get-cluster -name "$cluster").id  `

-Filter @{"runtime.PowerState"="poweredOn"} -Property Name, Summary.QuickStats.UptimeSeconds  `

| Select Name, $LastBootProp | sort-object -Descending -Property LastBootTime