Manage Inventory Objects Through Inventory Drives

You can use the PowerCLI Inventory Provider to browse, modify, and remove inventory objects from inventory drives.

Prerequisites

Verify that you are connected to a vCenter Server system.

Navigate to a host in your server inventory by running the cd command with the full path to the host.
```
cd Folder01\DataCenter01\host\Web\Host01
```
View the content of the host using the ls command.
```
ls
```
ls is the UNIX style alias of the Get-ChildItem cmdlet.

This command returns the virtual machines and the root resource pool of the host.
View only the virtual machines on the host.
```
Get-VM
```
When called within the inventory drive, Get-VM gets a list only of the virtual machines on the current drive location.
Delete a virtual machine named VM1.
```
del VM1
```
Rename a virtual machine, for example, from VM1New to VM1.
```
ren VM1New VM1
```
Start all virtual machines with names that start with VM.
```
dir VM* | Start-VM
```