How to log the o/p of powercli

[esxi1979]

Hi All,

I am running below

foreach ($snap in Get-VM | Get-Snapshot)

{$snapevent = Get-VIEvent -Entity $snap.VM -Types Info -Finish $snap.Created -MaxSamples 1 | Where-Object {$_.FullFormattedMessage -imatch 'Task: Create virtual machine snapshot'}

if ($snapevent -ne $null){Write-Host ( "VM: "+ $snap.VM + ". Snapshot '" + $snap + "' created on " + $snap.Created.DateTime + " by " + $snapevent.UserName +".")}

else {Write-Host ("VM: "+ $snap.VM + ". Snapshot '" + $snap + "' created on " + $snap.Created.DateTime + ". This event is not in vCenter events database")}}

Now that o/p i need to put in a txt file.

In putty we ca log the session o/p to a file. Is there anyway to do same here with powercli cmd ?

Thanks,

Kiran

[LucD]

The issue here is that you are using Write-Host to present the result on the console.

The disadvantage of Write-Host is that it doesn't write to the pipeline but directly to the console.

One solution is to use Write-Output instead, or even better use the Select-Object cmdlet to select the properties you want to capture.

Get-VM | Get-Snapshot |
Select @{N="VM";E={$_.VM.Name}},
  @{N="Snapshot";E={$_.Name}},
  @{N="CreationDate";E={$_.Created}},
  @{N="User";E={
    $snapevent = Get-VIEvent -Entity $snap.VM -Types Info -Finish $snap.Created -MaxSamples 1 | Where-Object {$_.FullFormattedMessage -imatch 'Task: Create virtual machine snapshot'}
    if($snapevent){$snapevent.UserName}
    else{"This event is not in vCenter events database"}
  }}

If you want to format the result in a specific text format, you can use the pipeline to send the resulting objects to another cmdlet.

[naiksidd]

hi,

I use some small functions

function WriteToFile($message, $locationFile)

{

$message | out-file -encoding ascii $locationFile -Append

}

function WriteProgress($progress, $ForeGround, $progressFile)

{

  if($ForeGround -eq $null)

  {

  $ForeGround = $Information;

  }

  $LogDate = Get-Date -uformat "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"

  $message = $LogDate + " " + $progress

  WriteToFile $message $progressFile;

  Write-Host $LogDate " " $progress -ForegroundColor $ForeGround;

}

just replace write-host with  WriteProgress, you get output both on screen and file.

PS: there are better ways of doing this as Luc mentioned.