Sometimes, Powershell ISN'T the answer!

We're looking around at SAN's, because our SAN is just out of headroom performance-wise. We have oodles of space but not enough IO. One idea put forth was to shut down VMs when they aren't doing anything and then power them on well before they're needed again. "I can totally handle this", I thought, with the command shutdown-vmguest already bouncing around in my head. Shutdown-vmguest is a VMware PowerCLI command that.... shuts down guest VMs. I love how command names are so intuitive. The verb-noun system is really great.

So the next issue with creating a PowerCLI script that accomplishes this is passing credentials. I hate working with credentials in Powershell, I really do. Then, I remember that vCenter can schedule tasks on its own! I poke around in the interface, because I pretty much hang out in Hosts and Clusters all the time, with only a brief foray into the Datastores section. Lo and Behold, there are Scheduled Tasks! And setting it up was stupid easy!

The moral of the story is that sure, Powershell can do everything (yes, including your dishes). It's easy to go to it for everything, but even with its seemingly unlimited OneRing-like power, you STILL need to step back and evaluate the best tool for the job.

Happy Holidays everyone!