vmcli - create empty CD-rom drive

[Stickybit2000]

Hi all

I'm struggling with creating an empty CD-ROM drive. I found this single example on how to create drive with a disk, but I cannot find actual documenation om vmcli (which btw is missing version information within the Windows binary).

echo "----create sata disk for iso mounting-----"
vmcli Sata SetPresent sata0 1 ~/Desktop/test/windowstest.vmx
vmcli Disk SetBackingInfo sata0:0 cdrom_image ~/Documents/iso/22621.1.220506-1250.ni_release_CLIENT_ENTERPRISES_OEM_x64FRE_en-us.iso 1 ~/Desktop/test/windowstest.vmx
 vmcli Disk SetPresent sata0:0 1 ~/Desktop/test/windowstest.vmx

Any hints on how to add an empty CD-rom drive?

Br. Stickybit

[Alexandru Capras]

Hi,

Check this post and script from @LucD

[Fred.S]

Get-VM fails for Workstation.. 

Pretty sure I went down this road only to find it's been deprecated.

[Alexandru Capras]

I've managed to get something working with this script:

$vmxPath = "Path to .vmx file"

$vmx = Get-Content $vmxPath

# Add a new CD-ROM device
$cdromConfig = @(
    'ide1:0.present = "TRUE"',
    'ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"',  
    'ide1:0.fileName = "auto"',        
    'ide1:0.startConnected = "TRUE"'
)

$vmx += $cdromConfig
$vmx | Set-Content $vmxPath

Write-Host "CD-ROM device added to VMX file."


It's not perfect, but it might help you build your own version.
The script edits the .vmx file by adding those four lines to define a new, empty CD-ROM device.
If you run the script multiple times on the same VM, the .vmx file may get corrupted. It happened to me when I was curious if I could add more than two CD-ROM devices, but it works correctly if you run it once.

[Stickybit2000]

To my best knowledge - PowerCLI is not for Workstation.

[Morc001]

I think the only way is to "share" the host CD-ROM device with the host. How to do that with vmcli I have no idea.

[Stickybit2000]

Solved it by doing these vmcli commands. Not to proud of the "configparams SetEntry" though - but I don't think there is any way around.

Sata SetPresent sata0 1 
Disk SetBackingInfo sata0:0 cdrom_raw "auto detect" 1
configparams SetEntry sata0:0.autodetect TRUE 
configparams SetEntry sata0:0.present TRUE