Renaming files on a datastore

[Charlie Silverman]

Is there a way to programmatically rename a file on a datastore with PowerCLI?   I know that I can copy files to and from using Copy-DatastoreItem, and I know that I could just copy down, rename it locally, then copy it back up, but that is far too time consuming.

Short of opening an SSH session to a host, is there another way to do this?

If people are asking for a use case, let's just say that I need to rename an .iso file that is there for reasons.

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[Crispin Bivans]

I second that question. I have a use-case where I detach VMDKs using the powercli SDK, ssh in, to use the old vmdk commands to 'move' the vmdk to another vm's folder, and then use ssh again to rename the file, and then attach. It would be sweet if there was a powershell way to accomplish this without ssh. I already have the code for detach/attach, so its just the move/rename I'm lacking.

[Charlie Silverman]

Keep in mind that this is all processing through your workstation so, in the case of moving a VMDK from one datastore to another, you're essentially copying it to your local machine, then copying it back to the new location, so it can increase the time it takes considerably.

You would probably be better off establishing an SSH session directly to a host and then passing the commands through that way:

$hostname = "myhost.mydomain.com"

#Query for SSH credentials (You could save this to a credential file to read back again later for automation)
$myhostcred = Get-Credential -Message "Enter credentials for host $hostname"

# Get the host information
$myHost = Get-VMHost -Name $hostname

#Check the host to see if SSH is enabled and enable it if not.
$mySSH = Get-VMHostService -VMHost $myHost | where {$_.key -eq "TSM-SSH"}
$mySSHstatus = $mySSH.Running
if ($mySSHStatus -eq $false) {
    $mySSH = Start-VMHostService -HostService $mySSH
    $mySSHstatus = $mySSH.Running
    if ($mySSHstatus -eq $false) {
        Write-Host "Unable to enable SSH on the host"
        exit
    }
}

# Establish an SSH session to the host and run the command.
$sshcmd = "mv /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/oldfolder/mydrive.vmdk /vmfs/volumes/datastore2/newfolder/mydrive.vmdk"
$ssh = New-SSHSession -ComputerName $hostname -Credential $myhostcred -AcceptKey -KeepAliveInterval 5
$result = Invoke-SSHCommand -SessionId $ssh.SessionId -Command $sshcmd -Timeout 30

# Write the resulting console output to the screen.
Write-Host $result.Output

# Close the SSH Session quietly
$nooutput = Remove-SSHSession -SessionID $ssh.SessionId

The only downside to this approach is needing to request and/or store the credential information, but it will be far more time efficient than trying to do it through a PSDrive.

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[Charlie Silverman]

As it turns out, I did actually already find information about how to do this but I had misinterpreted something so it didn't work for me before.

There is a method for accessing a datastore via PowerCLI as a regular drive so you can use any of the methods that you would usually use (Remove-Item, Rename-Item, etc.).   This is done using a PSDrive,

Sample code for this would be:

Connect-ViServer vcenter.mydomain.com
$datastore = Get-Datastore mydatastore
New-PSDrive -Location $datastore -Name myds -PSProvider VimDatastore -Root '\'

At this point, you can access the datastore as any other drive at myds:\, so to rename a file on the datastore, you could do something like:

Rename-Item -Path myds:\ISOs\myimage.iso -NewName mynewimage.iso

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[Crispin Bivans]

Sweet, thanks so much

[ITSavant]

Yes, use the data store browser service available through the vcenter connection.content object. The PSDrive method is slow and clunky 

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