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Released 17 November 2017

Build 7155375 is VMware PowerCLI 6.5.4

Check frequently for additions and updates to these release notes.

VMware PowerCLI 6.5.4 Release Notes

VMware PowerCLI provides a Windows PowerShell interface to the VMware vSphere, vCloud, vRealize Operations Manager, and VMware Horizon APIs. VMware PowerCLI includes numerous cmdlets, sample scripts, and a function library.

About VMware PowerCLI

VMware PowerCLI is a command-line and scripting tool built on Windows PowerShell, and provides more than 600 cmdlets for managing and automating vSphere, vCloud, vRealize Operations Manager, vSAN, NSX-T, VMware Horizon, and VMware Cloud on AWS environments.

Installation, Upgrade, and Removal of VMware PowerCLI

In this release of PowerCLI, an MSI installer is no longer available. Management of the PowerCLI modules is now provided by the PowerShell Gallery and by using the PowerShell default cmdlets for working with modules in the PowerShell Gallery. For detailed information on how to install, upgrade, or remove PowerCLI, refer to the VMware PowerCLI 6.5.4 User's Guide or the PowerCLI Blog.

VMware PowerCLI Components

In VMware PowerCLI 6.5.4, the following modules have been updated:

VMware.PowerCLI: Provides a root module which other modules are dependent on. This ensures the PowerCLI product can be installed, upgraded, and removed as a complete package if needed.
VMware.VimAutomation.Common: Provides functionality that is common to all PowerCLI modules. This module has no cmdlets, but is required for other modules to function correctly.
VMware.VimAutomation.Cis.Core: Provides cmdlets for managing vSphere Automation SDK servers.
VMware.VimAutomation.Storage: Provides cmdlets for managing vSphere policy-based storage.
VMware.VimAutomation.StorageUtility: Provides utility scripts for storage.
VMware.VimAutomation.HA: Provides the Get-DrmInfo cmdlet for managing High Availability functionality.
VMware.ImageBuilder: Provides cmdlets for managing depots, image profiles, and VIBs.
VMware.DeployAutomation: Provides cmdlets that provide an interface to VMware AutoDeploy for provisioning physical hosts with ESXi software.

In VMware PowerCLI 6.5.4, the following module has been added:

VMware.VimAutomation.Vmc: Provides a module with cmdlets for managing VMware Cloud on AWS features.

Requirements

For a list of software that you need if you want to work with VMware PowerCLI 6.5.4, see Compatibility Matrixes for VMware PowerCLI 6.5.4.

Supported Platforms

For a list of VMware PowerCLI 6.5.4 supported operating systems and PowerShell versions, see Compatibility Matrixes for VMware PowerCLI 6.5.4.

For a list of VMware products with which VMware PowerCLI 6.5.4 is compatible, see VMware Product Interoperability Matrixes.

What's New in This Release

New Features

VMware PowerCLI 6.5.4 introduces the following new features, changes, and improvements:

The new VMware.VimAutomation.Vmc module provides connection cmdlets for the VMware Cloud on AWS API, allowing access to information about organizations and software-defined data centers (SDDCs).
A number of new cmdlets have been added to the VMware PowerCLI Storage module, providing the ability to work with key management servers (KMS) and various vSAN features.
- New cmdlets
  Add-KeyManagementServer
  Get-KeyManagementServer
  Set-KeyManagementServer
  Remove-KeyManagementServer
  Get-KmsCluster
  Set-KmsCluster
  Get-KmipClientCertificate
  New-KmipClientCertificate
  Start-VsanEncryptionConfiguration
  Get-VsanEvacuationPlan
  Get-VsanRuntimeInfo
  Repair-VsanObject
  Start-VsanClusterRebalance
  Stop-VsanClusterRebalance
The VMware PowerCLI Storage module has been updated to include the following improvements:

Get-VsanStat
Adds vNIC and pNIC support for vSAN stat.
Get-VsanClusterConfiguration
Retrieves information about silent health checks and resynchronization throttling of a vSAN cluster.
Set-VsanClusterConfiguration
Lets you manage the vSAN health checks list, resynchronization traffic limit, and witness host in a stretched cluster.
Start-VsanClusterDiskUpdate
Reformats the vSAN disk with encryption settings.
Test-VsanClusterHealth
Adds encryption test results to the vSAN clusters health.

