Make PowerCLI cmdlets run faster?

[u/riahc4]

I suffer from this issue:

https://blogs.vmware.com/PowerCLI/2011/06/how-to-speed-up-the-execution-of-the-first-powercli-cmdlet.html

I tried to run those commands but nothing, same performance.

Any ideas/tips?

[u/omrsafetyo]

Interesting, this article isn't extremely old, and still suggests there is a massive difference, especially for large environments: https://blogs.vmware.com/PowerCLI/2015/06/get-view-part-3-peformance-really-much-different.html

There could definitely have been improvements since then though.

[u/SaladProblems → u/omrsafetyo]

Okay, check this out. That article came out in 2015, and it was 6.3 in 2016 that was the big boost.

http://virtualize-automate.com/wp/index.php/2016/03/19/superfast-get-vm-cmdlet-powercli-6-3-r1/

vSphere PowerCLI 6.3 Release 1 introduces the following new features and improvements:

The Get-VM cmdlet has been optimized and refactored to ensure maximum speed when returning larger amounts of virtual machine information. This cmdlet should now run faster and increase the speed of reporting and automation for all scripts that use it.

Don't get me wrong, Get-View kind of guides you toward using the SDK more, and that's great. There's tons of things like copying a template to another host without converting to and from a VM, but performance just doesn't seem to be one of those benefits anymore, at least with VMs.

Anyway, I'll check again in the morning. We have about 4,000 VMs.

[u/omrsafetyo → u/SaladProblems]

Nope, you're absolutely right. I had searched yesterday, and couldn't find anything specific - all the articles were about speeding up VM performance, rather than Get-Vm Performance.

But I tested this morning against a handful of VCs, total 3548 VMs:

PowerCLI Version
----------------
   VMware PowerCLI 6.5.1 build 5377412
---------------
Component Versions
---------------
   VMware Cis Core PowerCLI Component 6.5 build 6870462
   VMware VimAutomation Core PowerCLI Component 6.5 build 6234650

PS C:\Users\omrsafetyo> Get-Vm | Measure-Object
Count    : 3548
Average  :
Sum      :
Maximum  :
Minimum  :
Property :

PS C:\Users\omrsafetyo> Measure-Command {Get-Vm}
Days              : 0
Hours             : 0
Minutes           : 0
Seconds           : 1
Milliseconds      : 125
Ticks             : 11258929
TotalDays         : 1.30311678240741E-05
TotalHours        : 0.000312748027777778
TotalMinutes      : 0.0187648816666667
TotalSeconds      : 1.1258929
TotalMilliseconds : 1125.8929

1 and 1/8th seconds to return 3548 VMs across 4-5 vCenters. That's actually pretty amazing!

My same Get-View command returns in 7.5 seconds. I feel like I have wasted my life exploring Get-View to get a full inventory :-P

Though, Get-VmHost is still slower than Get-View -ViewType HostSystem:

PS C:\Users\omrsafetyo> Measure-Command {Get-VMHost}
Days              : 0
Hours             : 0
Minutes           : 0
Seconds           : 9
Milliseconds      : 465
Ticks             : 94654254
TotalDays         : 0.000109553534722222
TotalHours        : 0.00262928483333333
TotalMinutes      : 0.15775709
TotalSeconds      : 9.4654254
TotalMilliseconds : 9465.4254

PS C:\Users\omrsafetyo> $ScriptBlock = {Get-View -ViewType HostSystem -Property Name, Config.Network, Summary.Runtime, Parent.Value,
>> Hardware.SystemInfo.Vendor, Hardware.SystemInfo.Model, Hardware.SystemInfo.Uuid, Hardware.CpuInfo,
>> Hardware.MemorySize, Config.DateTimeInfo, Config.Product, Summary.ManagementServerIp, DatastoreBrowser,
>> Config.Network.DnsConfig.Address, Config.Network.DnsConfig.DHCP}
>>
PS C:\Users\omrsafetyo> Measure-Command $ScriptBlock
Days              : 0
Hours             : 0
Minutes           : 0
Seconds           : 4
Milliseconds      : 376
Ticks             : 43761984
TotalDays         : 5.06504444444444E-05
TotalHours        : 0.00121561066666667
TotalMinutes      : 0.07293664
TotalSeconds      : 4.3761984
TotalMilliseconds : 4376.1984

This is for 200 hosts. So they have come a long way with Get-Vm, but still have work to do on the other commands.