Automation

we have a esxi server with about 100 machines on it.

every day several tasks need to be done on different machines. All machines are numbered: 001 002 003 ... 098 099 0100

is it possible to automate the opening of the consoles in the vsphere client? I saw there is is an option to create plugins for the vsphere clients but not sure if this can be accomplished.

my idea: click on button, dialog opens with listbox.

in the listbox i copy paste the machines that need attention today, for example:

006

019

053

068

072

099

(in real world this are about 20 machines, that is why i want to automate it, as it's a awful job to open 20 consoles multiple times daily...)

i hit button "Do it!"

and all needed consoles are opened.

Is this possible?

Hi jhjkempen,

Maybe you can try something like this in PowerCLI:

#List de VMs in a window and select the machines that you need

$vms = Get-VM | Out-GridView -PassThru

#Open console of the selected virtual machines

$vms | Open-VMConsoleWindow

More info: Opening the Virtual Machine Remote Console through PowerCLI | VMware PowerCLI Blog - VMware Blogs

thanks Roberto,

that seems a good solution. But some points:

-PassThru is not available in my PowerCLI, is that possible?

i rather select the VMs using this way:

Get-VM -Name 420*   (this wil select vmware with 420 in name); but is it possible to select multiple VMware using this method. Something like: Get-VM -Name 056*, 068*, 099*.

So sending an array of strings that should be matched?

Also noticed the Chrome / Internet Explorer plugins are not stable when opening multiple consoles in 1 request. Only the last opened console gets a real desktop view. Other opened consoles just give a blank / white screen... (tested on Windows 7 64 bit and Windows 7 32bit machine)

On firefox it's possible to open 10+ consoles without any problem!

found a solution:

$vms = Get-VM -Name (Get-Content c:\machinelist.txt)

and machinelist.txt contains this:

169*

183*

237*

244*

253*

176*

207*

210*

228*

256*

248*

162*

195*

245*

266*

277*

works perfect!

Thanks for share the tests with IE and Chrome.

I think that the -Passthru parameter in the Out-GridView cmdlet is available only in PowerShell v3 and v4, so maybe you have version 2.

i use this command to to put a list of vmwares in memory:

$vms = Get-VM -Name (Get-Content c:\machinelist.txt)

the machinelist.txt contains this:

001*

002*

005*

all my numbered using this way:

001 machine windows xp

002 machine test visual studio

005 windows 10 beta

the * wildcard assures that the correct vmware is found.

Is it possible to leave out the "*" in the text file, and automatically let the * be added when reading the text file out?

Reason: internally in Excel we only use the number part of the vmware names and when i copy and paste this from excel in the textfile i get:

001

002

005

and we need to manually add the * after each number. (and this needs to be done lot's of time during day, and most of time with 10+ vmwares)

Hope someone has a suggestion!

nobody has a clue on this?