Unregister and register a list of specific vm's from CSV.

[uswbnc53]

I need to unregister and register a list of specific vm's that are spread across multiple datastores.

I have found these functions, but they process against all vm's in the datastore. Is there a way to modify the functions to process againsts a list of vm's?

I'm guessing you would need your input file to specify the vm and datastore path.

Function unregisterallvm([STRING]$datacentername,[STRING]$clustername)
{
 $vms = Get-DataCenter $datacentername | Get-Cluster $clustername | get-vm
 Foreach ($vm in $vms)
 {
   $vmname = $vm.name
   Write-Host "Unregistering VM: $vmname from Cluster $clustername"
   Remove-VM -VM $vmname -DeleteFromDisk:$false -Confirm:$false -RunAsync
 }
}

Function registerallvm([STRING]$vCenterHost,[STRING]$datacentername,[STRING]$clustername,[STRING]$datastorename)
{
 $datastore = Get-Datacenter $datacentername | Get-Datastore | ? {$_.name -match $datastorename}
 $datastoreshortname = $datastore.Name
 $ResourcePool = Get-Cluster -Name $clustername | Get-ResourcePool | Get-View
 $vmFolder = Get-View (Get-Datacenter -Name $datacentername | Get-Folder -Name "vm").id
 $vmdirs = (dir "vmstores:\$vCenterHost@443\$datacentername\$datastoreshortname\")
 Foreach ($f in $vmdirs)
 {
   $vmname = $f.Name
   $checkreg = (Get-Cluster $clustername | Get-VM | ? { $_.name -match $vmname})
   If (!$checkreg)
   {
     "Registering VM: $vmname on: $clustername \ $datastoreshortname"
     $vmFolder.RegisterVM_Task("[$datastoreshortname]/$vmname/$vmname.vmx", $vmname, $false, $ResourcePool.MoRef, $null)   
   }
   Else
   {
     "VM: $vmname is already registered with the same name. Skipping...."
   }
 }
}

[LucD]

To unregister a bunch of VMs, you could do

Get-VM -Name vm1,vm2,vm3 | Remove-VM -DeleteFromDisk:$false -Confirm:$false

There are other ways to provide the list of VM names (from a TXT or CSV file for example).

How do you want to register the VMs ?

Are they on 1 or more specific datastores ?

If yes, you could use the script in VMX Raiders Revisited

[uswbnc53]

How do you want to register the VMs ? Sorry, what do you mean?

Are they on 1 or more specific datastores ? Yes, they are on multiple datastores with vm's that are not being touched.

[uswbnc53]

I think I see what you are saying.

use the Remove-VM cmdlet to remove the VM's that I need to remove.

Then use the VMX Raiders Revisted script and let it search for all unregistered VMs and register them.

[LucD]

Yes, that's what I ment

[uswbnc53]

When the machine is unregistered and I run the VMX Raiders Revisited script I get a error that the specified key, name, or identifier already exists. It produces that error twice.

But it appears that the scripts succeeds and adds the vm to the correct folder.

[uswbnc53]

I got it figured out. Thanks again Luc!

[uswbnc53]

Hey Luc. Sorry to bother you, but I am still having an issue with the script. It appears that the script is not bypassing the registered vm's and attempting to register them. This appears to be why I am getting the before mentioned error.

The only modifcation I made was that I removed the $datastores variable so the script would search all datastores in the cluster.

$Cluster = "EngLab"
$VMFolder = "Test Sessions"

$ESXHost = Get-Cluster $Cluster | Get-VMHost | select  -First 1

foreach($Datastore in  Get-Datastore ) {
# Collect .vmx paths of  registered VMs on the datastore
$registered = @{}
Get-VM  -Datastore $Datastore | %{$_.Extensiondata.LayoutEx.File | where {$_.Name -like  "*.vmx"} | %{$registered.Add($_.Name,$true)}}

   # Set up Search for .VMX Files in  Datastore
New-PSDrive -Name TgtDS  -Location $Datastore -PSProvider VimDatastore -Root '\' |  Out-Null
$unregistered = @(Get-ChildItem  -Path TgtDS: -Recurse | `
where  {$_.FolderPath -notmatch ".snapshot" -and $_.Name -like "*.vmx" -and  !$registered.ContainsKey($_.Name)})
Remove-PSDrive -Name TgtDS

    #Register all .vmx Files as VMs on the datastore
   foreach($VMXFile in $unregistered) {
   New-VM -VMFilePath $VMXFile.DatastoreFullPath -VMHost  $ESXHost -Location $VMFolder -RunAsync
    }
}

[LucD]

Could you have multiple connections open ?

That way the same datastore would appear multiple times in the resulting objects from the Get-Datastore cmdlet.

Do a

$defaultViServers

If there is more than 1 entry, that most probably explains the phenomena you're seeing.

[uswbnc53]

No, sir. verified that I only have one connection.

[LucD]

Strange, can't see any obvious error.

Can you run the script in a debugger or wite some intermediate values to screen.

Is $registered filed in correctly in the first loop ?

Are the unregistered iVMs n the $unregistered array ?