update vm tools and limit running tasks

[BrianGordon84]

I've got around 900 vm's to update the tools on. Whats the best practice as far as how many you should run at once? They are spread out on about 45-50 different hosts and clusters. I'm using the following script that seems to work perfect:

$insParm = '/S /v"/qn REBOOT=ReallySuppress"'

$vmView = Get-VM | Get-View | Where {$_.guest.toolsstatus -ilike "toolsOld"}

foreach ($vm in $vmView){

$vm.UpgradeTools_Task($insParm)

Start-Sleep

-Seconds 30

}

Its taking roughly 3-4 minutes per vm to update the tools. I imagine I would crash some things if I ran one every 30 seconds. How can I restrict this task to only 3-5 at a time?

[lockenkeyster]

I imagine there is some thread magic you could do to keep track of each upgrade, but would using a simple for loop with a longer pause during the last iteration work for this?:

$insParm = '/S /v"/qn REBOOT=ReallySuppress"'

$vmView = Get-VM | Get-View | Where {$_.guest.toolsstatus -ilike "toolsOld"}

for ($i = 0; $i -lt $vmView.length; $i++) {

    $vmView[$i].UpgradeTools_Task($insParm)

    Start-Sleep -Seconds 30

    $i++

    $vmView[$i].UpgradeTools_Task($insParm)

    Start-Sleep -Seconds 30

    $i++

    $vmView[$i].UpgradeTools_Task($insParm)

    Start-Sleep -Seconds 30

    $i++

    $vmView[$i].UpgradeTools_Task($insParm)

    Start-Sleep -Seconds 300

    $i++

}

[BrianGordon84]

If I had a smaller list to do that would probably be a good solution. The only thing that worries me about doing it like that is if one errors or they start taking longer and longer to finish. I won't be able to get as many done. Probably don't need the start-sleep in the in the first four either.

[LucD]

Try perhaps something like this, it will start 5 updates every 5 minutes.

I used the Get-VIew cmdlet with the Filter parameter because that is way faster then a Get-VM followed by a Get-View in a bigger environment.

$insParm = '/S /v"/qn REBOOT=ReallySuppress"' 
$vmView = Get-View -ViewType VirtualMAchine -Filter @{"Guest.toolsstatus"="toolsOld"}
$interval = 300
$vmPerBlock = 5 $nrBlocks = [int]($vmView.Count/$vmPerBlock)

0..$nrBlocks | %{
  $vmView[($_ * $vmPerBlock).. ((($_ + 1) * $vmPerBlock) - 1)] | %{
    $_.UpgradeTools_Task($insParm)
  }
 sleep 300
}

[BrianGordon84]

If I want to specify a folder to run this script in, would it be:

$vmView = Get-View -SearchRoot Foldername -ViewType VirtualMachine -Filter @{"Guest.toolsstatus"="toolsOld"}

Also, since I have the list that I need to update, I probably don't even need the get-view section do I? I could just do this, correct?

$insParm = '/S /v"/qn REBOOT=ReallySuppress"' 
$list = (Get-Content servers.txt)

$vmView = Get-VM $list
$interval = 300
$vmPerBlock = 5 $nrBlocks = [int]($vmView.Count/$vmPerBlock)

0..$nrBlocks | %{
  $vmView[($_ * $vmPerBlock).. ((($_ + 1) * $vmPerBlock) - 1)] | %{
    $_.UpgradeTools_Task($insParm)
  }
 sleep 300
}

[LucD]

Yes, you use the SerachRoot parameter to start from a specific folder.

Yes, that will work.

Note that Get-View is considerably faster in bigger environments.

[BrianGordon84]

Whats the best way to provide a list of vm names to the get-view cmdlet? 

[Grzesiekk]

get-view -filter @{'name'='vm1'}

IS this what are you looking for ?

REgards,

Greg

[LucD]

The filter is a hash table which can use regular expressions.

So you could do

$names = [string]::Join('|',(Get-Content c:\names.txt))

Get-View -ViewType VirtualMachine -Filter @{"Name"=$names}

All the names seperated by a vertical bar (the regex expression for OR)