Powershell/PowerCLI

PowerCLI is a command-line interface for managing and automating all aspects of vSphere management, including networking, storage, VMs, guest OS, and more. PowerCLI functions as a collection of PowerShell modules that contain more than 700 cmdlets (commands) to manage VMware infrastructure.

PowerCLI runs on top of PowerShell, which is a cross-platform task automation and configuration management framework. It consists of a command-line shell and a scripting language. PowerCLI uses PowerShell’s basic syntax and concepts.

Prerequisites

• PowerShell version 5.1 or later is required to run PowerCLI cmdlets.
• Powershell comes installed on Windows and Windows Server by default.
• For Linux and MAC Powershell must be installed.

For more information, see the PowerCLI Compatability matrixes.

Installation

Online

You can install PowerCLI directly from the PowerShell Gallery.

# Run the following command from a Powershell prompt
Install-Module -Name VMware.PowerCLI

Offline

Download the .zip file with the latest released PowerCLI version from here.

# To retrieve the folder(s) on your machine that contain PowerShell modules, run the following command.
$env:PSModulePath

# Extract the downloaded .zip file to one of the listed folders.

# Unblock the copied files
cd path_to_powershell_modules_folder Get-ChildItem * -Recurse | Unblock-File

# Verify if the PowerCLI module is available on your system.
Get-Module -Name VMware.PowerCLI -ListAvailable

Basic Usage

PowerCLI includes cmdlets to connect to supported VMware products. This must be done before any other PowerCLI cmdlets can be run successfully.

Connect to vCenter or ESXi directly

# Connects to a vSphere server by using the User and Password parameters.
Connect-VIServer -Server 10.23.112.235 -Protocol https -User admin -Password pass

# Connects to a vSphere server by using a credential object.
$cred = Get-Credential
Connect-VIServer -Server 10.23.112.235 -Protocol https -Credential $cred

References

For the full PowerCLI documentation, see the PowerCLI Installation Guide