The following are a few PowerCLI commands that I have found useful at one time or another. The VMware Communities section for PowerCLI is a great starting point for more information on setting up and using PowerCLI. If you have a question about how to do something, the discussion forum is a great resource; there are tons of incredibly intelligent and helpful individuals that will be more than happy to point you in the right direction.

Get Running VMs without VMware Tools Installed:

Get-View -ViewType “VirtualMachine” -Property Guest,name  -filter @{“Guest.ToolsStatus”=”toolsNotInstalled”;”Guest.GuestState”=”running”} | Select Name

List all Snapshots:

Get-VM | Sort Name | Get-Snapshot | Select VM,Name,Description,Created

VMs Created Recently:

Get-VIEvent -maxsamples 10000 | Where {$_.Gettype().Name -eq “VmCreatedEvent”} | Select createdTime, UserName, FullFormattedMessage

VMs Removed Recently:

Get-VIEvent -maxsamples 10000 | Where {$_.Gettype().Name -eq “VmRemovedEvent”} | Select createdTime, UserName, FullFormattedMessage

VMs with more than 2 vCPUs:

Get-VM | Where {$_.NumCPU -gt 2} | Select Name, NumCPU

Check for invalid of inaccessible VMs:

Get-View -ViewType VirtualMachine | Where {-not $_.Config.Template} | Where{$_.Runtime.ConnectionState -eq “invalid” -or $_.Runtime.ConnectionState -eq “inaccessible”} | Select Name

Get Errors in the last week:

Get-VIEvent -maxsamples 10000 -Type Error -Start $date.AddDays(-7) | Select createdTime, fullFormattedMessage

Get VMs with Memory Reservations:

Get-VM | Get-VMResourceConfiguration | Where {$_.MemReservationMB -ne 0} | Select VM,MemReservationMB

Get VMs with CPU Reservations:

Get-VM | Get-VMResourceConfiguration | Where {$_.CpuReservationMhz -ne 0} | Select VM,CpuReservationMhz

Delete all Snapshots with Certain Name:

Get-VM | Sort Name | Get-Snapshot | Where { $_.Name.Contains(“Consolidate”) } | Remove-Snapshot