Listing vCloud Organization, Org VDCs, VMs, and a VM's Metadata field

[AdamRushUK]

How can I use PowerCLI to quickly list vCloud Organizations, Org VDCs, VMs, and a VM's Metadata field called "Location"?

I'd like to do this using views, but I can't find information on how to do this, especially the metadata part.

Any ideas?

[jonathanw]

Listing Organizations, VDCs and VMs should be straightforward using the standard Get-Org, Get-OrgVdc and Get-CIVM cmdlets.

Metadata is more of a challenge (as you say) as it's stored in VM extension data and not easily surfaced in PowerCLI. Alan Renouf wrote a blog post back in 2012 which included code for a PowerShell module to do this: Working with vCloud Metadata in PowerCLI - VMware PowerCLI Blog - VMware Blogs

The issue with this code is it was written before vCloud Director 5.x and doesn't support the typed values for metadata available in more recent releases. I took Alan's code and extended it for typed metadata values and it's available in a couple of blog posts I've written up:

Working with vCloud Metadata in PowerCLI – Part 1

Working with vCloud Metadata in PowerCLI – Part 2

Using this module you should be able to pipe the output from Get-Org | Get-OrgVdc | Get-CIVM into Get-CIMetaData with a -key "Location" filter.

Let me know how you get on and happy to assist further if I can.

[zicklacekic · Accepted solution]

Getting Metadata info is simple.

Be sure you have imported the following module:

Import-Module Vmware.VimAutomation.Cloud

You need to connect to vcloud director with following command first:

Connect-CIServer -Server <yourvclouddirector> - user <yourusername> -password <yourpassword> -org <yourorganization>

Then you need to get VM information with Get-CIVM command like:

$vmv = Get-CIVM | Sort-Object -Property Name

Then you need to get Metadata information from VM with .ExtensionData.GetMetadata() property like:

Foreach ($vm $vmv) { $Metadata = $vm.ExtensionData.GetMetadata() }

If Metadata entry is not inserted before $Metadata.MetadataEntry.Count property is 0.

If not you can take the Metadata information Vlue from the field called Location Like this:

$MetaValue= $Metadata.MetadataEntry[[array]::indexof($Metadata.MetadataEntry.Key,"Location")].TypedValue.Value

So whole sctipt to get Metadata should be something like this: (Replace values of vclouddirector,username,password with yours)

Import-Module Vmware.VimAutomation.Cloud

Connect-CIServer -Server <yourvclouddirector> -user <yourusername> -password <yourpassword> -org <yourorganization>

$vmv = Get-CIVM | Sort-Object -Property Name

Foreach ($vm in $vmv) {

$Metadata = $vm.ExtensionData.GetMetadata()

$MetaValue= $Metadata.MetadataEntry[[array]::indexof($Metadata.MetadataEntry.Key,"Location")].TypedValue.Value

Write-Host $vm + $MetaValue

}

if ($global:DefaultCIServers.Count -gt 0) {Disconnect-CIServer -Server * -Force -Confirm:$false} #For disconnecting