Quick and Dirty PowerShell to create a large number of test VMs with sequential names « Virtualization, Windows, Infrastructure and all that stuff in-between

Quick and Dirty PowerShell to create a large number of test VMs with sequential names

February 25, 2010

Be gentle, I’m new to this PowerShell stuff – I have a requirement to create a large number of VMs from a template, this is the PowerShell Code I hacked together from a VMTN communities blog post – it’s not pretty but it works for me – you can play with the variables to adjust to your own environment and desired number of VMs.

In my case my template is a Linux VM setup ready to boot from a LiveCD – just so it generates some basic load when it starts up.

There is a bit of clever number formatting which I lifted from this blog post to pad the VM numbers out to 3 digits and make it tidy looking, not entirely sure I understand what it does – but it works!

I am using PowerGUI based on the info at Al’s blog here

Connect-VIServer -Server localhost >$null

#Variables
$NameVM ="vmNested-"
$NameTemplate ="TPL – vmNested-01"
$Datacenter="v.T.A.R.D.I.S"
$Datastore="SSD-iSCSI"
$ESX="vmESXi-4.lab"
$HOW_MANY_TO_CREATE=4

$Date=get-date -uformat "%Y%m%d"

$NumArray = (1..$HOW_MANY_TO_CREATE)

foreach ($number in $numArray )
{
$seqn=$number
$name = $seqn | % {"{0:0##}" -f $_}
$string = $NameVM + $name
echo Creating $string
New-VM -template (Get-template $NameTemplate) -Name $string -Datastore (Get-datastore $Datastore) -VMHost $ESX
}

The Results (40 VM’s from template – completed in about 5mins);

Posted in PowerShell |

2 comments

Nice Script.

I have a couple of suggestions that would make the code a tad more elegant, as follows:

#Variables
$NameVM =”vmNested-”
$NameTemplate =”TPL – vmNested-01″
$Datacenter=”v.T.A.R.D.I.S”
$Datastore=”SSD-iSCSI”
$ESX=”vmESXi-4.lab”
$HOW_MANY_TO_CREATE=4

$Date=get-date -uformat “%Y%m%d”

$NumArray = (1..$HOW_MANY_TO_CREATE)

for ([int]$seq=1;$seq -le $HOW_MANY_TO_CREATE;$seq++)
{
$string = $NameVM + ($seq.tostring(“0##”))
“Creating $string”
# Create the VM
New-VM -template (Get-template $NameTemplate) -Name $string -Datastore (Get-datastore $Datastore) -VMHost $ESX
}

by Thomas Lee March 16, 2010 at 11:49 pm

Reply
- Thanks Thomas, the examples you have on your site are probably the most useful I have found… thanks!
  
  by vinf March 17, 2010 at 11:57 am
  
  Reply