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You're reading from Learning PowerCLI A comprehensive guide on PowerCLI

Product type Paperback

Published in Feb 2017

Publisher

ISBN-13 9781786468017

Length 562 pages

Edition 2nd Edition

Languages

PowerShell

Tools

PowerCLI

Concepts

Cloud Computing

Author (1):

Robert van den Nieuwendijk

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Table of Contents (16) Chapters

Preface

1. Introduction to PowerCLI

2. Learning Basic PowerCLI Concepts FREE CHAPTER

3. Working with Objects in PowerShell

4. Managing vSphere Hosts with PowerCLI

5. Managing Virtual Machines with PowerCLI

6. Managing Virtual Networks with PowerCLI

7. Managing Storage

8. Managing High Availability and Clustering

9. Managing vCenter Server

10. Patching ESXi Hosts and Upgrading Virtual Machines

11. Managing VMware vCloud Director and vCloud Air

12. Using Site Recovery Manager

13. Using vRealize Operations Manager

14. Using REST API to manage NSX and vRealize Automation

15. Reporting with PowerCLI

Registering virtual machines

To register an existing virtual machine to your vCenter inventory, you have to specify the path to a .vmx file. A .vmx file contains the configuration for an existing virtual machine. Here are a few lines from a .vmx file:

.encoding = "UTF-8" 
config.version = "8" 
virtualHW.version = "11" 
vmci0.present = "TRUE" 
displayName = "VM4" 
floppy0.present = "FALSE" 
numvcpus = "1" 
memSize = "256"

You typically don't modify a .vmx file with an editor, because you might break the connection to the virtual machine.

Note

For more information about modifying a .vmx file, read the VMware Knowledge Base article Tips for editing a .vmx file (1714) (available at https://kb.vmware.com/kb/1714 ).

The following example will register a virtual machine named VM4 on host 192.168.0.134. You have to specify the location of the .vmx file of the virtual machine on the datastore as the value of the New-VM -VMFilePath parameter: