Lessons so far in this blog post series:

• Customisation: Lesson 1 – Time Source
• Customisation: Lesson 2 – Service and Firewall Configuration
• Customisation: Lesson 3 – Networking

So, we now have our host added to virtual center, we have it syncing the time with our central time server, we have the firewall adjusted to meet our needs and we have some virtual switches created, our vmotion vswitch and portgroup created and associated with some nics.  Now what ?

PortGroups !

As this will obviously be different for each configuration I will show you a couple of ways of doing this.  If your not starting to guess the format of the cmndlets by now then there is no hope, turn back and start again from lesson 1, if you can already guess the cmdlets we will be using then please continue to Go and collect £200.

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I have just had an email from the guys at icomasoft letting me know they have released a PowerCLI Reference Card much like my reference card release earlier this year, this is in a real nice PDF format and has some powershell basics as well as the PowerCLI cmdlet references and examples.

This looks like a great sheet to download and keep with you for reference, its a 4 page doc which covers an awful lot of information.

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I have mentioned it a few times on my blog but now Hal’s excellent book ‘Managing VMware Infrastructure with Windows PowerShell TFM’ is available via Amazon so for all the UK/European readers it means we get better posting prices.

Read more:

• Managing VMware Infrastructure with Windows PowerShell
• Review: Managing VMWare Infrastructure with PowerShell

Buy it here:

VMware are hosting some ‘VMware Coffee Talk Live Webinars.’

VMware will be hosting some SDK/Toolkit sessions.  These will be aimed at people wanting to learn more about the SDK and scripting toolkits available for vSphere and whats new.

They will be hosted using WebEx and they will be recording the sessions, sessions and pdfs will be made available from the Developer Center Blog. Continue reading →

Lessons so far in this blog post series:

• Customisation: Lesson 1 – Time Source
• Customisation: Lesson 2 – Service and Firewall Configuration

Lets get down and dirty, by now you should not only starting to become familiar with the way things are working but also probably trying new things out, Great !

Now, as there are multiple ways of configuring your vSwitches/Portgroups and Nics I will explain a few ways that should show you the basics, everything else you should be able to work out from there.  As always any questions or comments are welcome !

So, the first thing we need to do is think about how we would configure this without scripts, often when I am writing a script I will write down the procedure a step at a time following it through in the GUI, I will then convert this into a script.

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Following my previous post where I gave you a quick review of Hal Rottenberg’s ‘ Managing VMware Infrastructure with Windows PowerShell’ book it is my pleasure to tell you that not only can you now buy the book but you can also see some sample chapters and sample code on the Sapien Press website so head over to the site and sample before you buy.

Believe me it really is a good book, also quite funny in places.

Following on from my last post in this series which showed us how to configure the ntp time source (Customisation: Lesson 1 – Time Source) lets get straight into it and start configuring more advanced areas.

In this post I will show you how to open some of the firewall ports on your host which are needed for various applications and services to talk to our ESX Host.

In the last post we setup the NTP server, I figure it would be a good start to make sure that now we have added the time server to our host we should start the NTP Service or as the Linux type people will know it, the NTP Daemon or NTPD.

So, if we use the Get-VmHostService cmdlet which is part of the VI Toolkit we can easily start our required service.  This cmdlet will give us a list of the services on our host and there current state:

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