powershell scripts to leverage UBERalign for virtual disk alignment

This post is meant to be an example of how you can leverage Nick Weaver's creation of the UBERalign tool's REST API in order to kick off alignment and checking jobs for Virtual Disks from the Powershell console.  The scripts attached allow command and control capability of the UBERalign Virtual Appliance along with necessary steps for the VMware environment to orchestrate an alignment.

See the following links for information.

http://nickapedia.com/2011/11/03/straighten-up-with-a-new-uber-tool-presenting-uberalign/

http://nickapedia.com/2011/11/07/for-advanced-users-uberalign-api-cli-powershell/

http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2011/11/first-of-a-series-of-holiday-giftsuberalign.html

The first link above is from Nick's page where the tool can be downloaded.  It consists of two different pieces, a Virtual Appliance which servers to receive REST API calls and does the heavy lifting work in aligning VMs, as well as the UBERalign .NET console.  The console's purpose is mainly to coordinate or orchestrate alignment jobs to specified aligners (vApps).

An option that makes the tool UBERcool is that it has a REST interface at the Virtual Appliance layer.  This means that we can cook up our own Powershell (or language of choice) logic to work with our VM's and then coordinate the alignment of those VMs.  See the attached screenshots and scripts!

Thanks Nick, great addition to the community and a great representation providing REST to make an UBERscalable tool.

Example runtime

get-vm winxptest* | .\ps_uberaligner.ps1 -valignervm valigner01 -valignerip ip

Features (ps_uberaligner)

Checks to see that you have started PowerCLI and logged into a viserver

Programmatic approach to sending jobs to aligner

Snapshot prior to alignment

Background job runs to lock aligner exclusively for system's use

Allow for receving pipe input, ie. get-vm vmname* | .\ps_uberaligner.ps1

Align, check alignment, space reclaim functionality

Linux style output of operations (OK, FAILED)

Progress bar for status of alignment

Futures

Allow to receive action to perform on VMs from pipe input, ie. select *,@{n="action";e={"align"}}

Multiple virtual disks on same VM

Multiple Aligner Support (can be done via multiple powercli windows, or other methods)

vCenter plugin

WARNING: This tool can cause permanent damage to a Virtual Machine and its disks, this is not an EMC supported tool, and we advise this currently be used in lab environments.  Please post questions to this forum.