For more information on changes made in VMware PowerCLI 6.5.4, including improvements, security enhancements, and deprecated features, see the VMware PowerCLI Change Log. For more information on specific product features, see the VMware PowerCLI 6.5.4 User's Guide. For more information on specific cmdlets, see the VMware PowerCLI 6.5.4 Cmdlet Reference.

Resolved Issues

The following issues have been resolved in VMware PowerCLI 6.5.4:

VMware.DeployAutomation module
All cmdlets throw permissions exceptions after reconnecting or creating a new session.
Set-SPBMEntityConfiguration
When the cmdlet encounters $null values, the PowerShell session no longer exits.

Known Issues

VMware PowerCLI 6.5.4 is known to have the following issues:

Add-EntityBaseline
The text of the error message that appears when you try to attach a baseline to a non-existing entity is improper.
Apply-DrsRecommendation
Apply-DrsRecommendation runs in asynchronous mode even when called without the RunAsync parameter.
Connect-OMServer
If you run Connect-OMServer against vRealize Operations Manager 6.4, you might receive an error message of type The request was aborted: Could not create SSL/TLS secure channel.
Workaround: Verify that SHA512 is enabled on your system. For more information, search for SHA512 is disabled in Windows when you use TLS 1.2 on the Microsoft Support site.
Connect-VIServer
- Connect-VIServer cannot use the Kerberos network authentication protocol to connect to vCenter Server systems that are installed under a custom user account on a Windows system. Connect-VIServer uses NTLM instead.
  Workaround: Install and run vCenter Server under the default system account. Alternatively, you can:
  1. Add another IP to the Windows system where vCenter Server is running.
  2. Register a new A DNS record for the IP.
  3. Run the setspn tool to register an SPN for the new DNS record and associate it with the vCenter Server account under which vCenter Server was installed.
    For example: To register an SPN for the vc-alias.domain.com DNS and the VCAccount account, run:
    setspn -A -HOST/vc-alias.domain.com Domain\VCAccount
  4. Use the new DNS name to connect to the vCenter Server system.
    For example: Run Connect-VIServer vc-alias.domain.com
- When you use the User and Password parameters to authenticate with a vCenter Server 5.1 or later system, you might not be recognized as a domain user.
  Workaround: Pass the domain name and the user name to the User parameter.
  For example: Run Connect-VIServer my.server.com -Username MyDomain\MyUserName -Password MyPassword
Copy-DatastoreItem
Copy-DatastoreItem throws an error when uploading an item to the root folder of a Datastore Provider drive.
Copy-HardDisk
- On vCenter Server 5.0, Copy-HardDisk cannot change the storage format of the destination hard disk.
- Using the Thick2GB value for the DestinationStorageFormat parameter is not supported. If you specify this value against an ESX 5.0 host, the connection to the ESX environment is lost.
Get-CIDatastore
When you specify the ProviderVdc parameter, Get-CIDatastore might return incorrect results if multiple provider virtual datacenters share a datastore.
Get-CIVM
When you are logged in as SysAdmin, the Get-CIVM cmdlet returns system vShield Edge virtual machines used to establish perimeter security in the NAT-routed network.
Get-CIVApp
Get-CIVApp returns all virtual appliance objects in the inventory including expired ones.
Get-CIVAppTemplate
Get-CIVAppTemplate returns all virtual appliance templates in the inventory including expired ones.
Get-Cluster
You cannot specify the VM or VMHost parameters in combination with the Location and NoRecursion parameters.
Get-Datacenter
You cannot specify the VM or VMHost parameters in combination with the Location and NoRecursion parameters.
Get-HardDisk
The value of the Persistence property of the object returned by Get-HardDisk is different depending on the way the hard disk is retrieved by the cmdlet.
Get-Log
When you try to retrieve a log from vSphere 6.0 or later, you might receive a There is an error in XML document error message.
Workaround: Use the Bundle parameter to retrieve the whole log bundle, or the StartLineNum and NumLines parameters to retrieve specific lines from the log.
Get-OMAlert
If you use the AssignedUser parameter to filter alerts and some of the retrieved alerts are assigned to the admin user, Get-OMAlert returns those alerts with empty AssignedUser property.
Workaround: To retrieve only the non-assigned alerts, use both the AssignedUser and Status parameters as filters.
Get-OMResource
The ResourceKind parameter does not work against vRealize Operations Manager 6.1.
Note: The parameter works against vRealize Operations Manager 6.2.
Get-OMStat
The Key parameter does not work against vRealize Operations Manager 6.1.
