How to Install VMware PowerCLI on Powershell Core

The latest versions of PowerCLI work very well on systems that have PowerShell Core installed. This is great as it allows us to work with VMware PowerShell cmdlets from a Linux system rather than being restricted to using Windows, if that isn’t your preference. It also opens up some other options such as running PowerShell from within a docker container.

In this short article we will take a look at how to install VMware PowerCLI on a system running PowerShell Core.

First of all, from a console session, start Powerhell:

$ pwsh

Once we have the PS /> Powershell prompt, we can go ahead and install the PowerCLI module from the PowerShell Gallery.

PS /> install-module -Name VMware.PowerCLI

You will then receive the following message if PSGallery isn’t currently trusted.

Untrusted repository
You are installing the modules from an untrusted repository. If you trust this repository, change its InstallationPolicy value by running the Set-PSRepository cmdlet. Are you sure you want to install the modules from
'PSGallery'?
[Y] Yes  [A] Yes to All  [N] No  [L] No to All  [S] Suspend  [?] Help (default is "N"):

After choosing [Y] Yes the module will proceed to install, which will take a minute or so. As a quick way to check the PowerCLI commands are now available for us we can run a get-command and look for anything with ‘vm’ in its name:

PS /> gcm *vm*

CommandType     Name                                               Version    Source
-----------     ----                                               -------    ------
Alias           Answer-VMQuestion                                  12.4.0.18… VMware.VimAutomation.Core
Alias           Apply-VMHostProfile                                12.4.0.18… VMware.VimAutomation.Core
Alias           Connect-VmcServer                                  12.4.0.18… VMware.VimAutomation.Vmc
Alias           Disconnect-VmcServer                               12.4.0.18… VMware.VimAutomation.Vmc
Alias           Export-VM                                          12.4.0.18… VMware.VimAutomation.Core
Alias           Get-PIVM                                           12.0.0.15… VMware.VimAutomation.Cloud
Alias           Get-PIVMTemplate                                   12.0.0.15… VMware.VimAutomation.Cloud
Alias           New-PIVM                                           12.0.0.15… VMware.VimAutomation.Cloud
Alias           Restart-PIVM                                       12.0.0.15… VMware.VimAutomation.Cloud
Alias           Restart-PIVMGuest                                  12.0.0.15… VMware.VimAutomation.Cloud
Alias           Shutdown-VMGuest                                   12.4.0.18… VMware.VimAutomation.Core
Alias           Start-PIVM                                         12.0.0.15… VMware.VimAutomation.Cloud
Alias           Stop-PIVM                                          12.0.0.15… VMware.VimAutomation.Cloud
Alias           Stop-PIVMGuest                                     12.0.0.15… VMware.VimAutomation.Cloud
Alias           Suspend-PIVM                                       12.0.0.15… VMware.VimAutomation.Cloud
Function        Initialize-CertificateManagementVcenterVmcaRootCr… 1.0.104.1… VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.CertManagement
Function        Initialize-NamespacesInstancesVMServiceSpec        1.0.104.1… VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.Namespaces
Function        Initialize-VchaClusterNodeVmInfo                   1.0.104.1… VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.VCHA
Function        Initialize-VchaClusterVmInfo                       1.0.104.1… VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.VCHA
Function        Initialize-VMClonePlacementSpec                    1.0.104.1… VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter
Function        Initialize-VMCloneSpec                             1.0.104.1… VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter
Function        Initialize-VmConsoleTicketsCreateSpec              1.0.104.1… VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.Vm

Good news! We now have the VMware PowerCLI cmdlets installed. We can check all the modules that have been installed using get-module:

PS /> get-module
Microsoft.PowerShell.Management   PSReadLine                        VMware.VimAutomation.Cloud        VMware.VimAutomation.License      VMware.VimAutomation.Storage
Microsoft.PowerShell.Utility      VMware.CloudServices              VMware.VimAutomation.Common       VMware.VimAutomation.Nsxt         VMware.VimAutomation.Vds
PackageManagement                 VMware.Vim                        VMware.VimAutomation.Core         VMware.VimAutomation.Sdk          VMware.VimAutomation.Vmc
PowerShellGet                     VMware.VimAutomation.Cis.Core     VMware.VimAutomation.HorizonView  VMware.VimAutomation.Srm          VMware.VimAutomation.vROps

As you can see, we have modules for interacting with many VMware products, including NSX-T and vROPs. We can check the version of individual modules. For example:

PS /> get-module vmware.vimautomation.vrops

ModuleType Version    PreRelease Name                                ExportedCommands
---------- -------    ---------- ----                                ----------------
Script     12.2.0.17…            VMware.VimAutomation.vROps          {Connect-OMServer, Disconnect-OMServer, Get-OMAlert, Get-OMAlertDefinition…}

We’re now ready to start working with PowerCLI in Powershell Core! In this article you have learned how to import the VMware PowerCLI modules into PowerShell core, along with how to confirm they have installed correctly, and which version of the module you have present.