#LFMF VMware datastores are case sensitive!

Working in a Microsoft world with only brief forays into Unix and Apple server technologies, I tend to forget some lessons from those alternatives :-)

So, today when working on some PowerShell scripts to copy datastore folders around for backup purposes I was a bit stumped by a copy failing as no object was found. The essential components of the script are:

Add-PSSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core

Connect-VIServer -Server FQDN of server or vCentre -Protocol https
$datastore = Get-Datastore Test
New-PSDrive -Location $datastore -Name TT -PSProvider VimDatastore -Root '\'
Copy-DatastoreItem 'TT:\sage\*' 'J:\esx\test\sage'
start-vm -vm 'Sage'

The Add-PSSnapin puts the VMware supplied PowerCLI snapins in place to manage ESX/vCentre architecture
Connect-VIServer does what it says on the tin
New-PSDrive creates a PowerShell drive mapping to the datastore in question so that it can be maipulated., and the Copy-DatastoreItem with those parameters copies the entire folder over (you can recurse through folders and so on if you wish, this is a simple copy)


Can you see the mistake, no I couldn't either!

The script would fail on the copy-datastoreitem command and jump onto the start-vm. Now I know there should be error handling and all that stuff, but this was a quick 1-off to sort something out.

So I browsed teh data store through the vCentre interface, all was there, the target folders were there...

In the end the Unix issue of capitalisation rang a distant echo. The Sage folder on the datastore was precisely that "Sage" not "sage".

Quick edit, and all is running.

Phew!

'scuse the inappropriate word wraps in the code.

#LFMF #PowerCLI Get-Folder contents #PowerShell

Because a “copy folder from the Datastore browser” backup of VM files is so inefficient, I’m writing a PowerShell process to improve my backups of the virtualised world.  Because I can move VM’s around onto different storage locations a hard coded “goto this datastore, download these VM’s” is going to need rewriting every time I do this.*

So I resolved to use as a starting point the Get-Folder command (and spawn a generic process for each Folder) that I have.

So I started to look at a folder (from the VMs and Templates view, not Hosts and Clusters) to do some testing on.  As the only, completely non active folder is Templates, I thought I’d start with that.

So the line of code I was looking at was something like:

Get-VM -Location (Get-Folder Templates) | Sort Name)

However I was getting nothing back, the code would run (there’s a lot more, but I won’t bore you with it until it’s all working), and there was a null result.  I didn’t quite spend days and days looking at it (see King Crimson - Indiscipline, Lyrics here), but I did spend quite a while thinking I’d got something wrong.

Then I had a thought – isn’t there a Get-Template command too?

Coded like this:
Get-Template -Location (Get-Folder Templates) | Sort Name)

I get some results.  Stupid of me to test a folder with wholly atypical contents

More later!

*I know some will wonder why I take flat file backups of VM’s.  It’s because I’m paranoid OK?  I copy them to external USB/FireWire drives for complete recoverability.  It’s not like I do it every day or anything