VMware PowerCLI 11.5 Released

VMware has released PowerCLI 11.5 latest version, with this release more than 20 cmdlets have been added. There are new properties available for the objects we all know and love, one of which has been requested for years. A big update for the VMC module, support for Horizon 7.10.0, and so much more.

What’s new with PowerCLI 11.5

Added cmdlets for Content Library management
Added cmdlets for vCenter alarm management
Added cmdlets for VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC management
Updated Get-*Service output
Updated New-VM parameters for networking
Updated performance for Tag based operations
Updated properties of Virtual Machine object
Updated support for Horizon 7.10.0
Updated support for HCX migration types

Content Library Management Update

Content Library’s features and capabilities have been going through some impressive updates over the last few versions of vSphere. It was one of the first services available through the vSphere Automation (REST) API and has maintained a steady stream of improvements. The latest update added some long-awaited support for templates! PowerCLI is improving the management of the Content Library with eight new cmdlets!

The new cmdlets for Content Library management are as follows:

New-ContentLibraryItem
Set-ContentLibraryItem
Remove-ContentLibraryItem
Export-ContentLibraryItem
New-ContentLibrary
Set-ContentLibrary
Get-ContentLibrary
Remove-ContentLibrary

vCenter Alarm Management Update

Managing vCenter alarms always comes up as one of those things that could be improved when using PowerCLI. There’s a solid set of alarm-based cmdlets that already exist. However, as evidenced by a PowerCLI session at VMworld in 2017 where we dug into some examples only available by the API, those cmdlets didn’t give quite give us everything we needed. PowerCLI 11.5 adds 6 new cmdlets and 3 updated cmdlets to help manage alarm definitions, create alarm triggers, and pull information about available event types and metrics.

These new cmdlets are as follows:

New-AlarmDefinition
Remove-AlarmDefinition
New-AlarmTrigger
Get-AlarmTrigger
Get-EventType
Get-Metric

The updated cmdlets are as follows:

New-AlarmAction
New-AlarmActionTrigger
Set-AlarmDefinition

VMware Cloud on AWS Module Update

The module for managing VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) is one of PowerCLI’s newest modules. Initially, it was released as a low-level module, which interacted directly with the available VMC APIs. As of PowerCLI 11.5, the VMC module introduces eight new cmdlets to make the management process easier. There’s a cmdlet to easily retrieve high-level information about our SDDCs. We can deploy an SDDC in a single command, down from the 20+ lines it took before. There are also cmdlets to streamline the process of retrieving information about our AWS linked accounts!

The new cmdlets are as follows: