get-vmswitch causes PowerCLI to query HyperV instead of vCenter

[vonhawkins]

I hope someone can shed some light on this as I can't find a similar question elsewhere.

I recently accidentally typed a powershell command "get-vmswitch" into my PowerCLI window.  Every Get-* command I typed after that retrieved information from the locally installed Hyper-V instead of the vCenter server I had been connected to.

I can repeat  the behavior every time.

Open PowerCLI on my 2012 R2 laptop

connect-VIServer 192.168.0.16

get-VM    displays the VMs managed by my vCenter server

get-VM -server 192.168.0.16     #also works

get-vmswitch  #displays the network adapters on my 2012R2 laptop

get-vm  #displays the Hyper-V VMs on my laptop

get-vm -server 192.168.0.16  # throws an error no parameter matches server

$displayviserver  #displays the expected vCenter IP address

connect-viserver  #appears to work, but all commands still act against the local machine

My lab is a collection of laptops running Hyper-V and ESXi.

I know that get-vmswitch is a powershell command for Hyper-V, but how does it subvert my PowerCLI session?

Is there a way to recover the session other than closing powerCLI and re-opening it?

[LucD]

What I think happened is the following.

• by typing the cmdlet you triggered the auto-loading of the Hyper-V module (this feature was introduced in PowerShell v3)
• there is overlap between the PowerCLI cmdlets and the HyperV cmdlets. A good example is the Get-VM cmdlet which exists for PowerCLI and Hyper-V

One way to make the distinction, is to prefix the cmdlets with the namespace.

VMware.VimAutomation.Core\Get-VM

Hyper-V\Get-VM

Another option is to define your own prefix when loading a module

Remove-Module -Name Hyper-V

Import-Module -Name Hyper-V -Prefix MS

Get-MSVM

In this example, the Hyper-V cmdlets will now have the noun prefixed with MS

Note that you can't do this for PowerCLI, since PowerCLI comes as a pssnapin, not a module.

[vonhawkins · Accepted solution]

LucD,

Thanks!.  Your answer is correct.  I asked the same question on powershell.com and got most of your answer, but Peter Jurgens added:

/********************************************************************************

Accessing VMware cmdlets from any powershell session is as easy as loading the Snap-In:

Add-PSSnapin vmware*

That will load all registered snap-ins beginning with vmware.

Hope this helps.

EDIT: I stumbled across a blog post from Jeffrey Hicks regarding this exact issue...

http://mcpmag.com/articles/2013/08/20/powershell-name-duplicates.aspx

*******************************************************************************/

http://powershell.com/cs/forums/p/19916/42912.aspx

I added your extra bits to that thread too so anyone stumbling across either thread will get the most complete answer.

Between the two of you, I learned a lot about PS and PowerCLI this week.  As an old bash-head moving over to more Windows/VMware, I need to continue that trend.

enjoy,

Von