Workaround: Use a client-side script to filter by key.
Note: The parameter works against vRealize Operations Manager 6.2.
Get-OMStatKey
- If you retrieve statistic keys by OMResource instance, some items might have empty properties. The returned keys that identify metric data for a specific instance object, like a CPU or network adapter, do not contain a description or ExtensionData info.
- Get-OMStatKey does not work against vRealize Operations Manager 6.1.
  Note: The cmdlet works against vRealize Operations Manager 6.2.
Get-OMUser
Get-OMUser does not return the vRealize Operations Manager amdin user and other internal users. If you specify admin for the Name parameter, Get-OMUser returns $null. For more information, see the vRealize Operations Manager 6.0.3 Release Notes.
Get-ResourcePool
You cannot specify the VM parameter in combination with the Location and NoRecursion parameters.
Get-ScsiLun
When you use Get-ScsiLun to retrieve Powerpath devices, the value of their MultipathPolicy property is shown as Unknown.
Get-TagAssignment
If you run Get-TagAssignment against a vCenter Server 6.0.x system that uses a non-default HTTPS port, the cmdlet fails.
Workaround: Configure the vCenter Server 6.0.x system to use the default HTTPS port (443).
Get-Template
The Location parameter of Get-Template does not accept Cluster objects.
Get-UsbDevice
Get-UsbDevice cannot obtain USB devices from snapshots.
Get-VDPortgroup
When you are connected to a vCloud Director 5.1 or later environment, you cannot use the RelatedObject parameter to retrieve a distributed port group from an organization network backed by the port group.
Get-View
- If you run Get-View with the SearchRoot and ViewType parameters and specify a property path for the Property parameter, the linked view of the cmdlet output is not populated.
- You cannot retrieve the VMware PowerCLI view of the underlying port group from the vCloud Director PowerCLI view of a network pool backed by the port group.
Get-VIEvent
- Filtering by type might return incorrect results. For example, if you specify Warning as the value for the Types parameter, you might receive Info and Error type events in addition to the Warning events.
- If a nonexisting user is specified, Get-VIEvent returns the events for all existing users.
- Objects returned by Get-VIEvent contain ManagedObjectReference types that are not compatible with the Get-View cmdlet.
Get-VirtualSwitch
When you are connected to a vCloud Director 5.1 or later environment, you cannot use the RelatedObject parameter to retrieve a distributed switch from a network pool backed by the distributed switch.
Get-VirtualPortgroup
When you are connected to a vCloud Director 5.1 or later environment, you cannot use the RelatedObject parameter to retrieve a distributed port group from an organization network backed by the port group.
Get-VM
- If a virtual machine is in the root virtual machine folder within a vApp and you try to retrieve the virtual machine by using the NoRecoursion parameter of Get-VM and specifying the root folder for the Location parameter, the virtual machine is not returned.
- If a virtual machine is in the root virtual machine folder within a vApp and you try to retrieve the virtual machine by using Get-VM, the <vm>.Folder and <vm>.FolderId properties are returned as $null.
- During the process of creating a template from a virtual machine, Get-VM returns both the virtual machine and template objects.
Get-VMHostProfileRequiredInput
On vCenter Server 5.0, Get-VMHostProfileRequiredInput returns a result even if you pass a hashtable with inapplicable elements.
Get-VsanResyncingComponent
Even if vCenter Server 6.0.x shows there are synchronizing components, Get-VsanResyncingComponent returns $null.
Workaround: Upgrade to vCenter Server 6.5 or later.
Import-Module
If you try to import the VMware.ImageBuilder module in a clean PowerShell session, you receive an error message and the import process fails.
Workaround: Import the VMware.VimAutomation.Core module before importing the VMware.ImageBuilder module.
Import-vApp
When you try to import a vApp and specify a datastore cluster to the Datastore parameter, PowerCLI automatically selects datastores from the specified cluster where to store the vApp, and if some of the datastores do not have enough free space, you receive an Invalid datastore format error message.
Workaround: Ensure that there is enough free space on all datastores in the cluster, or use the Datastore parameter to specify a datastore that has enough free space.
Install-VMHostPatch
- Install-VMHostPatch cannot install patches on diskless ESXi servers.
- Install-VMHostPatch cannot apply VIB patches.
  Workaround: Use metadata.zip patches.
Invoke-VMScript
