While working with the data protection team at my job I was asked if there was any way to track new datastores being added to a vSphere cluster. When new LUNs are allocated to our vSphere clusters, the data protection team isn’t always made aware ahead of time. Normally this isn’t a big deal, but in our case we have a product that requires access to specified datastores for backups. In order to maintain access to these virtual machines for backup purposes, we need to be notified when new datastores are added.
As I sat and thought about how I could accomplish this task I came up with a couple ideas, but figured a scheduled task with PowerCLI/PowerShell would be the easiest to implement. In this script we will connect to the vCenter server, get all the datastores in the cluster, write a file daily with a date stamp, then compare the current and previous day’s datastore output files and write that to a third file that will only display the new datastores that have been added or the datastores that have been removed.
I’ve broken down the script so I can explain each section making it easy to understand. Before I had any knowledge of PowerShell/PowerCLI, modifying something to fit my environment when I didn’t understand what was happening at each step was time consuming and frustrating.
1. This is where we define the name of the vCenter instance we’ll be connecting to and the name of the cluster we’re interested in.
$vCenter = "LabvCenter.domain.com"
$Cluster = "LabCluster"
2. This is where we define the output location for our datastores and difference file. I chose to drop it into a folder named for the cluster, but that can be removed.
$filePath = "C:\test\" + $Cluster + "\"
3. This is where we connect to vCenter and then immediately wait 15 seconds which can fix issues of commands running before security warnings are displayed
Connect-VIserver $vCenter
Start-Sleep -s 15
4. This will gather all the datastores in the cluster and exclude any datastore that has a name containing “*-local”. The wildcard is important because the local datastores contain “servername + -local” and if the wildcard wasn’t there all of the local datastores would be included because no datastore is named exactly “-local”
$Datastores = Get-Cluster -Name $Cluster | Get-Datastore | Where {$_.Name -notlike "*-local"}
5. I prefer the format of 2 digit month, 2 digit day, 2 digit year. This will get the current date of the system running this script, then convert it to this format of 051415 for example.
$today = (Get-Date).ToString("MMddyy")
$yesterday = (Get-Date).AddDays(-1).ToString("MMddyy")
$2DaysAgo = (Get-Date).AddDays(-2).ToString("MMddyy")
6. This will set the file name and location for the output from 2 days ago. If that file exists, it will be removed. Rather than have an output from every day saved until I manually remove it, this process seemed better. I chose to delete the file from 2 days ago as opposed to deleting yesterday’s file after we run the comparison in case we see a huge change in the difference file we can manually compare the 2 files to try to find the error.
$2DayOldFile = $filepath + $Cluster + $2DaysAgo + ".txt"
If (Test-Path $2DayOldFile){Remove-Item $2DayOldFile}
7. This will set the file path and name to the file path defined at the top, plus the cluster name, plus the date and add .txt to the end.
$CurrentFile = $filePath + $Cluster + $today + ".txt"
$YesterdaysFile = $filePath + $Cluster + $yesterday + ".txt"
8. Here we are exporting all the datastores from Step 4 by name and outputting to the file name/path defined in Step 7.
$Datastores | Select Name | Out-File $CurrentFile
9. This is where we set the name and path for the difference file that will track the datastore add/remove.
$DifferenceFile = $filePath + "Datastore-Changes" + ".txt"
10. This will read the content from today’s content and yesterday’s content.
$YesterdaysContent = Get-Content $YesterdaysFile
$CurrentContent = Get-Content $CurrentFile
11. Here we are comparing the content we just read in step 10.
$Compare = Compare-Object $YesterdaysContent $CurrentContent
12. The standard way “Compare-Object” outputs this data shows difference with a side indicator of <= or => depending on where the difference exists. Rather than remember which file was read first to determine whether a datastore was added or removed, we change the column names. If a datastore existed yesterday, but is missing today it is labeled as “Removed”. If a datastore didn’t exist yesterday, but does today it is labeled as “Added”.
