PowerCLI for Remediating Common Issues Automatically: Self-Healing VMware Scripts

Introduction

Infrastructure teams spend hours each week chasing repeatable issues: old snapshots, invalid VMs, disconnected hosts, and unused templates. Many of these problems can be detected and remediated with PowerCLI. By automating checks and responses, you reduce manual effort and improve environment stability.

In this article, you’ll learn how to:

• Detect and delete old snapshots
• Power off and archive idle VMs
• Identify and clean up orphaned or invalid objects
• Remove stale templates or ISOs
• Restart or flag hosts with intermittent disconnection

Step 1: Detect and Remove Snapshots Older Than 14 Days

Get-VM | Get-Snapshot | Where-Object {$_.Created -lt (Get-Date).AddDays(-14)} | Remove-Snapshot -Confirm:$false

Automate via scheduled job and report count:

$oldSnapshots = Get-VM | Get-Snapshot | Where-Object {$_.Created -lt (Get-Date).AddDays(-14)}
"$($oldSnapshots.Count) snapshots removed on $(Get-Date)" | Out-File "C:\Reports\SnapshotCleanup.log" -Append

Step 2: Identify Orphaned and Invalid VMs

Get-VM | Where-Object {$_.PowerState -eq "Unknown" -or $_.ExtensionData.Summary.Runtime.ConnectionState -eq "invalid"}

Auto-remove from inventory (not storage):

Get-VM | Where-Object {$_.PowerState -eq "Unknown"} | Remove-VM -DeletePermanently:$false -Confirm:$false

Step 3: Archive or Power Off Idle VMs

Get-VM | Where-Object {$_.PowerState -eq "PoweredOn" -and $_.ExtensionData.Summary.QuickStats.OverallCpuUsage -lt 50} | Stop-VM -Confirm:$false

Mark VMs with notes for review:

Set-VM -VM (Get-VM -Name "WebDev01") -Notes "Archived due to inactivity on $(Get-Date)"

Step 4: Remove Stale ISO Mounts

Get-VM | Where-Object {$_.ExtensionData.Config.Hardware.Device | Where-Object {
    $_.DeviceInfo.Label -like "CD/DVD*" -and $_.Backing.IsoFile
}} | Set-CDDrive -NoMedia -Confirm:$false

Step 5: Detect and Restart Disconnected Hosts

$disconnectedHosts = Get-VMHost | Where-Object {$_.ConnectionState -eq "Disconnected"}

foreach ($host in $disconnectedHosts) {
    Restart-VMHost -VMHost $host -Force -Confirm:$false
}

Optional: Email or alert for review before restart.

Diagram: Remediation Workflow with PowerCLI

Bonus: Weekly Self-Healing Script

$logPath = "C:\Reports\WeeklyRemediation_$(Get-Date -Format yyyyMMdd).log"

# Remove stale snapshots
Get-VM | Get-Snapshot | Where-Object {$_.Created -lt (Get-Date).AddDays(-10)} | Remove-Snapshot -Confirm:$false | Out-File $logPath -Append

# Flag invalid VMs
Get-VM | Where-Object {$_.PowerState -eq "Unknown"} | ForEach-Object {
    "$($_.Name) is invalid. Review required." | Out-File $logPath -Append
}

# Unmount ISOs
Get-VM | Get-CDDrive | Where-Object {$_.IsoPath} | Set-CDDrive -NoMedia -Confirm:$false | Out-File $logPath -Append

Schedule this script with Task Scheduler or PowerShell Job Scheduler module.

Troubleshooting