How do you interogate cmdlets to find all available objects?

[solson67]

Being a new PowerShell user I am wondering how to find out what objects are available within a cmdlet? I have tried piping through get-view and also format-custom to find available objects.

How did the author of this code know that the following was available under the Config object? And how do you find all of the other available objects?

$VMHostView.Config.ConsoleReservation.ServiceConsoleReserved

Using the Get-VMhost cmdlet as an example here is what I've found.

1. Get-VMhost | Get-View

Runtime : VMware.Vim.HostRuntimeInfo

Summary : VMware.Vim.HostListSummary

Hardware : VMware.Vim.HostHardwareInfo

Capability : VMware.Vim.HostCapability

ConfigManager : VMware.Vim.HostConfigManager

Config : VMware.Vim.HostConfigInfo

Vm : {VirtualMachine-vm-104, VirtualMachine-vm-37, VirtualMachine-vm-41}

Datastore : {Datastore-datastore-13, Datastore-datastore-15}

Network : {Network-network-17, Network-network-18, Network-network-19}

DatastoreBrowser : HostDatastoreBrowser-datastorebrowser-63

SystemResources : VMware.Vim.HostSystemResourceInfo

Parent : ClusterComputeResource-domain-c7

CustomValue : {}

OverallStatus : green

ConfigStatus : green

ConfigIssue : {}

EffectiveRole : {-1}

Permission : {}

Name : esx01.company.local

DisabledMethod : {ExitMaintenanceMode_Task, PowerUpHostFromStandBy_Task, ReconnectHost_Task}

RecentTask : {}

DeclaredAlarmState : {alarm-1.host-10, alarm-13.host-10, alarm-14.host-10, alarm-15.host-10...}

TriggeredAlarmState : {}

AlarmActionsEnabled : True

Tag : {}

Value : {}

AvailableField : {}

MoRef : HostSystem-host-10

Client : VMware.Vim.VimClient

1. Get-VMhost | Format-Custom

class VMHostImpl

{

State = Connected

ConnectionState = Connected

PowerState = PoweredOn

VMSwapfileDatastoreId =

VMSwapfilePolicy = Inherit

ParentId = ClusterComputeResource-domain-c7

Manufacturer = HP

Model = ProLiant DL380 G5

NumCpu = 8

CpuTotalMhz = 23992

CpuUsageMhz = 88

MemoryTotalMB = 8190

MemoryUsageMB = 1369

ProcessorType = Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5450 @ 3.00GHz

HyperthreadingActive = False

TimeZone =

class VMHostTimeZoneImpl

{

VMHostId = HostSystem-host-10

Description = CDT

GmtOffset = -18000

Key = America/Chicago

Name = America/Chicago

}

Version = 4.0.0

Build = 256968

CustomFields =

[

]

Id = HostSystem-host-10

Name = esx01.company.local

}

[RvdNieuwendijk]

To get all the properties of an PowerShell object you can use the Get-Member cmdlet. But if you want to get all the subproperties this can be time consuming. Luckily there are some scripts that you can use to do this all at once. For example take a look at the Get-ALLPropertyNames function on List ALL properties and subproperties of a variable in Powershell.

Regards, Robert

[LucD]

And don't forget Carter's post called Exploring your objects.

____________

Blog: LucD notes

Twitter: lucd22

[solson67]

Thank you very much for the quick reply.

This function proved to provide all of the information that I have been looking for.

-Scott

[admin]

With the newly released PowerCLI 4.1 we've introduced improved help reference that contains information about the output types. You can check it out here: http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/PowerCLI/PowerCLI41/html/index.html (section "All Types")