$compare | foreach {
if ($_.sideindicator -eq '<=')
{$_.sideindicator = "Removed"}
if ($_.sideindicator -eq '=>')
{$_.sideindicator = "Added"}
}
13. This will take the results from step 11 with formatting of step 12 then change the column names. The list of objects compared is normally named “InputObject” and then “Added or Removed” is normally “SideIndicator”. Maybe that’s fine, but I prefer something a little easier to read. I’ve renamed “InputObject” to “Datastore” but also I add the current date and we change “SideIndicator” to “Added or Removed”. Once that is done, we output that file to the path and name defined in Step 9. The reason why we include the current date in the “Datastore” column is because we are using “-Append” with the “Out-File” command. This will add a dated entry of changes that occurred to the bottom of the existing (or new) output file. This means we aren’t overwriting the same file every day, we are just adding to it. In case you forget to check this file for a few days you won’t lose that data.
$Compare |
select @{l='Datastore' + ' - ' + (Get-Date);e={$_.InputObject}},@{l='Added or Removed';e={$_.SideIndicator}} |
Out-File -Append $DifferenceFile
Now that we know what this thing does, let’s see it in action. I have run the output over 3 days and this is how the output file is displayed. We can see that on 05-14-15 we added Lab-Datastore-10 which didn’t exist on 05-13-15. Then on 05-15-15 we removed Lab-Datastore-03 and we added -11 and -12.
When running the script I commented out the removal of the 2 day old file so we could compare manually. Now we have an output file created (Datastore-Changes.txt) that should show the differences.
Inside Datastore-Changes.txt we see that on 5/14 the datastore “Lab-Datastore-10” was added and on 5/15 we lost Lab-Datastore-03, but added 11 and 12.
We can delete this file at any time and the next time this script runs we’ll create a brand new file. This means there is no dependency on this file already existing in order for the script to run and doesn’t require us to keep a long list of all the datastore add/removes for all eternity. Now you’ll just need to save the script schedule it to run using Windows Task Scheduler.
Below is the full scripts with comments.
#Define the vCenter Server and Cluster
$vCenter = "LabvCenter.domain.com"
$Cluster = "LabCluster"
#Set the path location for the output files
$filePath = "C:\test\" + $Cluster + "\"
#Connect to the vCenter Server and sleep for 15 seconds (necessary for security warnings)
Connect-VIserver $vCenter
Start-Sleep -s 15
#Get a list of all the datastores
$Datastores = Get-Cluster -Name $Cluster | Get-Datastore | Where {$_.Name -notlike "*-local"}
#Get the current date in the correct format
$today = (Get-Date).ToString("MMddyy")
$yesterday = (Get-Date).AddDays(-1).ToString("MMddyy")
$2DaysAgo = (Get-Date).AddDays(-2).ToString("MMddyy")
#Delete the output from 2 days ago (Remove this section if you want to keep the history)
$2DayOldFile = $filepath + $Cluster + $2DaysAgo + ".txt"
If (Test-Path $2DayOldFile){Remove-Item $2DayOldFile}
#Set the filename to include today's date
$CurrentFile = $filePath + $Cluster + $today + ".txt"
$YesterdaysFile = $filePath + $Cluster + $yesterday + ".txt"
#Export those datastores to a TXT file
$Datastores | Select Name | Out-File $CurrentFile
#Set file name & path for difference file
$DifferenceFile = $filePath + "Datastore-Changes" + ".txt"
#Get the content for yesterday and today's files
$YesterdaysContent = Get-Content $YesterdaysFile
$CurrentContent = Get-Content $CurrentFile
#Compare yesterday's and today's files
$Compare = Compare-Object $YesterdaysContent $CurrentContent
#Change the source/target column to "Removed" and "Added"
$compare | foreach {
if ($_.sideindicator -eq '')
{$_.sideindicator = "Added"}
}
#Change the column name output to "Datastore + Date" and "Added or Removed" then output to file
$Compare |
select @{l='Datastore' + ' - ' + (Get-Date);e={$_.InputObject}},@{l='Added or Removed';e={$_.SideIndicator}} |
Out-File -Append $DifferenceFile
