topic Re: Script for Shutdown VMs Details in VMware PowerCLI Discussions

Script for Shutdown VMs Details

CoolonVsphere — Wed, 22 Feb 2017 20:45:01 GMT

As an VMware admin always seen in vCenter most of VMs in shutdown state, wanted to know from how many days/months these shutdown vms are in shutdown state so we can delete these unused VMs which help in reclaiming storage space. If any one have script pls share it. (Note : shutdown vm from vcenter console )

Script can give the output of VM1 is shutdown from so and so date.

Thanks in Advance

Re: Script for Shutdown VMs Details

ScottDriver42 — Wed, 22 Feb 2017 21:34:01 GMT

Unless you shut them down from vCenter you won't see an event for the power off. I guess you could analogously look for something like the memory usage state change, or parse through the VM log. I think to concretely get this you'd have to go through the OS log. Or maybe going forward make a note on the machine description about shutdown date.

Good luck!

Re: Script for Shutdown VMs Details

kwhornlcs — Thu, 23 Feb 2017 16:25:51 GMT

You do have to parse the events. This should get you started on what you're looking for:

$vmlist = Get-VM | Where {$_.PowerState -eq 'PoweredOff'}
ForEach ($vm in $vmlist){
  $vm | Get-VIEvent -Types Info | Where {$_.fullFormattedMessage -match "Powered Off"} | `
  Sort-Object -property createdTime |  select -last 1 | %{
  Write-Host $_.vm.name $_.createdTime | Out-Default}
}

The above assumes you've already done connect-viserver etc.

Re: Script for Shutdown VMs Details

ScottDriver42 — Thu, 23 Feb 2017 17:13:00 GMT

But this will only give you the VMware events, they won't give you OS power operations, hence my comment about looking for analogous events.

Re: Script for Shutdown VMs Details

kwhornlcs — Thu, 23 Feb 2017 19:35:47 GMT

From my testing - vcenter records a state change whether the shut down comes from console/RDP session or right-click within the VM client. Event retention could be a problem depending on how busy the environment is - say if weeks or months go by.

Re: Script for Shutdown VMs Details

LucD — Thu, 23 Feb 2017 20:18:19 GMT

Afaik these are two different events, capture both.

Something like this.

You'll notice that a GuestOS shutdown generates both types of events.

So ultimately you should only look for the VmPoweredOffEvent

$vms = Get-VM | where{$_.PowerState -eq 'PoweredOff'}

Get-VIEvent -Entity $vms -Start (Get-Date).AddDays(-1) -MaxSamples ([int]::MaxValue) |

where{$_ -is [VMware.Vim.VmGuestShutdownEvent] -or $_ -is [VMware.Vim.VmPoweredOffEvent]} |

Select @{N='Date';E={$_.CreatedTime}},

@{N='VM';E={$_.Vm.Name}},

@{N='User';E={$_.UserName}},

@{N='EventType';E={$_.GetType().Name}}