Automate: New-CustomeAttribute and its value

[SaqiChangx]

Hi everyone,

I am new to Powershell and I am trying to learn it and understand the concept. Recently I joined a company as an IT engineer and my job is to automate VMWare.

I edited my first script with powercli and now I'm stuck. I would like some suggestions.

Let me say the situation:

There are many clusters in the VMWare client with a particular name, and each cluster has many VMS. We want two scripts, one to create a custom attribute and the second to give them a value according to their cluster. If the cluster has an (owner-it) name, then the VMS that are inside the cluster should have IT as the value. For all VMS, the user-defined attribute already has "Unit" assigned to it. The value is specified according to the name of the unit or cluster.

Cluster's name :          in Cluster VMs has names like:                custome attribute:          Value:

owner-IT                       test-owner                                                 Unit                              IT

trainign-xy                       Test-IT                                                Unit                                    xy

Job                              consulting-Job                                        Unit                                       job

Console-cons                   Program-cons                                         Unit                                   cons

what we want is that a PowerShell-script should give VM Value but the value should be the same as the cluster's name like (if a cluster has owner name so inside cluster the VM should have (test-owner) name.

A Sample:

loop $vm in get-vm | Get-Folder -Server $server -Name hasx

   switch ($vm | get-datacenter)

      devat-tsi $unit = "TSI"

      devat-uk $unit = "UK"

    $vm | Set-Annotation -CustomAttribute "Unit" -Value $unit

2nd Script should just create custom attribute for specific Cluster (owener-IT)

if it is not explained give a comment.

I would appreciate any suggestions.

Thank You

[LucD]

Not exactly sure I understand what you are trying to do.

I understand something like the following, but there are some open questions.

- loop over all clusters

- find VMs in cluster. Name of VMs is <text><clusterName>?

- create a Custom Attribute for the VM.

- The name of the Custom Attribute is <clusterName>?

- What value shall this Custom Attribute have?

[SaqiChangx]

you are right name of vm is <text>-tsi

First, we give each vm a value because each vm has a custome attribute (unit) and they should be sorted out by unit.

But they don't have a value yet, so we want to give them a value, and the value should be the last letter of the cluster (Management-tsi) for each vm, and in the owner cluster as owner and in the IT cluster as value IT.

Example:

ForEach($Line in $VMList)

{

# Get-Vm $Line.VMName | Set-Annotation -CustomAttribute "Unit" -Value "ES"

#Get-Vm $Line.VMName | Set-Annotation -CustomAttribute " UNIT" -Value IT

Get-Vm $Line.VMName | Set-Annotation -CustomAttribute "Unit" -Value "TSI"

}

[LucD]

You mean something like this?

Import-Csv -Path .\vmnames.csv |

ForEach-Object -Process {

    $vm = Get-VM -Name $_.VMName

    $cluster = Get-Cluster -VM $vm

    Get-Annotation -Entity $vm -CustomAttribute 'Unit' | Set-Annotation -Value $cluster.Name

}

[SaqiChangx]

yeah similar to this, but we do not want to use CSV we want to search the cluster directly from the Vcenter and according to the cluster the last character we give VMS Value. Because we want to do some automation course in Vcenter.

they are the cluster names:

PS C:\Users\Administrator> $clusters = Get-Cluster | Get-View

foreach($cluster in $clusters){

$cluster.name

$cluster.summary.numhosts

}

text-mgmt

2

text-uk

4

text-base

9

text-es

2

text-mech

text-tsi

[LucD]

Not sure what this NumHost property does here.
I thought you wanted to set a Custom Attribute?

In any case, without a CSV, you could do

Get-Cluster -PipelineVariable cluster |

Get-VM -PipelineVariable vm |

ForEach-Object -Process {

    Get-Annotation -Entity $vm -CustomAttribute 'Unit' | Set-Annotation -Value $cluster.Name

}

[SaqiChangx]

in next script, I want to set a custom attribute but only for one cluster not for all. I mean, I want to set only for (text-tsi) cluster custom attribute.

[LucD]

You lost me completely now I'm afraid.

[SaqiChangx]

Thank you it is working . i  always follow your blog they are really helpful.

[LucD]

Thanks.
Not sure what I replied to if I'm honest. :smileygrin:
Is this thread now answered or is there anything still missing?

[SaqiChangx]

I just have to adjust your code and it has answered my main question. before I consider it as correct answer I would like to post my code here then

[LucD]

Sure

[SaqiChangx]

Hi,

I have tested your given example and it works, but this way, under the example code, it would be more practical to change the value of the attribute each time. We do not want to give the attribute the full name of the cluster (devat-tsi) as a value in the future.

I tested your given example and it is working but like this, below example code. it would be more practice to change the value of attribute every time.  we do not want to give the attribute complete name of Cluster (devat-tsi) as value in future.

could you please help me in this below example. actually I used get-folder for a test but this script should be applied on all cluster.

loop $vm in get-vm | Get-Folder -Name test

   switch ($vm | get-datacenter)

      devat-tsi $unit = "TSI"

      devat-uk $unit = "UK"

    $vm | Set-Annotation -CustomAttribute "Unit" -Value $unit

[LucD · Accepted solution]

The following loops over all clusters in your environment.

And uses the suffix of the clustername for the Custom Value.

Get-Cluster -PipelineVariable cluster |

Get-VM -PipelineVariable vm |

ForEach-Object -Process {

    Get-Annotation -Entity $vm -CustomAttribute 'Unit' | Set-Annotation -Value ($cluster.Name.Split('-')[1])

}

[SaqiChangx]

Thank you, sir. That's what I wanted. Is there any way, if I give the attribute a different value in a particular cluster. like the VMs in "test-tsi" cluster should get as value "MA".

[LucD]

You could use a hashtable as a lookup table.

You can have multiple entries in there.

$lookupTable = @{

    'tsi' = 'MA'

}

Get-Cluster -PipelineVariable cluster |

Get-VM -PipelineVariable vm |

ForEach-Object -Process {

    $suffix = $cluster.Name.Split('-')[1]

    if($lookupTable.ContainsKey($suffix)){

        $suffix = $lookupTable[$suffix]

    }

    Get-Annotation -Entity $vm -CustomAttribute 'Unit' | Set-Annotation -Value $suffix

}

[SaqiChangx]

It is well practical, thank you Sir,