Clear VSAN partitions with PowerCLI

[AntonVZhbankov]

Common task for R&D Lab. I have moderately large VSAN cluster with large number of disks previously participated in VSAN.
vCenter task "Erase all partitions" fails
The only way to clean is to ssh to all ESXi hosts and "esxcli vsan strorage remove"

Current status: I can get all GroupUUID by host and generate .sh files for each host with corresponding "esxcli vsan storage remove --uuid 521a2882-0d7f-ef06-a117-d436718c6248"

It makes life easier, but still a lot of manual work for 10+ hosts cluster.

Get-ESXCli provides vsan.storage abstraction with remove method, but with unclear documentation and no examples.

Please point me to right direction - how can I clear VSAN partitions 100% automated?

[LucD · Accepted solution]

When you use the V2 switch, help is available

$esxcli = Get-EsxCli -VMHost <MyEsx> -V2
$esxcli.vsan.storage.remove.Help()

You can create the hash table, fill in the required parameter, and then Invoke the method.

$remVSAN = $esxcli.vsan.storage.remove.CreateArgs()
$remVSAN['uuid'] = <a groupUuid>
$esxcli.vsan.storage.remove.Invoke($remVSAN)

You can loop over all ESXi nodes and then all UUIDs

[AntonVZhbankov]

Great help, may thanks.

Working code for reference:

foreach ($vmhost in $vmhosts) {
  $esxcli = Get-EsxCli -VMHost $vmhost -V2

  [String[]]$diskGroups = @()

  $diskgroups += $esxcli.vsan.storage.list.Invoke() | findstr "pUUID"
  [String[]]$uniqueDiskGroups = $diskGroups | Sort-Object -Unique

  Write-Host 'Processing host' $vmhost.Name
  Write-Host ' - Disk groups found '

  $uniqueDiskGroups

  Write-Host ' -'

  foreach ($groupUUID in $uniqueDiskGroups) {
    $UUID = $groupUUID.Substring(31, 36)
    Write-Host 'Removing '$UUID
    $remVSAN = $esxcli.vsan.storage.remove.CreateArgs.Invoke()
    $remVSAN.uuid = $UUID;
    $esxcli.vsan.storage.remove.Invoke($remVSAN)
  }

  Write-Host ' -'
  Write-Host ' '
}

[LucD]

I think you have a typo in 1 line.
This

$remVSAN = $esxcli.vsan.storage.remove.CreateArgs.Invoke()

should be

$remVSAN = $esxcli.vsan.storage.remove.CreateArgs()

[AntonVZhbankov]

Well, it worked with .Invoke()

[LucD]

Strange, that seems to work indeed.
One learns something new every day 😉