Manage Inventory Objects Through Inventory Drives

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

Prerequisites

Verify that you are connected to a vCenter Server system.

Procedure

  1. Navigate to a host in your server inventory by running the cd command with the full path to the host.
    cd Folder01\DataCenter01\host\Web\Host01
  2. View the content of the host using the ls command.
    ls
    ls is the UNIX style alias of the Get-ChildItem cmdlet.
    This command returns the virtual machines and the root resource pool of the host.
  3. View only the virtual machines on the host.
    Get-VM
    When called within the inventory drive, Get-VM gets a list only of the virtual machines on the current drive location.
  4. Delete a virtual machine named VM1.
    del VM1
  5. Rename a virtual machine, for example, from VM1New to VM1.
    ren VM1New VM1
  6. Start all virtual machines with names that start with VM.
    dir VM* | Start-VM