Invoke-VMScript write-progress not outputting

[dgreebe]

Hi All,

For the past few weeks I'm building a deployment script based on Excel-input.

Basiclly to process goes like this;

- you fill in an excel-file with all kind of resources like CPU, MEM, Diskspace but also if you like to install IIS or SQL.

- When starting the script, the system reads all the cells of that excel-sheet and fills in variable that PowerCLI will be using.

- PowerCLi is then creating the VM, based on your input.

- After VM is created, there is only 1 file that will gets executing by invoke-vmscript.

That line looks like;

Invoke-VMScript -vm $VMName -ScriptText "Powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File c:\PSScripts\StartConfiguration.ps1" -GuestUser administrator -GuestPassword *******

That is a powershell script that will loop through a folder with all kind of PS-scripts. I have to do this so I have a modular deployment-script.

Those PS-scripts on the local VM have write-progress and write-output, but I don't see them in my main-console. The one where I started all of this....

When I launch them on my vm itself, I do see the progress-bar and the output.

How do I get this working that I see the progress within my main-screen?

By the way, I also tried executing one file (with progress-bar...) with invoke-vmscript but also that doens't work

My invoke-vmscript looks like;

Invoke-VMScript -vm $VMName -ScriptText "Powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File c:\PSScripts\001-WAN-LAN_networkconfig.ps1" -GuestUser administrator -GuestPassword *******

Hope someone knows.

best regards

Dave

[LucD]

The Invoke-VMScript cmdlet uses the GuestOperationsManager methods to run a command on or copy files to/from the guest OS.

For that it uses the VMware Tools interface.

In short when you use Invoke-VMscript to run a PowerShell script inside a guest, what happens in the background is the following:

• copy the script/command to the guest OS
• run the script/command from copied file
• capture the resulting output in a file
• copy the file with the output back to the caller of Invoke-VMScript

The Write-Progress output is in a stream that is not captured by the above process, hence you don't get that output on the calling side.

On a sidenote, the Invoke-VMScript is not an interactive type of session.

If you want to see progress on the calling station, you will need to go to PowerShell Remote Sessions.