PowerShell has been embraced by a variety of companies looking to manage their products from a command line. While VMware started out with a Perl-based script set, they quickly expanded to a PowerShell set of commandlets. The official VMware Automation class (ie Scripting class) focuses on the PowerCLI scripts. NetApp jumped into the game last year with a set of 350+ PowerShell command-lets which give the admin full control of their storage arrays. I hear Equallogic releases a set also, but until I have access to their support site again I don’t have much to comment on.
For those that don’t like full-bore commandline there is PowerGUI, a graphical interface to the PowerShell environment. There are two VMware and one NetApp “PowerPacks” to bring the commandlets of those vendors into the graphical environment.
“PowerGUI is the freeware tool administrators need to rapidly adopt PowerShell within their environment. Immediately begin building powerful scripts that harness the power of PowerShell across your environment.”
You can find more information, downloads and screen shots here:
http://www.powergui.org
VMware PowerPacks:
VMware vSphere Management
VMware Community PowerPack (Previously Virtu-Al.Net PowerPack)
(note the versions of PowerCLI supported by the different power packs. If you want to use the latest PowerCLI download get the betaversion of the vSphere Management Pack here)
NetApp PowerPack:
NetApp DataONTAP PowerPack
