VMware announced the general availability of the VMware Infrastructure (VI) Toolkit (for Windows), a new addition to its scripting toolkit portfolio that enhances automation of virtual datacenters. Offered free of charge, the toolkit is an easy-to-use scripting interface for administrators who need to manage multiple VMware ESX hypervisors or VMware VirtualCenter instances. Based on the popular Microsoft PowerShell scripting language, it provides a familiar interface that lets administrators automate repetitive tasks such as cloning, moving, starting or stopping virtual machines and hosts in a VMware Infrastructure environment.

Managing a large VMware Infrastructure deployment can require taking similar actions across dozens or hundreds of hosts or virtual machines. Typically, administrators either perform the tasks individually or use less familiar scripting languages to help automate some of the standard tasks.

The VI Toolkit (for Windows) allows VMware Infrastructure to be managed just like any other Windows application. Routine tasks can easily be automated so that hundreds of hosts or virtual machines are just as easy to manage as one. The toolkit includes simple-to-use “commandlets” for deploying hundreds of virtual machines across IT infrastructure, saving administrators the time and effort of repeating management tasks and freeing up their precious time for more creative, productive and impactful efforts.

“With more than 120,000 customers using our products, and 46 percent of our enterprise customers deploying VMware Infrastructure 3 as the preferred platform in the datacenter, the ability to automate standard management tasks is becoming increasingly important,” said Raghu Raghuram, vice president of products and solutions at VMware. “Now anyone using Microsoft PowerShell can automate these tasks. For example, a customer managing multiple virtual machines can write a few lines of PowerShell commands to eliminate hours of work. In environments with hundreds or thousands of virtual machines, this can save a tremendous amount of time.”

VMware encourages IT administrators to submit their own scripts to the community to help their peers improve management of their own VMware environments. As part of this effort, VMware is announcing a contest for the best script created using the VI Toolkit (for Windows). For additional details on the contest, visit http://vmware.com/go/powershellcontest.

The VI Toolkit (for Windows) is available effective today as a free download at http://vmware.com/go/powershell.