If you are into automating tasks in your VMware environment, there is no better way to do those tasks than with Powershell and the PowerCLI commandlets. Â With the release now of VMware vSphere 6.0 family of products, there is a new PowerCLI version to be had if you were still running 5.8 as I was on my workstation. Â The upgrade process is very painless as the installer upgrades any existing installation (actually uninstalls the old version and installs the new version). Â You will need to login to your VMware account and pull down the latest version available under PowerCLI. Â Once you do this, the installation/upgrade is as easy as running the installer. Â We will look at how to upgrade VMware PowerCLI 5.8 to 6.0.
What’s New in this release?
- The big one is vCloud Air support in this release
- .NET 4.5 is a requirement as of this version to prepare for future releases of the software.
- More modular design in that modules are now included which
- New-VM commandlets and others have been enhanced for vSphere 6 and the new hardware 11 version level
Installation Process
Below are screenshots from the upgrade installation I ran on my workstation.
- The first screen will actually tell you that an earlier version was detected and that you will automatically be upgraded to the newest version.
- Before running and copying the new files over, you will see the installer removing the older version PowerCLI files from your workstation.
- After the installer is finished, you can simply open up PowerCLI and note that you are now running on PowerCLI 6.0 Release 1.
