How to automate shutdown of many VMs on VC using a script rather than Scheduled Tasks

[Saffanu]

Hi, I have a VC 2.5 with many ESX 3.5 hosts in cluster; I need to shutdown and restart many VMs every Week. At this time I'm using VC Scheduled Task, but this isn't usefull because I've to create one tasks for every VM.

I'm wandering if exist any scripting-tool or snap-in for managing multiple shutdowns. I thought the bast way was using Remote CLI but i did't find a Perl Script for doing something like vmware-cmd pointing to a VC.

any Helps?

Thanks, Andrea

[kjb007 · Accepted solution]

You can install the powershell vi toolkit on the vc server. The toolkit comes with a command to shutdown-guest. You can pipe a set of vm's into that command and shutdown a handful of vm's at a time.

-KjB