When using Invoke-VMScript to invoke multi-line BAT and BASH scripts, the command might not run all the script lines.
New-CIVAppNetwork
You can create a vApp network by specifying inconsistent network settings. While the settings of the newly created vApp network are inconsistent, you can only modify them to restore their consistency. To configure the vApp network, run Set-CIVAppNetwork.
New-DrsRule
If you try to create a new DRS rule by specifying multiple clusters from different servers and virtual machines with identical IDs on different servers, you receive an error message and the process fails.
Workaround: Create a new DRS rule for each cluster separately.
New-HardDisk
New-HardDisk does not prompt for confirmation when you try to create a VMDK anti-affinity rule that overwrites an existing one.
New-OrgNetwork
You cannot create new organization networks in vCloud Director 5.1 or later environments.
New-OrgVdc
To ensure backward compatibility, PowerCLI provides limited support for the StorageAllocationGB parameter on vCloud Director 5.1 environments. When you develop new scripts for vCloud Director 5.1 environments, do not use this parameter.
New-OSCustomizationSpec
You cannot add a virtual machine to a domain by using OS customization.
New-SpbmRule
When you create an SPBM rule, you can specify a value for the CacheReservation property that is outside the valid range of 0 to 100. You can specify a value from 0 to 1,000,000 and divide it by 10,000 to get the value in percentage. This value in percentage is displayed in the vSphere Web Client, while the actual value that you provide is displayed in PowerCLI.
New-VAIOFilter
If you try to install a VAIO filter on a cluster, the VAIO filter might install successfully on some hosts, but fail to install on other hosts.
Workaround: Use Get-VAIOFilter to check whether the same VAIO filter is already installed on the cluster. If installed, use Remove-VAIOFilter before trying to install the same VAIO filter again.
New-VM
When you are connected to a server which uses an invalid certificate and you specify the ContentLibraryItem parameter when running New-VM, the process might become non-responsive.
Workaround: Run Set-PowerCLIConfiguration and set the value of the InvalidCertificateAction parameter to Ignore or Fail.
Set-DRSRule
If you try to update multiple DRS rules from different servers and specify virtual machines with identical IDs on different servers, you receive an error message and the process fails.
Workaround: Update each DRS rule separately.
Set-OrgVdc
The StorageAllocationGB parameter is supported only on vCloud Director 1.5.x environments.
Set-ScsiController
Set-ScsiController cannot set both the Type and BusSharingMode parameters at the same time when running against vCenter Server or ESX/ESXi versions 5.1 or earlier.
Workaround: First run the cmdlet to set the type and then run it again to configure the bus sharing mode.
Set-SpbmEntityConfiguration
You cannot disable SPBM on clusters in vSphere 6.0 environments.
Set-SpbmStoragePolicy
If you try to retrieve storage policy contents and any VASA provider does not comply with the constraints in the resource storage policy, you receive a validation error for these resource storage policies. All valid storage policies are returned by the cmdlet.
Set-VMGuestNetworkInterface
On Windows operating systems, Set-VMGuestNetworkInterface becomes non-responsive if the provided IP address conflicts with an existing IP address on the network.
Set-VMHost
- When an ESX/ESXi host is registered with multiple vCenter Server systems, you cannot change the state of the disconnected host to connected.
  Workaround:
  1. Run Remove-VMHost to remove the disconnected host from the vCenter Server system that it is registered with.
  2. Run Add-VMHost to attach the host to the vCenter Server system again.
  3. (Optional) Run Set-VMHost to restore the initial configuration of the host.
  The operation authenticates you with the host and automatically changes its state to connected.
- When you update the value of the VMSwapfileDatastore parameter and immediately retrieve the host information, the value of VMSwapfileDatastore might appear unchanged. If you retrieve the host information after a brief period of time, the change of the property value should be reflected.
Set-VMHostNetwork
Set-VMHostNetwork cannot clear the values of the ConsoleV6Gateway and VMKernelV6Gateway properties of the input object.
Set-VMHostNetworkAdapter
If you have vMotion enabled on one VMKernel NIC and you enable it on a second NIC on the same switch by using Set-VMHostNetworkAdapter, the VMotionEnabled property of the second NIC might still report that vMotion is not enabled. This is because only one NIC can be selected for vMotion, but more than one can be candidate NICs for vMotion. To change the currently active vMotion NIC, first disable the current one and then enable the one you want.
