Extremely slow when run PowerShell script by scheduled taks

I like automition/programming as much as I like Windows, my first offical training in University was VB, then I learned PHP and HTML after graduated. I can’t believe my first PHP program was welcomed in internel. But I stopped develop the skill.

I got lot of special request for virtual environment. Some people want to monitor snapshot, some want to check space status, and some request to create backup for VM…etc. Regular operation cannot satisify the requests, most of the requests are time consuming operation. Automation can save my ass. 🙂

You may know PowerCLI – VMware automation product for PowerShell. If you put PowerCLI scripts as scheduled task, you will be able to do any workflow you want by schedule.

But there is a problem stuggled me for a long time. The scheduled PowerCLI script is instable, sometimes script ran very well, sometimes script ran extremely slow, sometimes script hung, or sometimes script unexpected stopped. In troubelshooting I noticed it need a long waiting time (maybe  5 – 10 mintues) till execute first line of script when I ran it on Scheduled Task Window. Initially I thought it’s a bug of PowerShell 2.0. I upgraded to 3.0 but no lucky. I also suspected loading PowerCLI Snap-in may slow down the script exectue time, or bugs on PowerCLI components, tried to google but nothing was found.

Finally my colleague Amnon gave my some idea, he asked me change the scheduled taks priority. I figured out the trick after did some testing:

  1. Create a task as usual.
  2. Export the taks to a xml file.
  3. Open the xml file by editor.
  4. Search keyword priority.
  5. Change the default value 7 to 3. ( More detail about priority of Scheduled Task )
  6. Save the xml file and delete created task.
  7. Import the xml as a task.

It signaficantly improved the executive time! Same script was 2 hours, now only 10 minutes!

Here is my another post ($array.count does not show anything in PowerCLI) regarding a bug of PowerShell, it may helpful for your PowerCLI script.

$array.count does not show anything in PowerCLI

I developed a script to take snapshot on VM and delete older snapshot regularly. I  used  variable $snapshots to receive data from Get-Snapshot command, then determine how many existing snapshots according to return of $snapshots.count. Somehow the script always ran incorrect behavior. When I deep looked into $snapshots, I found a interesting things.

Computer A, $snapshots.count return nothing if no, or one snapshot received.

Computer B, $snapshots.count returned 0 if no, or returned 1 if one snapshots received.

Then I checked out $PSVersionTable, found computer A powershell version is 2.0, B is 3.0, looks like this is a bug in 2.0.

The issue got fixed after upgrade to 3.0, one more benefit is I got performance improve to load PowerCLI components after upgrading.

You could install Widnows Management Framework 3.0 to upgrade PowerShell. I tested it on PowerCLI 5.5 Update1.

How to get HBA WWPN of ESXi hosts

It’s busy month, I haven’t update my blog since I back from Phuket with my wife. I’m running into multiple projects, a little overload.

Just a quick share, my storage team ask me provide WWPN of all hosts to do a health check. it’s nightmare to pull out the data from vSphere client or web client. Just found a way to get it.

Get-VMHost -Location | Get-VMHostHBA -type fibrechannel | select VMHost,Device,@{N=”WWPN”;E={“{0:X}” -f $_.PortWorldWideName}}

Especially “{0:X}” -f $_.PortWorldWideName}

{0:X} is format, check out here  to find more.

-f is kind of pipeline.

$_.PortWorldWideName is the value you want to convert.

 

Nodes in the ESXi cluster may report corruption after reboot host or attach device

VCE just released a new KB vce2563 to description the issue.

If your ESXi 5.x hosts is connected on VMAX running Enginuity 5876.159.102 and later, you may see this particular issue after reboot ESXi host or attach storage if you enabled block delete feature of VAAI.

To check the option status you can run following command on PowerCLI:

 Get-VMHost -Location cluster name | Get-VMHostAdvancedConfiguration -Name VMFS3.EnableBlockDelete

How to Add VMware PowerCLI to Standard PowerShell Enviroenment

1. create a file with name “Profile.ps1” under %windir%system32WindowsPowerShellv1.0profile.ps1

2. Add following content to the file.

# Adds the base cmdlets
Add-PSSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core
# Add the following if you want to do things with Update Manager
#Add-PSSnapin VMware.VumAutomation
# This script adds some helper functions and sets the appearance. You can pick and choose parts of this file for a fully custom appearance.
. “C:Program FilesVMwareInfrastructurevSphere PowerCLIScriptsInitialize-PowerCLIEnvironment.ps1”

You need administrator permission to create file on the system32 location.

Get specific advanced configuration of ESXi host

Storage team said the best practics of QFullSampleSize is 32, they want to check how it’s going in our environment. It’s easy to check individual host, but pretty time consuming if you want to check 300+ hosts.
Here is a one line PowerShell script to export QFullSampleSize and QFullThreshold to a csv file.

Get-VMHost | %{ $HostName=$_.Name; $HostCluster=$_.Parent; Get-VMHostAdvancedConfiguration -VMHost $_ | % { $_.getEnumerator()| ? {$_.Key -like "*QFull*"} | select Name,Value,@{N='host';E={$HostName}},@{N='Cluster';E={$HostCluster}} } } | export-csv c:qSetting.csv

 

 

 

How to retrieve RDM information by PowerCLI

I worked on move RDM LUNs of Microsoft Cluster virtual machine from one iGroup to another. To make sure the moving safe, we should record RDM LUN information before migration.

We had two VMs with almost 20 RDM LUNs, it’s pretty time consume to get the information manually, I used following script to retrieve information:

$RMDinfo = Get-HardDisk -VM virtual machine name -DiskType rawPhysical

$RDMinfo | select Parent,Filename,CapacityGB,ScsiCanonicalName,Name

 

How to remove multiple snapshot by PowerCLI

My SMVI backup job was crashed few days ago, the stupid application generated a lot of snapshots for virtual machine!!! It’s  hundred!

I really don’t like to remove one by one! That’s what I used to clean up the snapshot.

Get-VM | Get-Snapshot -Name smvi* | Remove-Snapshot

I used wildcard smiv*, it means all snapshot that name start with smvi.

Move multiple datastores to a folder

We are moving virtual machine from old storage to new datastore today, there are a lot of old datastores need to be removed after migration, for saftey consideration, I move all old datastore to a folder and then do decommission process.

There are more than 60 datastores, and vSphere client not allow move in one time. Here is a PowerCLI script can help move multiple datastores to a folder.

Note: Please make sure your folder name is uniquely.

When you create datastores.txt, please make sure first line is “Name”, one datastore name in each line.
Example:
Name
datastore1
datastore2
datastore3

Move-Datastores