Installation guide

What to do next
Install PowerShell on your VCM managed machines. See "Install PowerShell" on page 110.
Install PowerShell
Verify that PowerShell 2.0 is installed on each VCM managed Windows machine used to collect Windows
Custom Information (WCI).
PowerShell 2.0 is supported on all platforms that support PowerShell 1.0.
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PowerShell is installed by default on Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 7 machines.
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For Windows XP, 2003, 2003 R2, 2008, and Vista machines, you must install PowerShell separately.
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You cannot install PowerShell on Windows 2000 or NT4 machines.
Because of its ability to set the execution policy at the process level, PowerShell 2.0 is the base requirement
for WCI in VCM. If you run the standard WCI non-inline collection filters against PowerShell 1.0 VCM
managed machines, the collection process will fail.
Procedure
1. On your VCM managed machine, check the following registry entry to verify whether PowerShell 2.0
is installed.
a. Key Location: HKEY_LOCAL_
MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PowerShell\1\PowerShellEngine
b. Value Name: PowerShellVersion
c. Value Type: REG_SZ
d. Value Data: <1.0 | 2.0>
If you do not check the registry, the steps to determine if PowerShell 2.0 might differ depending on the
platform type of your managed machine.
If PowerShell is not installed on the target VCM managed machine, the WCI collection returns a Not
Executed status. See "View Windows Custom Information Job Status Details" on page 112.
What to do next
Reboot the VCM managed machine after you install or upgrade PowerShell to ensure that collections
work properly.
Collect Windows Custom Information Data
Use the Windows Custom Information (WCI) data type to perform user-defined, script-based collections
on your VCM managed machines. To collect the custom data, you build a collection filter that includes a
script with parameters to run the script and process the results.
When you use the script-based filter in a collection, the VCM Agent calls a script engine to run the script,
parse the results to return the collected data to the VCM database, and display the results in the VCM
Console. During the collection process, the VCM Agent starts PowerShell, which runs the script and
generates the XML result file. The Agent parses the XML result into a format that VCM can use to check
for changes and returns the changes to the Collector.
vCenter Configuration Manager Administration Guide
110
VMware, Inc.