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One of my users was complaining of “slow vm performance over the network”, so I requested a few simple diags including a traceroute from his machine to the vm instead I got a traceroute from the VM to the VM. So I decided that clearly I was asking too much from the user and threw the following batch file together (I may rewrite it in powershell for fun later).

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This is a function that allows you to clone a VM from a specified snapshot. The only way to do this in the UI would be to take a snapshot of the current state, revert to the one you wish to clone, clone, revert to latest snapshot and then delete latest snapshot. As you can see that is time consuming and takes numerous mouse clicks.

I recommend adding this function to your powershell profile so you always have access to it.

As always feel free to comment.

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After a mass of updates to the code a new version is out, this is still experimental so should only be used in a lab environment.

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This little gem I wrote will listen to all interfaces on a computer for CDP packets. Once it has looped all the interfaces any packets it has captured are processed and added to WMI.

Using the attached SMS_DEF.mof we can extract that information and place it in SCCM. Anyone who knows what CDP is will see the benefit immediately. For the rest; CDP (Cisco Discovery Protocol), Cisco devices send out CDP packets every 60seconds each packet contains information about the port it was sent from and the sender. In a nutshell if my computer receives a packet then I can tell which switch I am connected to, what port on that switch and a few other bits and bobs about the switch. e.g. In a test environment I have a Cisco switch which connects to a Cisco IP phone which then connects to my computer, when exe runs I get two entries in WMI, one for the phone and one for the Switch.

The use case is that helpdesk  may not know where a user is physically or where they are connected to the network and the user may be experiencing network issues, this would allow a helpdesk tech to locate the switchport  the user is connected to and pass that info to the network team for troubleshooting saving both parties the hassle of tracing cables and also allowing reporting on where a user is plugging in over a period of time.

There is still a bit to be done for this but it does generally work.

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I have tweaked my powershell script for the SCCM Dell/HP tags due to popular demand so that it can be run on a single machine using a list of service tags as the source and then will output to a CSV file. The source CSV can have any number of columns however it MUST have the following three for the script to work “Name,Vendor,Tag” in its default state. You also need to edit the $infile & $outfile variables as required.

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Deprecated - VMWare have release an official checker and there is a better script at http://virtu-al.net

This is a script I wrote to check vSphere 5 vRAM compliance.

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A while back I had a support case open with MS about some scripting in winPE. In order to debug the problem we wanted to see what variables were declared & what their values were. The support tech came up with the attachted script, I never got round to adding it to my scripts folder, so I ran it by opening a command shell in winPE (F8) then “net use Z: \\<mycomputer>\c$\users\<username>\desktop\”. Then I ran the script with “cscript.exe SCCMVarDump.vbs” a file is created in the same location as the script.

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Updated: 2011-08-18

This is the next evolution in the warranty info fight, Dell keep changing their site which is rather frustrating. I have re-written the Warranty Info Scripts in powershell as in my opinion the code is a lot cleaner and more manageable, I’ve tweaked the MOF edit required to read this.

One major change to the script is that I have added support for HP systems, now I must stress I only have one or two of these, both are out of warranty and only had base warranties so something may have been missed / may not work as expected. You can either fix it and let me know the changes you make or let me know, via the contact page, the tag of one of your systems and I will look at it when I get a chance.

If you use any other version of the script from my site you will need to update sms.mof as the reports have changed.

I am quite shameless so if you find this useful feel free to click on donate and well, donate. :D

What info do you get?

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Yet another role added to my Job description, Now I am managing our Virtual Servers. So true to form I’ve dived headfirst into powershell / powercli to see what I can do. Some of the posts coming up on this will likely be similar to others around the web as I reinvent the wheel while I learn. But you never know one of you might find me 1st or I might do it in a way that suits you better.

First up is a simple script to read data from an xml file and then update custom attributes on the vmhosts.

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A quick Report to return all of the computers, the OU they are in and the last time they had  a Hardware scan.

First we create a temporary table to hold the 1st pass results, then we query that table looking for the longest OU for each computer ( this way we only get 1 record per computer returned, otherwise each level of the OU a computer is a member of will be returned)

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