Help with powershell PNTools upgrade script

Hey René,

Did you have a look at the blog post regarding this topic? If not have a gander at this.

If you still have questions after reading please let me know. As for the password issue you can do something like this:

Function Get-ConsoleCredential([String] $username, [String] $password)

{

        New-Object Management.Automation.PSCredential $username, (ConvertTo-SecureString $password -AsPlainText -Force)

}

This will return a PScredential object with the proper username and password set.

Hello Adam,

That script looks very nice, but we don't have any powershell guru's in house.

I would be very happy if the following functionality could be added to the script:

Only upgrade machines that are currently powered off.

AND / OR

Only upgrade machines that are specified in a list or txt file.

This way we have more control and can inform a group of users that their machines will be upgraded tonight or something.

Hey René,

I've included an updated script that will query for all VMs that do not have the current PNTools version installed and are currently Powered Down. If you look in the script you will see CurrentState = 1, which indicates that a machine is Powered Down.

If you have a text file of machines you could do something like:

Get-Content "Machines.txt" | Invoke-QVWCommand -Action UninstallMSI -MSIPackage "PNTools" 
Get-Content "Machines.txt" | Invoke-QVWCommand -Action InstallMSI -MSIPackage "PNTools"

This would queue up an uninstall and then an install for all the machines in the text file. The file would have to have one machine per line. If it is more convient to have a comma seperated list you could also do something like this:

Get-Content "Machines.txt" | ForEach-Object { $_.Split(',') } | Invoke-QVWCommand -Action UninstallMSI -MSIPackage "PNTools" 
Get-Content "Machines.txt" | ForEach-Object { $_.Split(',') } | Invoke-QVWCommand -Action InstallMSI -MSIPackage "PNTools"

Hope this helps!

Thanks, but this isn't working very well.

First the VM is powered up, but then the next pending task that should uninstall pntools fails:

Virtialization Management Server reported no IP Adress for computer.

Then it tries to install pntools and fails again because it wasn't uninstalled in the first place.

It takes some time before the ip adress is being reported by vmware esx. Too bad it times out so quickly.

Hmmm... I think a check of the powerstate would do the trick.... mayabe Adam knows :-)

I would also check by manually powering on a VM in the vWorkspace console that it does report a IP address.  It might be a timing issue with the script or something else, for example the VMs really are not getting a IP address.

Here is an updated script that calls the Invoke-QVWComputerAction -Action PowerOn command. Then the script will wait for the machine to report an IPAddress. Once this happens it will begin the installation. Alternatively, I've included the below script using the text files I mentioned in previous posts.

Get-Content "Machines.txt" | ForEach-Object { $_.Split(',') } | Invoke-QVWCommand -Action PowerOn 
Start-Sleep 150
Get-Content "Machines.txt" | ForEach-Object { $_.Split(',') } | Invoke-QVWCommand -Action UninstallMSI -MSIPackage "PNTools"
Get-Content "Machines.txt" | ForEach-Object { $_.Split(',') } | Invoke-QVWCommand -Action InstallMSI -MSIPackage "PNTools"

Hope this helps!

The script is very neat, but I'm a bit scared to use it on our production environment

The other 'easy' script is perfect. Using a timeout will do the trick. Might not be the most elegant way but it works and that is what counts.

This is what I'm using now:

get-content "upgrade.txt" | Set-QVWComputer -Enabled false -farm "vWorkspace Database"
Start-Sleep -Seconds 5
get-content "upgrade.txt" | Invoke-QVWComputerAction -Action PowerOn -farm "vWorkspace Database"
Start-Sleep -Seconds 120
get-content "upgrade.txt" | Invoke-QVWComputerAction -Action UninstallMSI -MSIPackage "PNTools" -farm "vWorkspace Database"
Start-Sleep -Seconds 300
get-content "upgrade.txt" | Invoke-QVWComputerAction -Action InstallMSI -MSIPackage "PNTools" -farm "vWorkspace Database"
Start-Sleep -Seconds 300
get-content "upgrade.txt" | Invoke-QVWComputerAction -Action InstallMSI -MSIPackage "NWGina" -farm "vWorkspace Database"
Start-Sleep -Seconds 60
get-content "upgrade.txt" | Invoke-QVWComputerAction -Action ShutdownOS -farm "vWorkspace Database"
Start-Sleep -Seconds 5
get-content "upgrade.txt" | Set-QVWComputer -Enabled default -farm "vWorkspace Database"

It takes about 15 minutes to upgrade a client. To prevent users from logging in during the upgrade, the script disables the VM before the upgrade and enables it when it's done.

Thanks all!

Great! I'm glad that you got it to work.