Set-VMHostSNMP
- The default value of the Set-VMHostSNMP TargetPort parameter is a random number instead of the port number.
- Set-VMHostSNMP skips the value of the TargetPort parameter.
- Set-VMHostSNMP fails to enable VMHostSNMP and to set the ReadOnlyCommunityString when called for the first time.
  Workaround: Run the command again.
Set-VsanClusterConfiguration
When you run Set-VsanClusterConfiguration, the AddSilentHealthCheck and RemoveSilentHealthCheck parameters do not update any values.
Workaround: Update to vSAN 6.7.
Inventory Provider
When run within the Inventory Provider, Get-Datacenter returns the datacenters from the default servers instead from the VIServer folder of the Inventory Provider drive.
Other
- When you have multiple connections to the same vCenter Server system in different PowerShell runspaces, a memory leak issue occurs.
  Workaround: Reuse the connection across multiple runspaces, or do not use runspaces.
- If you have installed the SAP Crystal Reports runtime engine for .NET Framework and try to start the 64-bit version of PowerCLI, you might receive an error message of type Could not load file or assembly ‘log4net, Version=1.2.10.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=692fbea5521e1304’ or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
  Workaround: Start Windows PowerShell (x86) and import the PowerCLI modules that you want to use.
- When you run a cmdlet and the operation fails on the server side, you might receive a There is an error in the XML document. error message. This is not a valid server error and it is returned when PowerShell is unable to read the actual server-side error.
  Workaround: Use the vSphere Web Client to check the actual server-side error.
- If you use multiple PowerShell ISE tabs and try to run Import-Module, you might receive an error message.
  Workaround: Use multiple PowerShell ISE instances instead of using multiple ISE tabs within a single ISE instance.
- If you apply a policy created from VASA 1.0 capabilities to a virtual machine created on a Virtual SAN datastore, the compliance status of the virtual machine is incorrectly displayed as non-compliant instead of not-applicable.
- If you clone a virtual machine from a NFS datastore to a Virtual SAN datastore with a mixed storage policy that has both VASA 1.0 and Virtual SAN rule sets, the policy associated with VM Home is removed from the virtual machine.
- If you create a linked clone of a virtual machine which is associated with a VASA 1.0 profile and then move the cloned virtual machine to a Virtual SAN datastore, the virtual machine's VM Home and HardDisk properties are incorrectly displayed as compliant.
- If you apply a storage policy that has Virtual SAN capabilities to a HardDisk object, the SPBM compliance status of the HardDisk object changes to outOfDate.
- You can modify the SPBM configuration of VirtualMachine and HardDisk objects after disabling SPBM on the cluster in which the objects are located.
- Users without the Profile-driven storage update privilege can modify SPBM configuration on VirtualMachine and HardDisk objects, and can also enable or disable SPBM on Cluster objects.
- You cannot create a storage policy if you do not specify a description for a tag or tag category.
- You can create a storage policy by using a tag that has already been deleted from the SPBM server. When you retrieve information about the policy, the tag is shown as missing.
  Workaround: Use the Get-Tag cmdlet to verify that the tag you want to use exists on the SPBM server.
- You can create rules by specifying a value for Virtual SAN capabilities of the type ValueType. However, PowerCLI cannot verify whether the value assigned to the capability is within the allowed range of values because the AllowedValue property is not populated.
- If you are logged in to vCloud Director as a regular user or an organization administrator, you might not be able to retrieve CIView by ID for some of the cloud objects.
  Workaround: Pass the object to the Get-CIView cmdlet.
- If you try to run a script or binary code which creates new instances of the VimClient class from the VMware.Vim.dll module, you might receive a MissingMethodException error message.
  Workaround: Create new instances of the VimClientImpl class instead of the VimClient class.
- The types labels in the UpdateViewData property are case-sensitive.
- All VIX cmdlets support use of SSPI for Windows guest machines if the underlying vCenter Server is version 5.0. This might not be valid for users who are local, and not domain users. VIX cmdlets are Invoke-VMScript, Copy-VMGuestFile, *-VMGuestNetworkInterface, *-VMGUestRoute, and Set-HardDisk when used for guest disk resizing.