The PowerGUI VMware Infrastructure Management PowerPack seems to be really popular with people, so I’ve been spending a lot of time over the past four months significantly enhancing that PowerPack. Some of the enhancements are things that we wanted to put in and others are things that community members had requested (note to the reader: if you like a particular PowerPack and would like to see it improved, speak up on the PowerGUI Forums…we really take your feedback very seriously! :)). Today I just finished posting another release of the VMware Infrastructure Management PowerPack with a few more enhancements, and I’m particularly happy with this one.
This release greatly improves usability through the new icons that were added (and I mean *greatly* improves…the value the icons add is huge). It’s also the first PowerPack release that takes advantage of some really cool Visio scripts that I’ve been working on. The Visio scripts I’m referring to were largely inspired by Alan Renouf’s vDiagram script, although the Visio script I ended up with doesn’t look anything like the original. I’m itching to talk more about those scripts, but I want to write a blog post specifically on that topic so watch for more on this soon. For now I’ll simply point out that to use the Visio functionality, you have to download the additional VESI_Visio.zip file that was added to the VMware Infrastructure Management PowerPack document page and install it as per the instructions in that document (see the “How to enable vDiagram support” section). Visio 2007 is required.
For those of you who were fortunate enough to attend VMworld Europe in Cannes at the end of February, this release contains the icons and Visio features that Scott Herold was showing off during that show. You can see a live demo of the new features on Scott’s website, here.
If you want to learn more about this PowerPack, including version history and other details, you can go here. You can download the PowerPack from that location as well.
Kirk out.
| Share this post: |  |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Poshoholic 
Hi Kirk, as a improvement I suggested to Alan I will suggest to you as well.
When creating diagrams into Visio, If you have many VM’s under a cluster/host then the line that you create can get very, very,very long…………
Maybe you can create a cutoff point of the number of VM’s on one line and then wrap the rest of them on the next (say 10-15)?
Great idea! I can do that very easily, so I’ll wait for a little more feedback and then put in an updated version that has a little better distribution of VMs.
Thanks for the feedback!
Oh yes and sorry ..
Forgot….
This is absolutely the best!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[…] suggest you head over to Kirk’s article to read more information about this version of the PowerPack and also download it straight away […]
[…] Published March 9, 2009 PowerGUI , PowerPack , PowerShell , VMware , Virtualization Kirk has published version 2.1.5 of PowerGUI’s VMware […]
Kirk,
It seems that you don’t get any output if you don’t have a cluster. I have inherited a VMWare environment that has a Folder -> DataCenter(s) -> ESX hosts, and I tried to edit the script to perform a get-datacenter with no luck.
Any advice?
You’re absolutely right, when I put together the script to generate the vDiagram from a DataCenter, I made it go through the cluster. Sorry for that. The test environments I work with all use clusters at the moment, so I didn’t catch this issue before releasing it. I have a few items I need to fix in a dot-release, this one included. If you would like to test the updated Generate vDiagram action in your environment once I have it ready, let me know.
Absolutely! Management always loves visio diagrams. 😀
[…] PowerGUI VMware PowerPack v2.1.5 released (thx Virtu-Al) […]
[…] Kirk Munro and crew have been working hard on a new VMware PowerGUI PowerPack […]
I saw similar mapping issues in a mixed cluster / ESX environment. The Cluster maps, but the ESX hosts do not. Just wanted to let you know it could be a mix-mode environment not just 1 or other.
Thanks for the feedback Gerry. Actually, I just realized that last night and I reconfigured my test lab to have a mixed cluster / ESX environment this morning so I’ll make sure that scenario is covered as well. 🙂
This tool is really neat, and very usefull. One suggestion and modification I made was to put the IP address and VM Name on the visio. Being a total newb to powershell, I kinda fingured it out by replacing:
$vmShape = Shape $vmShapeName -Label $vm.name
with the following:
$vmShape = Shape $vmShapeName -Label ([string]$vm.guest.ipaddress+[string]” “+[string]$vm.name)
Maybe there’s a better way, but it was a simple enough change in the code 🙂
I’m glad you find it useful. I agree, the vDiagrams need more details. It’s an item that ended up staying on my todo list for a later release. Adding them to the labels is one way. I was planning on adding them plus a bunch of other additional properties to the objects. But the Visio DSV doesn’t support adding object properties just yet.
Anyhow, thanks for the feedback, I will keep it in mind for the next release!