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Powering VMware with PowerShell

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Many tools and products that support scripting are adding PowerShell support. VMware also did this in their PowerCLI tool that can be used to provision and manage vSphere hosted virtual machines. There is even a PowerCLI test lab that you can use to learn about the tool without any risk to your vSphere environment. More details at the VMware blog site here.

PowerShell is rapidly becoming an essential tool that IT administrators and Developers need to know. It’s a full featured, modern, object orientated, scripting language that is built on top of the Microsoft .NET framework. Microsoft are really pushing PowerShell beyond the traditional Windows Server based environments where it has been stress tested and improved over the last few years. It’s now been open sourced and is also available prepackaged for several Linux distributions and for Apple macOS X. It is also a language that can be used with tools like Docker, Chef, Ansible, and Puppet. Kemp LoadMaster also supports automation via PowerShell, and we supply an extensive set of cmdlets so you can incorporate LoadMaster into an automated workflow.

VMware provided much more information, discussion, and focus on PowerShell and PowerCLI at the recent VMworld conference where several sessions covered PowerCLI and PowerShell topics. And others covered how they can be used in DevOps scenarios to automate vSphere and move towards including it in Infrastructure as Code. The sessions from VMworld 2016 can be viewed for free here. These sessions were very popular and were delivered in the largest conference rooms and some of them had to be repeated due to demand. This shows that automation with PowerShell and Power CLI is a hot topic. Rightly so as it allows for better management of the virtual infrastructure within existing workflows. It’s definitely a skill you what to add to your technical skills.

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