I have a need to be able to run a script in linux to power on/off and check the power state of virtual machines. These could be windows or linux VMs. Since I have a dozen esx hosts 4.1 at present and 1 virtual center server, writing a script that contacts the virtual center server, finds each esx host then finds the vm in question seems wasteful. Then there is the task at hand of powering on or off or getting power state. My oritional thought was to ssh to the vSphere Management Assistant virtual appliance. I found some useful perl scripts that can find the esx hosts but other references to various commandlets and using PowerCLI don't seem to lead any place useful. It sounds like there should be a linux install for powerCLI but I can'r find it. But is this the best way to do this? (and by the way I don't know perl - not in our shop).
You would think there would be a simple command api I could run from a bash shell to check a VMs state, power it on or off (soft or hard) and do other things.
I have to power on and off, in sequence a long list of vmware guests, Oracle VM (yes that nasty "other" hypervisor)'s guests in full orchastration.