Powershell – ‘exit status’ of a powershell pipeline

powerclipowershellvmware-vsphere

How do I check for the success/failure of a pipeline from within the same executing script?

Get-VM -Name Machine | Get-Snapshot | Where {$_.Created -lt (Get-Date).AddDays(-1)} | Remove-Snapshot -Confirm:$false

I don't need anything more than the equivalent of $?.

Best Answer

Agree with the try...catch approach, but the if ($?) {} works well too, but won't catch exceptions that would normally throw the script completely.

Either way, one of the strengths of PowerShell is also one of its weaknesses. I'm talking about pipelining. Yes, it's great that you can pass objects down the pipe, but when you're script is running in production, and you need to gracefully fail, create a meaningful log, return a meaningful return code, possibly SMS the person on standby and maybe even run a recovery job, a pipeline that has just barfed on the 50th object it came across, when there's another 70 to go isn't of much use.

In a production script, I'd strongly recommend staging your "pipe work". That is, use the power of the pipeline to gather your work queue (Get-VM | Where-Object, blah, blah), and shove this into an array of objects.

Then use a Foreach-Object to step through the objects in your work queue. Within the Foreach-Object, use your try...catch when it comes to things like Remove-Snapshot, and interrogate the returned exception object in order to provide your return code / log file / alert / recovery sequence, etc.

Related Solutions

Powershell – DPM 2010 PowerShell Script to Easily Restore Multiple Files

Well, after much frustration and research, I have come up with a working script. For those that want to know how to do the same, the script below works well to restore any given file.

<#
Parameters: Folder Path, File to Restore, Deletion Date
Example Usage: 
.\RecoverFile.ps1 "ClientName\Folder\2010\02\03\" "mydoc.pdf" "2010-08-04 09:54:24.117" 
#>

$filePath = [IO.Path]::Combine("D:\ClientData\", $args[0] )
$fileName = $args[1]
$dateDeleted = Get-Date $args[2]

Write-Host "Restoring '" -NoNewLine
Write-Host $filePath -NoNewLine
Write-Host $fileName -NoNewLine
Write-Host "' which was deleted on '" -NoNewLine
Write-Host $dateDeleted -NoNewLine
Write-Host "'"

$recoveryDate = Get-Date $dateDeleted.AddDays(-1).ToShortDateString()
$pg = Get-ProtectionGroup -DPMServerName DPMSERVER01 | Where-Object {$_.FriendlyName -eq "Document Repository Data"} 
$ds = Get-Datasource $pg
$so = New-SearchOption -FromRecoveryPoint $recoveryDate.AddDays(-1).ToShortDateString() -ToRecoveryPoint $recoveryDate.ToShortDateString() -SearchDetail FilesFolders -SearchType exactMatch -Location $filePath -SearchString $fileName
$ri = Get-RecoverableItem -Datasource $ds -SearchOption $so
$ro = New-RecoveryOption -TargetServer CLIENTDATASERVER01 -RecoveryLocation OriginalServer -FileSystem -OverwriteType overwrite -RecoveryType Recover
$recoveryJob = Recover-RecoverableItem -RecoverableItem $ri -RecoveryOption $ro
#4.3 Wait till the recovery job completes
while (! $recoveryJob.hasCompleted )
{
    # Show a progress bar
    Write-Host "." -NoNewLine
    Start-Sleep 1
}
if($recoveryJob.Status -ne "Succeeded")
{
    Write-Host "Recovery failed" -ForeGroundColor Red
}
else
{
    Write-Host "Recovery successful" -ForeGroundColor Green
}

Powershell Remote Execution Error on EC2

The server and client do not need to be in the same domain, however, the error message you are getting seems to me to indicate not an authentication error, just a basic networking error. Are there firewalls between you and the WinRM server that may be preventing this communication? Can you telnet to port 5985 on the WinRM server? 5985 is the HTTP port that WinRM uses in 2008 R2.

edit: Also note that you're going to need to add the WinRM server to the TrustedHosts list on your client, but I don't think you've gotten to that point yet.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Powershell – DPM 2010 PowerShell Script to Easily Restore Multiple Files

Powershell Remote Execution Error on EC2

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