How to APPEND info into VM Notes field, leaving existing info intact.

[RBohmann2]

Trying to determine if it is possible to APPEND information into the Notes field.   I am attemping to use Set-VM -Notes  cmdlet  and I can overwrite, but not append. Is this possible? 

vCenter 5.0U3 with PowerCLI 55 R2.

[LucD]

You can do like this

Get-VM -Name MyVM | Set-VM -Notes "$($_.Notes) New text"

[RBohmann2]

Thanks for the reply Luc.     I tried that and it is overwriting the original text..

[LucD]

Then try like this

$vm = Get-VM -Name MyVM

Set-VM -VM $vm -Notes "$($vm.Notes) New text" -Confirm:$false

[ITSavant]

The following will append to existing text in the notes object on a VM  if any exists, or just write a new value.

$VMnamearray = "VM1","VM2","VM3"

$TextToAppend = "`r`n"+"Line1 Text"+"`r`n"+"Line2 Text"

Foreach ($VM in $VMnamearray){$NotesTemp=(Get-VM $VM | Select -ExpandProperty Notes); If ($NotesTemp -ne ""){(Set-VM $VM -Notes "$($NotesTemp)$TextToAppend" -Confirm:$False -RunAsync)} Else {Set-VM $VM -Notes "$TextToAppend" -Confirm:$False -RunAsync}}

[Devrawat2708]

Hi Rob,

Not sure if this is already resolved. You can edit your script based on these commands :-

PowerCLI D:\VMware\Test_scripts> $vm = get-vm <vm_name>

PowerCLI D:\VMware\Test_scripts> $vm.notes

Text 1

PowerCLI D:\VMware\Test_scripts> $add_note = "Text 2"

PowerCLI D:\VMware\Test_scripts> $new_note = ($vm.notes + $add_note)

PowerCLI D:\VMware\Test_scripts> $new_note

Text 1Text 2

PowerCLI D:\VMware\Test_scripts> get-vm <vm_name> | set-vm -Notes $new_note

You can use escape characters like carriage return or space for formatting the new text.

[CCHAMEYRAT]

1. Sorry it is an old post, but the LucD command didn't work, it replaced old value by "new text".

[LucD]

Looks like the pipeline behaves differently.
This seems to work

Get-VM | %{Set-VM -VM $_ -Notes "New text + $($_.Notes)"}

[CCHAMEYRAT]

Hi LucD,
I got the same issue, the "new text" replaced existing Notes

[LucD]

Strange, works for me

[CCHAMEYRAT]

Instead to use @LucD  command, I used the @ITSavant  command and it worked fine.
Thanks a lot.