Using PowerCLI and OS Customisations to Rapidly Provison a Q/A Environment

In this example below I've presented a PowerCLI script that will provision 20 desktop VMs to be used wihtin a Q/A testing process to support Automated Testing

# We will name the VMs “QAVMUD-01”, “QAVMUD-02”.....

Step 1:  Source Control Your Configuration

a. Download GIT for Windows
b. Create a new folder structure for your project e.g.
mkdir c:\devops\irm\qabuild\git
cd c:\devops\irm\qabuild\git
git init --bare # which creates a new git repo
c. Create a file to hold the list of static IPs you wish to assign
192.168.0.11
192.168.0.12
192.168.0.13
............

md c:\devops\irm\qabuild\working
cd c:\devops\irm\qabuild\working
git clone c:\devops\irm\qabuild\git

Step 2:

$strNameTemplate = “QAVMWSUD-{0:D2}” # QA / Virtual Machine / Windows / User Desktop / Two Digit 00...99

$objCluster = Get-Cluster LocalDC-Non-Production
$objTemplatee = Get-Template QATMPLWIN8UD

$objVMList = @()

for ($i = 1; $i –le 20; $i++)
{
$strVMName = $strNameTemplate –f $i
$objVMList += New-VM –Name $strVMName –ResourcePool $objCluster –Template $objTemplate

}

$staticWindowsIPList = Import-CSV c:\devops\irm\qabuild\working\git\WindowsQAIPs.csv

$objWindowsSpec = New-OSCustomizationSpec –Name WindowsCustomization –Domain abbeydev.com –DnsServer “192.168.0.100”, “192.168.0.110” –NamingScheme VM –OSType Windows

$objWindowsSpecClone = New-OSCustomizationSpec –Spec $objWindowsSpec –Type NonPersistent

for ($i = 0; $i –lt $objVMList.Count; $i++)
{
$ip = $staticWindowsIPList[$i].IP
$nicMapping = Get-OSCustomizationNicMapping –OSCustomizationSpec $objWindowsSpecClone

$nicMapping | Set-OSCustomizationNicMapping –IpMode UseStaticIP –IpAddress $ip –SubnetMask “255.255.252.0” –DefaultGateway “192.168.0.1”

Set-VM –VM $objVMList[$i] –OSCustomizationSpec $objWindowsSpecClone –Confirm:$false

}

So what is the advantage of this

Well one very simple change you could make

Make the VM Template, OS Type parameters and this gives you the ability to create a QA environment with the same code as you require.