Simplify your VMware management with ScriptRunner

In many IT departments, the administration of virtual machines within VMware vSphere remains with the system administrators. They are often directly involved when it comes to creating backups, managing snapshots or even creating VMs. This use case is about empowering the service desk to perform simple VM tasks such as starting or stopping a VMware VM itself.

Deploying a VMware virtual machine from a template is a core functionality in VMware vSphere. In companies, standardised VMs are rolled out as often as required and according to capacity. In addition to the infrastructure requirements, there are other points to consider. Especially in larger environments, the standardisation of systems is important. Are the security settings identical on all VMs and do the installed programmes fit?

Do you want to standardise, automate and delegate vSphere management tasks? The PowerCLI PowerShell module is a good starting point for this. Creating new VMs, managing snapshots and changing VM configurations are just a few examples of recurring tasks where PowerShell can help simplify VSphere administration.

Knowing how to control VMware vSphere via PowerShell allows you to work even more efficiently as an administrator. You can achieve a higher level of automation and configure tasks to run automatically when needed without manual intervention - ideal if your maintenance window is in the middle of the night.

In this first blog post about VMware, we're going to look at installation and setup, as this is where you might encounter some issues that surprise you. I hope to make getting started with automating and managing VMware vSphere with PowerShell as understandable and straightforward as possible.