Finally: vCO Interactive Shell
I totally missed that! So my surprise was even bigger: vCO now has an interactive Shell (vCO-Cli) just like Python and PowerShell. Ok, maybe not really like them; but at […]
Housekeeping the vCAC MgmtContext
When working with the vCAC MgmtContext from within PowerShell or whatever other .NET language you will probably have noticed two properies on the context called ‘Entities’ and ‘Links’. Whenever you make a call like ‘$vm = m.VirtualMachines |? VirtualMachineName -eq “server1″‘ the DataContext is tracking the queries objects and thus adding them to the two aforementioned properties (that are actually […]
vCAC: Dynamically execute Scripts in ExternalWFStubs Workflows with PowerShell
Often you would like to customise one or two things with a script in one of the predefined workflow steps like ‘BuildingMachine’. However depending on your blueprint you do not […]
vCAC: Export all PropertyDefinitions automatically with PowerShell
Imagine you feel like reinstalling your vCAC system as the DB got somehow corrupted and VMware support is not able to fix it. Although you really like the fancy GUI of the vCAC administration interface you somehow get bored to enter all your configuration options again and again … As usual, there is help: You can later import them via […]
vCAC: Displaying Available Networks per Location using PowerShell
Sometimes you want to have the user to be able to select a VLAN based on the location he chooses during a machine request. With some little logic you can actually create a DropDown box backed by a ValueExpression that lists all selected networks per location. You only have to enumerate all HostReservations, lookup the location of its related Compute […]
A better placement strategy for vCAC with Custom Properties
As an update to the previous post on doing a manual placement of VMs I would like to present a approach for a placement strategy in vCAC that is a […]
[NoBrainer] Enumerate over all vCenter VMs in vCAC
Did you ever want to quickly enumerate over all vCenters that are connected with vCAC? without storing hard coded credentials? and never worry when endpoints are added or removed? Here is how …
biz.dfch.PS.Storebox.Api: Invoke-CteraFileTransfer
I updated the biz.dfch.PS.Storebox.Api for being able to have file transfers to and from Ctera (Storebox) via its REST API. There you will also find the link to the NuGet package and the Github repository. With it you can get a directory listing, download and upload a file. It uses our logging module as well as the generic ‘Invoke-CteraRestCommand’. There […]
[NoBrainer] Get location field for vCAC ComputeResource
In vCAC you can set a location on a ‘Compute Resource’. While in some cases this might not make sense (e.g. vCenter stretched clusters) you might still want to use it, for example to implement some placement logic. When you have a look at the object, you might be surprised to see, that there is no attribute of the corresponding […]
[biz.dfch.PS.System.Data] Invoke-SqlCmd without the overhead
=== UPDATE 2014-10-19 === I created a separate module that uses the SqlClient where you do not have to specify the command type and where you can also use LocalDB connections. === For the full module and description see my Post Module: biz.dfch.PS.System.Data. === UPDATE 2013-12-21 === added an additional parameter to specify the command type manually === Sometimes we […]
Change VirtualMachine Reservation and StoragePath
[UPDATE 2014-02-16] For a different approach on how to change HostReservation and StorageReservation have a look at the method via RegisterExistingVirtualMachine().] One of the limitations in vCAC 5.2 is the […]
Synchronisation Issues in vCAC Workflows and how to solve them
Warning: this post describes a feature where the developers probably might not have thought of when they designed it. Use on your own risk (as with any scripts we show you here). When using workflows to integrate with infrastructure outside the control of vCAC (like getting the next available IP address from your IPAM system) you might run into concurrency […]
[NoBrainer] Convert byte array to hex string in PowerShell
This is a rather quick one and I am merely writing it down as I tend to forget … If you need a quick way to get a hex representation in string form (of a byte array or any string) you can use this fragment. You certainly can combine this with some hash computation if you do not want a […]
Simplify your life while testing and debugging PowerShell scripts in vCAC
You have read all the blogs like Calling Powershell/PowerCLI Scripts from a vCAC workflow on how to call PowerShell scripts from vCAC or -if you really have to- vCO (when […]
Handling PowerShell ValueFromPipeline easily
Did you ever want your Cmdlets tp support pipeline input but never took the time to correctly implement it? There is an easy way of handling input either from pipeline or as a parameter (regardless it being a sigle object or an array of objects). You just have to decorate a generic input parameter with the “ValueFromPipeline” attribute and iterate […]
Creating vCAC ValueExpressions automatically
vCAC has the a built-in feature to define properties as drop down lists that can display information based on a selection of a different (parent) property (as described in the vCAC 5.2 Operating Guide). This is called a “ValueExpression”. Though this mechanism is a bit buggy and might even raise some security issues it is still quite useful in certain […]
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