Categoriearchief: PowerShell

Managing vSphere with PowerCLI (creating Tags)

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DownloadVMware vSphere PowerCLI is a command line tool for automating vSphere and vCloud management.

VMware PowerCLI is a very powerful command-line tool that lets you automate close to all aspects of a vSphere management. This includes among others: network, storage, guest OS.

PowerCLI is distributed as PowerShell modules, and includes over 500 PowerShell cmdlets.

The first version of PowerShell was released in November 2006 for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista. We have come a long way since then. PowerShell is an important part of today’s IT landscape. By using PowerShell you can manage systems from different vendors in a unified way. I find myself using PowerShell almost every day in my work.

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Manage VMware AppVolumes via Ivanti Automation

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OIP_thumbIn this blog article I will describe how you can automate assigning VMware AppVolumes to AD user groups by using PowerShell via Ivanti Automation. To accomplish this task I am using the API of App Volumes.

The Powershell function I am using I found online, and is created by by my former colleague Thomas Brown. I slightly altered the script to meet my needs to accomplish the task at hand.

VMware AppVolumes has proven to be a very powerful product to deliver application to both VMware Horizon as well as Citrix Virtual Apps & Desktops.

The relative parts of my setup are:

  • VMware AppVolumes 2.18.014U
  • Ivanti Automation 2020.1

If you like to know more about creating an AppStacks please read: More on AppStacks

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Network Connection check and no Telnet available

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PowerShellWe have all been there…. you want to do a quick check if an IP port is reachable from a Windows machine. There is no telnet or putty installed/available and you don’t want to introduce any changes to the system.

Launch a Powershell window

[sourcecode language='powershell' ]
Test-netconnection -computername randommachinename.rocyjati.local -port 3163
[/sourcecode]

Multiple PowerShell outputs within Ivanti Automation

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imageIvanti Automation (formally known as RES Automation) and PowerShell work very well together. By using PowerShell from within Ivanti Automation we are able to talk to any system that utilize a REST full API.

The Task for Powershell does only allow for all the screen output of a script to be placed in one Automation parameter. To divide this output into multiple parameters the data had to be splited in Automation or in Ivanti Identity Director.

image

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Using special characters in PowerShell Variables

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PowerShellPowerShell is an important part of today’s IT landscape. By using PowerShell you can manage systems from different vendors in a unified way. Nowadays more and more vendors come with there own PowerShell cmdlets, PowerShell is way more than just another tool for today’s sysadmins. Today more then ever IT pros should me getting onboard the PowerShell train. It reminds me of a presentation I saw a couple of years ago where the presenter urged the attendees to ether learn PowerShell today or learn how to say the phrase “Do you want to have fries with that?”.

I am not sure if it is going to be like that. If you like scripting, learning PowerShell can be allot of fun. People often ask how to start learning PowerShell since there is so much to learn and there is allot of content on the subject online. My advice if you want to learn PowerShell today would be: https://www.manning.com/books/learn-windows-powershell-in-a-month-of-lunches-second-edition

This is a good way to learn the fundamental basics and guide you through the first steps in the world called PowerShell.

Today I want to talk about naming your variables, you want the name to identify its purpose so you can still tell what it does when you revisit your script a year later.

What characters can you use for naming a variable? To start off you can use all the alphanumeric characters, both capital letters and small letters.

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Change the date to the EPOCH format

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For a recent project it is a requirement to change a date value to the EPOCH format. We need this EPOCH date format to automate the creation of a ticket in a Remedy system. The customer is using BMC Atrium Orchestration as a frontend to the Remedy system.

What is EPOCH Time?
The Unix epoch (or Unix time or POSIX time or Unix timestamp) is the number of seconds that have elapsed since January 1, 1970 (midnight UTC/GMT), not counting leap seconds (in ISO 8601: 1970-01-01T00:00:00Z).

Why does EPOCH time start in 1970?
So no file can be created before 1970-01-01. … Unix was originally developed in the 60s and 70s so the “start” of Unix Time was set to January 1st 1970 at midnight GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) – this date/time was assigned the Unix Time value of 0. This is what is know as the Unix Epoch.

I’ve created a small PowerShell function to convert a Get-Date input to the EPOCH date/time format.

function ConvertTo-Epoch ([datetime]$InputEpoch) {
    [datetime]$Epoch = '1970-01-01 00:00:00'
    [int]$Ctime = ""

    $Ctime = (New-TimeSpan -Start $Epoch -End $InputEpoch).TotalSeconds
    return $Ctime
}

$a = ConvertTo-Epoch (get-date)

Telnet with PowerShell via RES One Automation

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Today I want to build an PowerShell script for a customer that will connect via Telnet to a switch or a firewall to run some commands and log the output. The next step is to be able to schedule this script to run at the beginning and at the end of the working day. The environment for this task is PowerShell 2.0 and RES ONE Automation 2015.

After some Internet searching I found an Get-Telnet PowerShell function that can do what I want. It will connect to the switch, and I can place the commands I want to run in an array or in a text file. I altered the script slightly to meet my needs. I only use the function because I run the script from within RES One Automation.

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Starting PowerShell as default within Windows Core

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My lab environment runs on Windows 2012 R2 Core, with Hyper-V installed. It runs smoothly. When I need to manage the environment I can do the most common task right there on the prompt.

But with Microsoft pushing everyone to use PowerShell I don’t understand why Windows Core start with a normal prompt instead of a PowerShell prompt.

In this article I will describe how you can change the prompt that is launched when Windows Core boots from CMD to PowerShell.

In Windows Core there is no explore. All you get to see is al black command box..

Schermafdruk 2014-08-11 20.53.59

Now let’s see if we can find out how to change the cmd prompt to a PowerShell prompt.
First I need to know what’s the current value for the shell that is launched at startup.

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