Slide 1

Slide 1 text

Documenting your Virtual Infrastructure with PowerShell

Slide 2

Slide 2 text

Tim Carman Senior Consulting Engineer Thomas Duryea Logicalis @tpcarman github.com/tpcarman timcarman.net

Slide 3

Slide 3 text

My Problem The constant need to deliver As Built documentation for multiple technologies for every customer project

Slide 4

Slide 4 text

My Objective To automate the creation of As Built documentation in formats which are clear and consistent, using a process which is simple to build and manage

Slide 5

Slide 5 text

My Inspiration RVTools, vCheck, vDocumentation Fantastic tools which provide a significant amount of information however they only report on VMware vSphere environments and do not report on other related infrastructure. Jake Rutski’s vSphere Documentation Script A fantastic concept, which provided a lot of great information, however it required MS Word and I regularly had issues with output formatting. I also found it quite complex to tailor to my requirements. Build It Myself Limited PowerShell skills. Any document framework I could produce would take significant time and effort to learn, produce and maintain. Some existing PS modules were useful but each had their limitations.

Slide 6

Slide 6 text

My Solution PScribo (pronounced 'skree-bo') is a PowerShell module which is used to create a document in a standardised format. The document can be exported into various formats by "plugins", for example, text, HTML, XML and/or Microsoft Word format.

Slide 7

Slide 7 text

❑ Open Source Project – github.com/iainbrighton/PScribo ❑ Supports multiple formats: Word, HTML, XML & Text ❑ It does not require MS Word to produce documents ❑ Available via PS Gallery module or GitHub bundle ❑ YouTube Demo - https://youtu.be/pNIC70bjBZE ❑ Iain started the project to assist Carl Webster with his projects PScribo by Iain Brighton (@iainbrighton)

Slide 8

Slide 8 text

My Demo

Slide 9

Slide 9 text

❑ The vSphere As Built and other scripts are still in development. What you see today may or may not end up in the v1.0 release. ❑ I would consider my PowerShell skills to be intermediate at best. There are likely to be many examples of bad coding. ❑ My Git skills are worse ❑ I use VScode - Tabs vs Spaces is now irrelevant My Disclaimer

Slide 10

Slide 10 text

❑ I would like your feedback and contributions ❑ Develop report types (Summary, Detailed, Complete) ❑ Add Email capabilities, Theme/Style support, Config files ❑ Template the documentation script ❑ Add scripts to PS Gallery ❑ Add multi vCenter Support (vSphere) ❑ Add more health checks, more details, more vendors My Next Steps

Slide 11

Slide 11 text

Thank You Questions? @tpcarman github.com/tpcarman timcarman.net