For all the folks that didn’t hear about the EcoShell yet: The Virtualization EcoShell makes it possible to create scripts to automate management tasks for your virtual infrastructure, all from a user friendly user interface.

These scripts can be saved for later use.

This is not only good news for the lazy or time driven admin, but also from the point of making less mistakes. Actions can be run time after time at the same way.

The Virtualization EcoShell divides everything into the following actions:

• gather
• filter
• remediate
• report
• integrate

One of the items that is very interesting is vDiagram. vDiagram automagically creates a diagram of the items you want to report, for example which virtual machines are connected to what vSwitch.

Best Practice Filters are a great addition to the Virtualization EcoShell. For example: Give me all virtual machines with a connected CD-ROM drive that prevent VMotions. ESX hosts with NICs slower than 1GBit/s or VM’s with snapshots older than 7 days are part of the best practice filters.

Alan Renouf has put a lot of his PowerShell scripts he posted earlier on virtu-al.net in a PowerPack for the Virtualization EcoShell. vCheck is one of those things.

Eric has given a demo on his laptop. ESXi in a VMware Workstation 7 installation with a couple of virtual machines in it.

Without a line of programming or scripting he connects to the ESX host. Just by clicking he changes the connection of a couple of VMs to a different vSwitch.

If you want to change the code behind actions, no worry. Since everything is based on PowerShell commandlets you can change the code yourself.

Even creating your own PowerPack is very easy. As a demo Eric created a vmug PowerPack with a script he copied from the site from Alan. Sounds good, a vmug PowerPack.

Checkout  http://www.thevesi.org and ofcourse the site of Eric Sloof, ntpro.nl

Books that Eric mentioned in his presentation:

• vSphere Quick Start Guide
• Managing VMware Infrastructure with Windows PowerShell
• VMware VI and vSphere SDK

Twitter aliases to follow:

• carter shanklin @cshanklin
• alan renouf @alanrenouf
• hal rottenberg @halr9000
• luc dekens @LucD22
• Dmitry Sotnikov @DSotnikov
• hugo peeters @hugopeeters
• Arne Fokkema @afokkema
• Eric Sloof @esloof
• Scott Herold @vmguru

Scott Herold took the stage after Eric. He showed vRangerPro and the integration with the Virtualization EcoShell. From within the Virtualization EcoShell you are able to make charts from your backup times for example and use this in a monthly report.Even integration with vControl, a workflow application, is very easy from within the Virtualization EcoShell.

Scott is out in the exhibition hall to give more info and demo of the Virtualization EcoShell.

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Related posts:

1. Demo Virtualization EcoShell by Eric Sloof
2. Dutch VMUG Breakout 1 pictures
3. Virtualization EcoShell release date
4. VMworld Europe 2009 – EcoShell introduction
5. Dutch VMUG video extravaganza

Tags: VMUG, VMware

This entry was posted on Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 11:48 and is filed under VMUG, VMware. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.