This blog post provides a simple and easy to use PowerCLI script which allows vSphere administrators & consultants to perform the following tasks AUTOMATICALLY !
- Add multiple ESXi hosts in a cluster
- Create vSphere Standard Switch
- Assign Physical Network cards
- Create Virtual Machine portgroups and assign VLAN
- Create VMkernel Port groups
- Assign IP address, Netmask & Gateway to the VMkernel ports
I have provided comments before each script to help you understand the script better. Please leave a comment if you have any questions.
#Create an Empty array which will save all the values in $esxi variable, #you can input values for #ESXi host IP/FQDN using multiple. #In this example I have used Read-Host option. $esxi = @() #Enter the IP/FQDN of the ESXi servers and this script will #continue to prompt you to add hosts untill you stop entering them. do { $input = Read-Host "Enter the name or IP of the ESXi server" if ($input -ne ""){ $esxi += $input } } until ($input -eq "") #The ESXi hosts that you add in the above step are saved in an array. #The below commandlet lets you addd these ESXi host to the cluster "DR-Stie". #The credentials have been pre-entered. foreach ($name in $esxi) { add-vmhost -Name $name -location DR-Site -user root -password XXXXXX -force: $true } #The below cmdlet allows you to define the last octet for VMkernel interfaces #that you want to configure. #For example I have used 101 as the last octet for VMkernel interfaces used for #vMotion & NFS. Though they would belong to different Subnets & VLANs. $vMotionip = 101 $nfsip = 101 #I am using a for-each loop to perform the below tasks on all the ESXi hosts #reported using the get-vmhost cmdlet. #Here we are querying all the ESXi host managed by vCenter. #You can modify this to query only specific ESXi hosts in cluster. foreach ($vmhost in (get-vmhost)) { #Here I am defining a variable $vmnic with value of vmnic1. #You can use multiple vmnics by separating them using "," $vmnic = vmnic1 #Here is am defining a variable $vs for vSiwtch2 while creating the vSwitch. $vs = New-VirtualSwitch -VMHost $vmHost -Name vSwitch2 #Here I am creating a new virtual machine portgroup named "VLAN-600-Std-Switch" #and assigning it VLAN 600. #The output of this cmdlet is saved in $vlan $vlan600 = New-VirtualPortGroup -VirtualSwitch $vs -Name VLAN-600-Std-Switch -VLanId 600 # I have created a new virtual machine portgroup named "Infra". New-VirtualPortGroup -VirtualSwitch $vs -Name Infra -Vlanid 0 # I have created a new virtual machine portgroup named "Infra". $vmotion = New-VirtualPortGroup -VirtualSwitch $vs -Name vMotion -VLanId 500 # I have created a new virtual machine portgroup named "NFS" and assigned it VLAN 400. #The output of this cmdlet is saved in $nfs $nfs = New-VirtualPortGroup -VirtualSwitch $vs -Name NFS -VLanId 400 # We are now creating a VMkernel network interface that will be used for vMotion. #I am using the vMotionip+=1 which will increment the last octet of the IP by one. New-VMHostNetworkAdapter -VMHost $vmhost -PortGroup $vmotion -VirtualSwitch $vs -IP 192.168.50.$vMotionip -SubnetMask 255.255.255.0 -VMotionEnabled: $true $vMotionip+=1 # We are now creating a VMkernel network interface that will be used for NFS. #I am using the nfsip+=1 which will increment the last octet of the IP by one. New-VMHostNetworkAdapter -VMHost $vmhost -PortGroup $nfs -VirtualSwitch $vs -IP 192.168.40.$nfsip -SubnetMask 255.255.255.0 -VMotionEnabled: $false $nfsip+=1 }
