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VMware Cloud on AWS - VM Creation Date available in vSphere API

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I was recently doing some work with my VMware Cloud on AWS instance and I needed to verify something in the vSphere API. Since I already had a browser open, rather than context switch, I decided to quickly open up the vSphere MOB which is a debugging tool that provides a browser interface to the vSphere SOAP API. While going through the Virtual Machine view, I was pleasantly surprised to see a new VM config property called createDate which looks to give you the original date/time of when the VM was first created!


This is probably one of the most frequently asked question that I have seen from VI Admins around basic VM management and I am sure everyone has probably had a need to pull this type of information at least once in their career. Historically, VM creation date was not an easy thing to thing to find and success of retrieving that data was dependent on the retention of your vCenter Server Events database since that is where the information is stored. This means if you only retain 6 months worth of historical events, you will not be able to retrieve creation dates for VMs that were created prior to that.

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VMware Fusion Powershell community module

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During the VMware Fusion 2017 Tech Preview, I was experimenting around with the new Fusion REST API and I had built a small prototype PowerShell Module as a way for me to learn how the API works. This allowed me to provide valuable feedback back to the Fusion Engineering team on improving the REST API UX. I was pleasantly happy to see that the majority of the feedback was indeed implemented for Fusion 10 which GA'ed a few weeks back.

Given the PowerShell module was pretty useful for my own use, I figure I would also publish it for others who might also be interested in Automating VM management using the new Fusion REST API, especially those with a PowerShell/PowerCLI background. Another nice thing about the module is that it can run across macOS/Linux via PowerShell Core or Windows using full blown PowerShell. I have been slowly tweaking the module to include the updated REST API changes and I am please to announce that the VMware.Hosted PowerShell Module which supports the new Fusion 10 REST API is now available!

The module includes the following 14 functions:

  • Connect-HostedServer
  • Disconnect-HostedServer
  • Get-HostedNetworks
  • Get-HostedVM
  • Get-HostedVMNic
  • Get-HostedVMSharedFolder
  • New-HostedVM
  • New-HostedVMSharedFolder
  • Remove-HostedVM
  • Remove-HostedVMSharedFolder
  • Resume-HostedVM
  • Start-HostedVM
  • Stop-HostedVM
  • Suspend-HostedVM


If you have ever used PowerCLI before, these functions should feel very familiar. We have basic Connect/Disconnect-HostedServer which will set an environmental variable called $DefaultHostedServer. This variable contains some basic information about the Fusion API endpoint as well as the base64 encoded credentials which are required when connecting to the new Fusion API. Below are a few examples using the new Fusion module, they are pretty basic and I have only implemented a sub-set of the Fusion REST API, so any community contributions are most welcome!

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Automating VM keystrokes using the vSphere API & PowerCLI

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I am constantly amazed at the number of new use cases that can now be enabled with some of the new and updated capabilities of our vSphere Platform. I recently discovered a new vSphere API that was introduced in vSphere 6.5 called PutUsbScanCodes() which may sound a little strange but it enables some really slick Automation capabilities. This feature allows customers to send keyboard character keystrokes directly to a VM regardless of the underlying OS. In fact, the OS does not even have to be booted up for this to work which means there is no reliance on VMware Tools as this is happening at the Virtual Hardware layer.

You might ask, why would this be interesting? Lets take a look at a scenario that I had ran into years ago when I was a customer and why this feature would have really helped. At the time, there were several Virtual Appliance solutions that I needed to deploy, although I could automate the deployment, I could not automate the initial setup process. The reason for this is that before the OS is fully booted up, it required the user to interactively provide password on boot which can only be done using the VM Console. This meant solutions like the Guest Operations API was out of the question since VMware Tools is not running during this time. I suspect many of you have probably came across a similiar situation, where you are prompted for a password or some other manual input was required and the only solution is to be in front of the VM Console. Some other interesting use cases that this feature could help with are OS installations where automated deployments may not be possible due to the type of OS, automated filesystem check (fsck) or verification where manual intervention was the only option. The possibilities for this API is truly endless and I am sure there are many many more use cases where this feature could be used.

OK, so now that are you sold on the feature, lets take a look at how it works! I have built a PowerCLI script called VMKeystrokes.ps1 which demonstrates the use of this vSphere API.

The API takes in an array of scan code events or what is referred to as USB Human Interface Device (HID) Codes which is part of the USB specification for human interactions with a computer system. There was not any details on what exactly this even looked like, so it took me awhile to figure out the input and what the API was expecting. I found this online reference here which provided a mapping of keyboard keys to their respective scan codes which I have implemented a subset of the scan codes within my script. However, upon further inspection, these scan codes could not be used as-is and required a conversion to the appropriate HID format which can be seen in my code. There also a modifier type within the API that can be associated with a given scan code. One use for this is to send an upper-case character rather than a lower case.

Lets now go through a demonstration to see how the Set-VMKeystrokes function works. In my environment, I have a PhotonOS VM running and I want to automate the login via the console which means I want to pass in the username (root), hit return, pass in the password (VMware1!) and hit return.

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