Note to Self: Learn Get-View

Queue Deflation

I’m rather red-faced right now.  I chimed in with a reply in the VMTN VMware vSphere PowerCLI forum and promptly got schooled.

Which is great; these things should happen.

Where’s the Template?

In this thread, VMTN Communities member denjoh44 asked how one would obtain a list of templates along with the name of the vSphere hosts on which they reside.

I haven’t had the need to do this myself, but I wanted to give it a shot. I fired up PowerShell ISE and plugged away:

	$Templates = @()
	$Hosts = Get-VMHost
	foreach ($h in $hosts) {
	$HostTemplates = Get-Template -Location $h
	foreach ($t in $HostTemplates) {
	$TemplateInfo = New-Object PSObject
	$TemplateInfo | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty Name -Value $t.Name
	$TemplateInfo | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty Host -Value $h.Name
	$Templates += $TemplateInfo
	}
	}
	$Templates

view raw gistfile1.txt hosted with ❤ by GitHub

And it works, which is nice.

I See Your 12 Lines and…

It wasn’t long after that I revisited the thread only to find a much more elegant solution posted by Christophe Calvet:

	Get-Template |
	Select-Object Name, @{N="Host"; E={(Get-View $_.HostId).Name}} |
	Format-Table -AutoSize

view raw gistfile1.txt hosted with ❤ by GitHub

My personality dictates that I should feel silly about my reply.  Christophe nailed it with a one-liner.  Instead, I’m going to focus on my inexperience with Get-View and do some reading.  I'll endeavor to always keep calculated expressions in mind as well.

Time to Learn

Brian Graf has a 3-part blog series on Get-View which I’ve seen before and marked for reading in more detail “later.”  If you are interested in learning more about Get-View, start here:

• Get-View Part 1: Introduction
• Get-View Part 2: Views and Extension Data
• Get-View Part 3: Performance Impact

While you are at it, Christophe has a blog worth checking out at TheCrazyConsultant.com