Learn Advance PowerCLI in under 100 minutes

Purpose:

Automation in a virtualised datacenter is must for any IT-Admin. PowerShell is perhaps the most important tool in such virtualised datacenter.  For VMware environment PowerCLI provides that capability to the admins. This is the second session on PowerCLI, covering the advance topics. If you are just starting or plan to start with PowerShell, then first read the first part and come back here.

Introduction:

As mentioned, PowerShell has become an invaluable tool in any IT-Admin's kitty. The power of PowerShell is not only the ease of use but the things you can do with this.

In first part I have shown basics covering how you can use variables and write small functions. I also covered concepts on basic cmdlets, pipeline and tying everything together for getting complex tasks done.

Every software is built to interface with external world. For human users they have graphical or command line based interface. But for interacting with other softwares they provide APIs. API is the interface of Software's for software's. So to programmatically utilize any software to its fullest capacity you need to know how you can use API of the software.

With today's technology everyone is moving towards using REST API's. They are fun and easy to use. For example, VMware vSphere 6.5 comes with fully supported REST API's.

What is covered in this session?

In this session I have covered advance topics of PowerShell. I am not going to and possibly cannot cover everything. Instead I covered what is essential in everyday life. Mainly I covered the following topics:

• More on Variables (typing, array, hash tables)
• Advance functions
• Writing Help files
• API in general and how you can explore and utilize vSphere API's
• REST API in general and how you can utilize REST API in VMware environment

My main aim is to enable you to explore these features. You should build upon these foundation and explore further to master these topics. I strongly believe in showing how it is done rather than giving a particular solution. I believe, if you know what is API and how to utilize them, then you can go ahead and explore them by your own and make wonderful things.

Hope you like the session and have fun as much as I had giving the session.

Conclusion:

This session gives you understanding advance functions. What are they, how to write them and most importantly where to use them. You have also learned about API and REST API and how to utilize them. I hope you will build further on this knowledge and do amazing things.

Do let me know yours feedback on this topic.