Enhancing Your VMware vSphere Test Environment with Interactive Menus

As IT professionals, we often find ourselves setting up test or demo environments and tearing them down a few hours later when we’re done with whatever testing we were doing. While setting up a VMware vSphere test environment is super easy using PowerShell/PowerCLI, I’ve found that using dynamic selection of resources such as datastores can enhance the experience. In this blog post, I’ll show you how to build an interactive dynamic menu of your datastore clusters and use it to select where to install your lab environment.

Why Dynamic Selection Matters

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When setting up multiple labs, you might run out of some resources statically configured in the script. For instance, your datastore configuration might not have enough capacity. By using dynamic selection, you can easily choose the best available resource for your needs.

How to Build an Interactive Dynamic Menu

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To build an interactive dynamic menu, we’ll use a PowerShell function that calls the datastore clusters available in your vCenter server and orders them based on available free space. Here’s the code for the function:

“`powershell

function Get-DatastoreClusterMenu {

$datastoreClusters = Get-DatastoreCluster -Name *

$menu = @()

foreach ($datastoreCluster in $datastoreClusters) {

$freeSpace = Get-DatastoreFreeSpace – Datastore $datastoreCluster.Name

$menu += [PSCustomObject]@{

Name = $datastoreCluster.Name

FreeSpace = $freeSpace

}

}

return $menu

}

“`

In the above code, we first call the `Get-DatastoreCluster` cmdlet to retrieve a list of all datastore clusters in our vCenter server. We then use a `foreach` loop to iterate over the list and add each datastore cluster to the menu. For each datastore cluster, we use the `Get-DatastoreFreeSpace` cmdlet to retrieve the available free space, and then create a PSCustomObject with the name and free space of each datastore cluster.

We can then call the function and pass it as a parameter to the script from William Lam that sets up the vSphere test environment. The output will look something like this (the menus being produced are highlighted in red):

“`powershell

$script = “……WilliamLamvSphere-PowerCLISet-vSphereLabEnvironment.ps1”

Get-DatastoreClusterMenu -Name * | Select-Object -First 1 | % { $script – Datastore $_.Name }

“`

In the above code, we first set the script path to William Lam’s `Set-vSphereLabEnvironment.ps1` script. We then call the `Get-DatastoreClusterMenu` function and pass it as a parameter to the script. The output will be a list of menus, each containing a list of datastore clusters with their available free space.

Using the Function in William Lam’s Script

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To use the `Get-DatastoreClusterMenu` function in William Lam’s script, we can simply add it as a parameter before the `Datastore` parameter. Here’s an example:

“`powershell

$script = “……WilliamLamvSphere-PowerCLISet-vSphereLabEnvironment.ps1”

Get-DatastoreClusterMenu -Name * | Select-Object -First 1 | % { $script – Datastore $_.Name }

“`

In the above code, we first set the script path to William Lam’s `Set-vSphereLabEnvironment.ps1` script. We then call the `Get-DatastoreClusterMenu` function and pass it as a parameter to the script. The output will be a list of menus, each containing a list of datastore clusters with their available free space.

Conclusion

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In this blog post, we’ve shown how to build an interactive dynamic menu of your datastore clusters and use it to select where to install your lab environment. By using dynamic selection, you can easily choose the best available resource for your needs. This enhancement can be added to William Lam’s `Set-vSphereLabEnvironment.ps1` script, providing more flexibility when setting up your vSphere test environment.