To run PowerCLI cmdlets on vSphere and perform administration or monitoring tasks, you must establish a connection to an ESXi host or a vCenter Server system.

With PowerCLI, you can automate various administration tasks on virtual machines, for example retrieving information, shutting down and powering off virtual machines.

You can add standalone hosts to a vCenter Server system by using the Add-VMHost cmdlet. After adding the hosts, you will be able to manage them through the vCenter Server system.

You can set the license key for a host on a vCenter Server system by using the LicenseKey parameter of the Set-VMHost cmdlet.

To complete some specific administration tasks, you might need to activate maintenance mode for a host. On vCenter Server, you can activate maintenance mode by using the Set-VMHost cmdlet.

By using PowerCLI cmdlets, you can automate creating different inventory objects on vSphere.

You can use a specification provided in an XML file to automate the creation of virtual machines on vCenter Server.

You can use PowerCLI to create virtual machines templates and convert them to virtual machines on vCenter Server.

You can use the Snapshot parameter of Get-VM to take a snapshot of virtual machines and then revert the states of the virtual machines back to the snapshot.

You can use the Set-VMResourceConfiguration cmdlet to modify the resource configuration properties of a virtual machine, including memory, CPU shares, and other settings.

With PowerCLI, you can get information about all available hosts in a data center and view their properties.

You can modify host configuration, including advanced settings related to virtual machine migration, and apply them to another host.

You can migrate a virtual machine between vCenter Server hosts by using vSphere vMotion.

You can migrate a virtual machine between datastores using the VMware Storage vMotion feature of vCenter Server.

The VMware Host Profiles feature enables you to create standard configurations for ESXi hosts. With PowerCLI, you can automate creation and modifying of host profiles.

To simplify operational management of large-scale environments, you can apply standard configurations called host profiles to hosts on vCenter Server. If you want to set up a host to use the same host profile as a reference host, you can attach the host to a profile.

You can use the PowerCLI cmdlets to automate tasks for viewing and managing statistics for vCenter Server inventory objects.

You can set the NIC teaming policy on a vSwitch. The NIC teaming policy determines the load balancing and failover settings of a virtual switch and lets you mark NICs as unused.

With PowerCLI, you can create and manage vApps.

With PowerCLI, you can start and stop vApps, and modify their properties.

You can import and export vApps to OVA and OVF files.

For a host, you can enable iSCSI, add iSCSI targets, and create new host storages.

You can get information about existing passthrough devices and add new SCSI and PCI devices to virtual machines and hosts.

You can create custom properties to add more information to vSphere objects. Custom properties based on extension data properties correspond directly to the property of the corresponding .NET view object.

You can create a custom property by writing a script and providing a name for the property. The script evaluates when the custom property is called for the first time.

You can apply a custom configuration to a cloned virtual machine by using a customization object.

You can modify the default NIC mapping object of a customization specification and apply the specification on a newly created virtual machine.

You can modify multiple NIC mapping objects of a customization specification and apply the specification to an existing virtual machine.

You can deploy multiple virtual machines with a single network adapter and configure the deployed virtual machines to use static IP addresses by applying a customization specification.

You can deploy multiple virtual machines with two network adapters each and configure each adapter to use specific network settings by applying a customization specification.

With PowerCLI, you can automate management of vSphere permissions, roles, and privileges.

You can see which action triggers are configured for an alarm.

With PowerCLI, you can create and modify vCenter Server alarm actions and alarm triggers.

In some cases, you might want to remove obsolete alarm actions and triggers.

You can customize the behavior of a cluster on a vCenter Server system by creating and modifying custom advanced settings for it.

You can modify the email configuration settings of a vCenter Server.

To use SNMP, you must first configure the SNMP settings of the vCenter Server.

You can use the Get-EsxTop cmdlet to retrieve real-time data for troubleshooting performance problems.

You can use the Get-View cmdlet to filter vSphere objects before performing various actions on them.

To save time and efforts, you can use Get-View to retrieve PowerCLI views from previously retrieved view objects.

You can use the Get-View cmdlet to update server-side objects.

You can reboot a host by using its corresponding view object.

You can modify the CPU levels of a virtual machine using a combination of the Get-View and Get-VIObjectByVIView cmdlets.

You can browse the default inventory drive and view its contents.

In addition to the default drive, you can create new custom inventory drives by using the New-PSDrive cmdlet.

You can use the PowerCLI Inventory Provider to browse, modify, and remove inventory objects from inventory drives.

You can use the PowerCLI Datastore Provider to browse the default datastore drives: vmstore and vmstores.

You can use the PowerCLI Datastore Provider to create custom datastore drives.

You can use the PowerCLI Datastore Provider to browse datastores from datastore drives.

To avoid unexpected timeouts, you can run Set-PowerCLIConfiguration to modify the PowerCLI settings for long-running Web tasks.

You can assign tags to different types of objects, such as virtual machines, resource pools, datastores, and vSphere distributed switches. You can use tags to retrieve a specific group of objects.

The cmdlets provided in the VMware.VimAutomation.VDS module let you manage networking with vSphere distributed switches and port groups.

You can deploy a virtual machine from a content library template.

You can deploy a vApp from a content library template.

You can create a VM-VM DRS affinity rule within a cluster.

You can create a VM-VMHost DRS rule within a cluster after creating a VM DRS cluster group and a VMHost DRS cluster group.