Clone-List Function

[#1]

If you've been managing a virtual environment for any period of time you've probably received an email requesting that you clone a long list of VMs prior to an upgrade.  I have received this request a variety of times and decided this needed to be automated.

The function performs the following tasks:

• Clones each VM with suffix "clone-"
• Places the cloned VM in the same folder as the original to maintain permissions for application owners.
• Assigns clone to random host within the cluster. This was done in case the clones needed to be started up on a cluster where DRS is not enabled or available.
• Sets clone to Thin provisioned disks
• Works for live and cold clones
• Runs Asynchronously so it will initiate multiple clones simultaneously
• Ability to set parameters if you wish to target the clones to a different folder, datastore, or Thick disk.

I've used this function several times and has saved me a ton of time.  Hope it helps you as well.

Thanks

Josh

http://www.vtesseract.com/post/16447807254/clone-list-powercli-function

[LucD]

Great function Josh, thanks for sharing.

[muthuvairavantu]

Hi,

The script is really good. I'm planning to automate the process of deleting the clones as well. Could you please let me know a complete script which will delete the previous clones once the fresh clone is created. Appreciate your help in advance.

Cheers,

M

[vinod_sikka]

Hi Josh,

I am beginner in power CLI, I ran the scripts and it did not show any output likely because i need to supply a list of VMs which will be cloned. please let me know how to import of csv file as input. Please add that as part of script and share.

Thanks a bunch !

[aerodevil]

You'll note that the example provided on vTesseract.com is done by getting a list from a text file.  You could do similar with a CSV

Import-CSV <csvfile.csv> | Select <server-name-field> | Clone-List

I wasn't able to test this at the moment but something along these lines should work.

[aerodevil]

Sorry for the delayed response.  All of the clones get a prefix of "clone-"  you could potentially use that to have a list for deleting.