August 2009 - The Practical Administrator

PoshOnTap: Manage NetApp SAN from PowerShell Demo

2009-08-302015-12-21 by Glenn

Well it’s the night before VMworld, and I can’t sleep, so I’m catching up on my blog. A while back I did a presentation to the PowerShell Virtual Users Group. I demoed my PoshOnTap PowerShell Module, a lot has changed since that presentation. Mainly I have a new version, but I’m still in the process of trying to get the nod from NetApp. So in the meantime if you wished you could manage a NetApp SAN from PowerShell go check it out I have the first 30 minutes. http://marcoshaw.blogspot.com/2009/08/windows-powershell-virtual-user-group.html

With a little luck I’ll get the nod to redistribute the manageontap c# assemblies, and I’ll post Version 2 of my PoshOnTap module!

~Glenn

VMworld here we come!

2009-08-292015-12-21 by Glenn

Last year Andrew talked our employer into sending us to VMworld. We followed up that amazing week with several whitepapers, and a year of being ahead of the curve. Apparently we did something right because VMworld 2009 here we come! Last year my goal for the show was to gather a better understanding for how other VI Administrators worked. To assess where we were in both process, and execution. This year I have a stack of stuff I want to get into.

Processes:
I want to find what others use for VM Request/Provisioning? Lab manager Is great but that only covers my developers. What about joe admin or a new customer? Is there anything that competes with lifecycle manager(Quest had to buy something :D). Additionally, we’ve seem to reach a critical mass, and charge back (at least the math behind it) will be of interest to me in particular. While I don’t think we’ll ever charge per division, I would like to be able to show the cost in datacenter capacity every VM is consuming.

Technology:
I chose to skip the first round of VDI… It’s been a year time to look at VMware View. What’s the report card is VDI ready for primetime, or is Citrix still my best bang for the buck, are there any new players I never heard of? Sticking with VDI, anything new in thin clients that I care about (doubtful), but then again you never know. I also need to take a fresh look at I/O virtualization. I spoke with the NextIO guys last year, and left excited, but I never got to that part of our datacenter… Maybe this year. All of that isn’t even addressing any storage, network, but I have a separate list for Cisco, and NetApp!

Dev Day:
I’m really looking forward to Monday. You can keep your NDA, and partner track. I want to spend a day with the other SDK/Automation geeks. Perhaps I can find some fellow PowerShell enthusiast in the crowd.

People:
Finally, I’m hoping to meet you People! Last year I was fairly new to VMware, and was rather uneasy about the whole thing. A year later I’m much more familiar with the Virtualization Community, and I hope to get to meet you in person. Especially, the PowerCLI enthusiast our there… not to be too cocky, but I called it, and while I’m no LucD… I know a thing or two about PowerShell, and would love to talk!

See ya at the show,
~Glenn

Monday

10:45 AM-11:30 AM	DE-04	Developing vApps and Virtual Appliances using VMware Studio 2.0
1:30 PM-2:15 PM	VS-02	Hardware Health Monitoring
2:30 PM-3:30 PM	VS-03	Integration Best Practices for vSphere Web Services SDK
3:45 PM-4:45 PM	VS-04	vSphere API for Performance Monitoring

Tuesday

10:00 AM-12:00 PM	LAB03	VMware View Advanced Config & Troubleshooting
1:30 PM-2:30 PM	TA3438	Top 10 Performance Features of VMware vSphere 4
3:00 PM-4:00 PM	TA2713	Safe At Any Speed with VMware DRS & DPM
4:30 PM-5:30 PM	TA2623	Enhanced Storage VMotion in vSphere 4
5:30 PM-7:00 PM	VM2241	Managing vSphere with VMware PowerCLI

Wednesday

3:00 PM-5:00 PM	LAB11	VMware vCenter Chargeback

Thursday

11:30 AM-12:30 PM	TA4341	Virtual Network Performance
3:00 PM-4:00 PM	TA2650	Take PowerCLI to the Next Level
4:00 PM-5:30 PM	TA2963	ESXtop for Advanced Users

PowerCLI: Evacuate a Datastore

2009-08-252015-12-21 by Glenn

More migration/upgrade stuff… As part of a larger migration strategy, I needed to migrate whole datastores. Literally Terabytes of VM data, while sVMotion did all the heavy lifting. I still needed a control script to manage this process for me. This script ran successfully for over three days on one of my larger datastores. Faithfully, moving my VM’s two by two!

$SourceDS = Get-Datastore 'VMData1'
$DestinationDS = Get-Datastore 'VMData0'
$MaxConcurrent = 2
#Keep at least 10% freespace in the datastore
$buffer = ($DestinationDS.CapacityMB * .1) * 1048576
$DestView = Get-View -VIObject $DestinationDS -Property Info
$SourceView = Get-View -VIObject $SourceDS -Property vm
    
While ($DestView.Info.FreeSpace -gt $buffer -and $SourceView.VM.count -ge 1)
{
    $SourceDS | Get-VM | Select-Object -First $MaxConcurrent | Move-VM -Datastore $DestinationDS -RunAsync | Wait-task
    $DestView.UpdateViewData("Info")
    $SourceView.UpdateViewData("Vm")
}

$SourceDS = Get-Datastore 'VMData1'

$DestinationDS = Get-Datastore 'VMData0'

$MaxConcurrent = 2

#Keep at least 10% freespace in the datastore

$buffer = ($DestinationDS.CapacityMB * .1) * 1048576

$DestView = Get-View -VIObject $DestinationDS -Property Info

$SourceView = Get-View -VIObject $SourceDS -Property vm

While ($DestView.Info.FreeSpace -gt $buffer -and $SourceView.VM.count -ge 1)

{

$SourceDS | Get-VM | Select-Object -First $MaxConcurrent | Move-VM -Datastore $DestinationDS -RunAsync | Wait-task

$DestView.UpdateViewData("Info")

$SourceView.UpdateViewData("Vm")

}

Honestly I completed this over a month ago, but I consider these little scripts I write to be too simple to post… My drafts folder is full of stuff like this. On the one hand I want to post for my own use, but I can search my drafts for that. So I ask you, do you get any value out of these one off solutions? Please, don’t pad my ego… If you don’t find this kind of stuff useful don’t pretend. I have my documentation, I want to know if you would like access to it?

See ya’ll at VMworld
~Glenn

PowerShell PSA: Stop Crunching the CODE!

2009-08-052015-12-21 by Glenn

Stop crunching the code people! I know PowerShell is incredibly powerful, and can be extremely terse, but seriously! Can someone explain to me how all this shorthand helps anyone?

ls  -r|?{!$_.PSIsContainer}|Select Name,Length,@{e='Owner';E={(Get-Acl $_.FullName).Owner}}

1	ls -r\|?{!$_.PSIsContainer}\|Select Name,Length,@{e='Owner';E={(Get-Acl $_.FullName).Owner}}

I’m not condemning shorthand. Give me a fire and a PowerShell prompt my code is barely legible (and mostly red :D), but I don’t post that crap. This isn’t hard, when passing on knowledge to the community as a whole, or answering a post in a forum, clean it up!

# Is this really that hard
Get-ChildItem -Path c: -Recurse  |
    Where-Object{-Not $_.PSIsContainer} |
    Select-Object Name, Length, @{Name="Owner";Expression={(Get-Acl $_.FullName).Owner}}

# Can anyone not understand this?
Get-ChildItem -Path c: -Recurse |
    Where-Object{-Not $_.PSIsContainer}
    Add-Member -MemberType 'ScriptProperty' -Name 'Owner' -Value {
        (Get-Acl $this.FullName).Owner
    } -PassThru |
    Format-Table -Property Name,Length,Owner -AutoSize

#If you really must show off, be creative not Lazy!
$tempFile = "{0}{1}.ps1xml" -f $env:temp, [System.IO.Path]::GetRandomFileName()
@'
<Types>
 <Type>
  <Name>System.IO.FileInfo</Name>
  <Members>
   <ScriptProperty>
    <Name>Owner</Name>
    <GetScriptBlock>
      (Get-Acl $this.FullName).Owner
    </GetScriptBlock>
   </ScriptProperty>
   <ScriptProperty>
    <Name>SizeMB</Name>
    <GetScriptBlock>
      ($this.Length * 1024)/1mb
    </GetScriptBlock>
   </ScriptProperty>
  </Members>
 </Type>
</Types>
'@ | Out-File -FilePath $tempFile
Update-TypeData -AppendPath $tempFile
Get-ChildItem -Path c: -Recurse | Format-Table -Property Name, SizeMB, Owner -autosize

# Is this really that hard

Get-ChildItem -Path c: -Recurse |

Where-Object{-Not $_.PSIsContainer} |

Select-Object Name, Length, @{Name="Owner";Expression={(Get-Acl $_.FullName).Owner}}

# Can anyone not understand this?

Get-ChildItem -Path c: -Recurse |

Where-Object{-Not $_.PSIsContainer}

Add-Member -MemberType 'ScriptProperty' -Name 'Owner' -Value {

(Get-Acl $this.FullName).Owner

} -PassThru |

Format-Table -Property Name,Length,Owner -AutoSize

#If you really must show off, be creative not Lazy!

$tempFile = "{0}{1}.ps1xml" -f $env:temp, [System.IO.Path]::GetRandomFileName()

<Types>

<Type>

<Name>System.IO.FileInfo</Name>

<Name>Owner</Name>

(Get-Acl $this.FullName).Owner

</GetScriptBlock>

</ScriptProperty>

<Name>SizeMB</Name>

($this.Length * 1024)/1mb

</GetScriptBlock>

</ScriptProperty>

</Members>

</Type>

</Types>

'@ | Out-File -FilePath $tempFile

Update-TypeData -AppendPath $tempFile

Get-ChildItem -Path c: -Recurse | Format-Table -Property Name, SizeMB, Owner -autosize

There are already too many Admins intimidated by PowerShell. All this needless over complication isn’t helping! Your blog post may never get a comment, but your code is impacting the community as a whole.

Enough already, stop… crunching… the code.
~Glenn

PowerCLI: Copy a ResourcePool(or a hundred)

2009-08-042015-12-21 by Glenn

As part of a larger migration I was recently given the task to copy all resource pools into new EVC enabled clusters. An already monotonous task was made worse by our use of resource pools for delegation. While it took a couple days to work out a recursion bug. The end product worked flawlessly, and successfully reproduced almost 100 resource pools across three clusters in less than 5min.

I mention the time lost because I truly believe you should “try” to script everything! In this case I lost some time, but I gained accuracy, and the ability to scale to the nth degree!