Tag Archives: Script

Use Powershell to Write to Event Log

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One of my first tasks in my new position was to use Powershell to write to the event log.  The purpose of this was to monitor locked out users in an application and forward them to our Solarwinds application via an SNMP trap.  The application itself would write a .csv file to a share containing user information for those that are locked out.  The first part of this was to get Powershell to read the file, and put the details into the Event Log so it could later be sent to Solarwinds as a trap.

The script is below, with some helpful comments (The items in bold are what you will need to change according to your environment):

#Write events to the EventLog
Write-EventLog -LogName Application -Source The source name -EventId 1234 -EntryType Error -Message (Get-Content ‘File Path‘)
#Rename file with date/time stamp
$d = Get-Date -uFormat “%Y%m%d@%H%M%S”
$date = Get-Date -uFormat “%Y%m%d@%H%M%S”
## These will become parameters in our function later
$locationPath = “File Path”
$fileName = “File Name”
$extension = “.csv”
$old = $locationPath + $fileName + $extension
$new = $locationPath + $fileName + “_” + $date + $extension
Rename-Item $old $new

 

The top part of the script is getting the content from the file and writing it to the event log that you specify.  The bottom can be molded to what you want to do but it will rename the file that is read to append the date and time to the file name.  It’s a rather basic script but a good starting point to do more with Powershell.  The script was also added to a scheduled task in order to get the data into the event log.

As a follow up, I’ll write another post describing how to use Windows to send an SNMP trap. The functionality is built into Windows and can be used to send traps for other types of events.

Script to Add Multiple NFS Datastores to an ESXi Host

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I am sure I’m not the first admin that has needed to add an NFS datastore to multiple hosts, and usually it’s multiple datastores that are needed as well. Normally, I would go to each host, and add the storage manually via the vSphere Client.  But after doing this for quite some time, I decided I needed a better way to get this task done.  Scripting!

I have recently started to use PowerCLI to automate many of my daily tasks (Hint: more scripts to come) and decided to share the one I’ve used the most first.  The script takes an input after running, asking you to input your host name.  Inside the script, you will set the datastores you want to add to the host.  Those are the only changes that are needed when being run.  This script has saved me a great deal of man hours and some headaches.  A great advantage to scripting is that you avoid those sneaky spelling mistakes or clicking the wrong button.

The script is below here (The bold parts are what need to be changed by you):

$VMHost = (Read-Host “Please enter the name of your ESX Host you wish to configure”)

$shellObject = new-object -comobject wscript.shell
$intAnswer = $shellObject.popup(“Do you want to add the datastores?”, 0,”Add datastores – remember you must have added the hosts on the storage”,4)
If ($intAnswer -eq 6) {
Write “Creating Datastores on $VMHost…”
New-Datastore -Nfs -VMHost $VMHost -Name DatastoreName1 -Path /vol/DatastoreName1 -NfsHost 192.168.255.251
New-Datastore -Nfs -VMHost $VMHost -Name DatastoreName2 -Path /vol/DatastoreName2 -NfsHost 192.168.255.251
New-Datastore -Nfs -VMHost $VMHost -Name DatastoreName3 -Path /vol/DatastoreName3 -NfsHost 192.168.255.251
} else {
Write “Skipping Datastores on $VMHost…”
}

When running the script, you will see the following output asking you to put in your hostname:

addnfsdatastore

You will then see a successful message for each datastore added to the host. You must remember to add the host to the NFS Export share on the storage itself before completing this step.

Script courtesy of VMware PowerCLI Blog