PowerShell is where Windows and VMware administration actually happens once the environment stops being small enough to click through. The problem is rarely the language. It is remembering the exact parameter set for a cmdlet you use twice a year, and finding out at 2 a.m. that a scheduled script fails for reasons that have nothing to do with the script.
This category collects the builders that produce PowerShell and PowerCLI you can read before you run, and the guides that cover the parts which bite in production: scheduling, event logs, performance counters, and connecting to vSphere in the first place.
Tools in this category
- PowerCLI Command Builder — build vSphere PowerCLI commands for everyday VM, host and datastore work, with the parameters spelled out instead of remembered.
Two tools in other categories also produce PowerShell: the cURL converter turns a vendor cURL example into Invoke-RestMethod, and the ROBOCOPY Command builder produces a command line you can drop straight into a script.
vSphere automation with PowerCLI
- How to install VMware PowerCLI and connect to vSphere — the starting point, including the certificate and module problems that stop the first connection.
- VMware PowerCLI command reference — the command set behind the builder, organised by what you are trying to do.
- Getting started with PowerCLI automation scripts — moving from single commands to something scheduled and repeatable.
- How to manage vSphere snapshots with PowerCLI — finding, aging and removing snapshots before they fill a datastore.
- How to remove a stale datastore from VMware vCenter — a cleanup that is far less painful from PowerCLI than from the web client.
PowerShell on Windows Server
- PowerShell scripts in Windows Task Scheduler: why they fail and how to fix it — execution policy, working directory, and the account context that breaks a script which runs fine by hand.
- How to read Windows Event Logs with PowerShell (Get-WinEvent) — filtering at the source instead of exporting everything and sorting later.
- How to monitor Windows Server performance from PowerShell using Get-Counter — performance data without opening Perfmon on a remote server.
- WMIC vs PowerShell: which one to use, and how to migrate — what to use now that WMIC is deprecated, with the equivalent commands side by side.
- Windows command aliases: DOSKEY macros in CMD and aliases in PowerShell — shortening the commands you type all day, and why aliases do not belong in scripts.
Other tool categories
- System tools — Windows command builders and log analysis.
- Network tools — subnet maths, port checks and connectivity diagnostics.
- DNS tools — record lookups, propagation, SPF and DMARC.
- Security tools — password generation and hashing.
- Data utilities — JSON, JWT, timestamps and cURL conversion.
- Encoding tools — Base64 and URL encoding.