Can powercli report the status of a windows service?

[Squigglymonkey]

We found out that we need to reinstall some software, if a particular service is not running. Can powercli be used to report on services?
(Windows server VM's)

[LucD]

If you have the VMware Tools installed on those VM, and you have credentials for the guest OS on the VM, you can use the Invoke-VMScript cmdlet.

Something like this

$script = @"

Get-Service -Name $serviceName

"@

$VMName = 'srv1'

$serviceName = 'WinRM'

Invoke-VMScript -VM $vmName -ScriptText $script -ScriptType Powershell

[Squigglymonkey]

Thank you for the quick answer.
I got an error initially
<code>

  Get-Service : Missing an argument for parameter 'Name'. Specify a parameter of

|  type 'System.String[]' and try again.

|  At line:2 char:13

|  + Get-Service -Name

|  +             ~~~~~

|      + CategoryInfo          : InvalidArgument: (:) [Get-Service], ParameterBin

|     dingException

|      + FullyQualifiedErrorId : MissingArgument,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.Ge

|     tServiceCommand

</code>

So  I commented out Servicename = 'winrm' and made the script block specific  for winrm and it worked for me.

<code>

$script = @"

Get-Service -Name 'WinRm'

"@

$VMName = 'srv1'

#$serviceName = 'WinRM'

Invoke-VMScript -VM $vmName -ScriptText $script -ScriptType Powershell

</code>

What is the best approach to run this against all of the Windows server vm's?

I'd like the output as one thing, a csv, or in notepad, without all the lines that are around it.

[LucD]

You could do something like this

$script = @"

Get-Service -Name 'WinRm' | Select -ExpandProperty Status

"@

$report = Get-VM | where{$_.Guest.OSFullName -match "Window"} | %{

   Invoke-VMScript -VM $_ -ScriptText $script -ScriptType Powershell |

  select @{N='VM';E={$_.VM.Name}},@{N='Status';E={$_.ScriptOutput.Trim()}}

}

$report | Export-Csv .\report.csv -NoTypeInformation -UseCulture

[Squigglymonkey]

This mostly worked, the end output was just what I wanted.
2 things though. Our network security alarmed on this activity with this showing up in their console:

powershell -NonInteractive -EncodedCommand cABvAHcAZQByAHMAaABlAGwAbAAuAGUAeABlACAALQBPAHUAdABwAHUAdABGAG8AcgBtAGEAdAAgAHQAZQB4AHQAIAAtAE4AbwBuAEkAbgB0AGUAcgBhAGMAdABpAHYAZQAgAC0AQwBvAG0AbQBhAG4AZAAgACcAJgAgAHsARwBlAHQALQBTAGUAcgB2AGkAYwBlACAALQBOAGEAbQBlACAAJwAnAFgAYQBnAHQAJwAnACAAfAAgAFMAZQBsAGUAYwB0ACAALQBFAH=

which decoded was something like this:powershell.exe -OutputFormat text -NonInteractive -Command '& {Get-Service -Name ''WinRm'' | Select -ExpandProperty Status}' .....

Can this work be done without the encoding part?

If I wanted to run it against a known set of server names, would this be it?

$script = @"

Get-Service -Name 'WinRm' | Select -ExpandProperty Status

"@

$report = read-host = .\server.txt| %{

   Invoke-VMScript -VM $_ -ScriptText $script -ScriptType Powershell |

  select @{N='VM';E={$_.VM.Name}},@{N='Status';E={$_.ScriptOutput.Trim()}}

}

$report | Export-Csv .\report.csv -NoTypeInformation -UseCulture

[LucD]

I'm afraid not, the Invoke-VMScript internals do this encoding.

If that .txt file contains 1 VM name per line, you could do

$script = @"

Get-Service -Name 'WinRm' | Select -ExpandProperty Status

"@

$report = Get-VM -Name (Get-Content -Path .\server.txt) | %{

   Invoke-VMScript -VM $_ -ScriptText $script -ScriptType Powershell |

  select @{N='VM';E={$_.VM.Name}},@{N='Status';E={$_.ScriptOutput.Trim()}}

}

$report | Export-Csv .\report.csv -NoTypeInformation -UseCulture

[Squigglymonkey]

Sorry LucD, I was looking aback at old questions and saw I did not choose a correct answer.