VMware: Fancy HTML reports using PowerCLI

In today's blog post how to create fancy HTML reports using PowerCLI. Sysadmins are well known to be data nerds, they like to constantly monitor all datacenter parameters, either using real time stats monitoring solutions, like VMware vCenter Operations, either producing periodical reports to analyze changes that occurrs in the virtual infrastructure.

Reports must be functional and readable, but if you are not the only one consuming these reports why not to make them look good too?

Fancy reports can be generated using PowerCLI - actually the capability is provided by PowerShell - by using the ConvertTo-Html cmdlet which generates an HTML output.

The trick to generate these good looking reports is to consider them as a webpage, that will be generated by script, to which a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) will be applied.

Page is composed by an header, a CSS and a body. CSS part is the most important for our purpose because it will describe how output will be styled. Body section of the page will contain correct div IDs assignation and all statistics composing our report and in this example I get infos regarding Datacenter, Cluster and VMs. Of course you can include in the report whatever you want.

This is the expected result:

Here's the code. As usual I've uplaoded it to my GitHub page: Fancy Reports.ps1

	#Variable declaration
	$vCenterIPorFQDN="10.0.1.210"
	$vCenterUsername="Administrator@vsphere.local"
	$vCenterPassword="vmware"
	$LocationName="Datacenter" #This could be: Datacenter Name, Cluster Name, Host Name
	$ClusterName="TestCluster" #Name of the Cluster on which you need to run the report
	$OutputPath="C:\" #Location where you want to place generated report
	Write-Host "Connecting to vCenter" -foregroundcolor "magenta"
	Connect-VIServer -Server $vCenterIPorFQDN -User $vCenterUsername -Password $vCenterPassword
	#This is the CSS used to add the style to the report
	$Css="<style>
	body {
	font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;
	font-size: 14px;
	color: #666666;
	background: #FEFEFE;
	}
	#title{
	color:#90B800;
	font-size: 30px;
	font-weight: bold;
	padding-top:25px;
	margin-left:35px;
	height: 50px;
	}
	#subtitle{
	font-size: 11px;
	margin-left:35px;
	}
	#main {
	position:relative;
	padding-top:10px;
	padding-left:10px;
	padding-bottom:10px;
	padding-right:10px;
	}
	#box1{
	position:absolute;
	background: #F8F8F8;
	border: 1px solid #DCDCDC;
	margin-left:10px;
	padding-top:10px;
	padding-left:10px;
	padding-bottom:10px;
	padding-right:10px;
	}
	#boxheader{
	font-family: Arial, sans-serif;
	padding: 5px 20px;
	position: relative;
	z-index: 20;
	display: block;
	height: 30px;
	color: #777;
	text-shadow: 1px 1px 1px rgba(255,255,255,0.8);
	line-height: 33px;
	font-size: 19px;
	background: #fff;
	background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #ffffff 1%, #eaeaea 100%);
	background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(1%,#ffffff), color-stop(100%,#eaeaea));
	background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #ffffff 1%,#eaeaea 100%);
	background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #ffffff 1%,#eaeaea 100%);
	background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #ffffff 1%,#eaeaea 100%);
	background: linear-gradient(top, #ffffff 1%,#eaeaea 100%);
	filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#ffffff', endColorstr='#eaeaea',GradientType=0 );
	box-shadow:
	0px 0px 0px 1px rgba(155,155,155,0.3),
	1px 0px 0px 0px rgba(255,255,255,0.9) inset,
	0px 2px 2px rgba(0,0,0,0.1);
	}
	table{
	width:100%;
	border-collapse:collapse;
	}
	table td, table th {
	border:1px solid #98bf21;
	padding:3px 7px 2px 7px;
	}
	table th {
	text-align:left;
	padding-top:5px;
	padding-bottom:4px;
	background-color:#90B800;
	color:#fff;
	}
	table tr.alt td {
	color:#000;
	background-color:#EAF2D3;
	}
	</style>"
	#These are divs declarations used to properly style HTML using previously defined CSS
	$PageBoxOpener="<div id='box1'>"
	$ReportVmHost="<div id='boxheader'>Get-VMHost $LocationName</div>"
	$BoxContentOpener="<div id='boxcontent'>"
	$PageBoxCloser="</div>"
	$br="<br>" #This should have been defined in CSS but if you need new line you could also use it this way
	$ReportGetCluster="<div id='boxheader'>Get-Cluster $ClusterName</div>"
	$ReportGetVmCluster="<div id='boxheader'>Get-VM $ClusterName</div>"
	#Get VMHost infos
	$VmHost=Get-VMHost -Location $LocationName | Select-Object @{Name = 'Host'; Expression = {$_.Name}},State,ConnectionState,PowerState,Model,Version,Build,NumCpu,@{Name = 'CpuTotalGhz'; Expression = {"{0:N2}" -f ($_.CpuTotalMhz/1000)}},@{Name = 'CpuUsageGhz'; Expression = {"{0:N2}" -f ($_.CpuUsageMhz/1000)}},@{Name = 'MemoryTotalGB'; Expression = {"{0:N2}" -f $_.MemoryTotalGB}}, @{Name = 'MemoryUsageGB'; Expression = {"{0:N2}" -f $_.MemoryUsageGB}} | ConvertTo-HTML -Fragment
	#Get Cluster infos
	$GetCluster=Get-Cluster -Name $ClusterName | Select-Object Name, HAEnabled, HAIsolationResponse,@{Name = 'DRS Enabled'; Expression = {$_.DrsEnabled}},@{Name = 'DRS'; Expression = {$_.DrsAutomationLevel}},VsanEnabled,VsanDiskClaimMode | ConvertTo-HTML -Fragment
	#Get VM infos
	$GetVmCluster=Get-VM -Location (Get-Cluster -Name $ClusterName) | Select-Object Name,PowerState,NumCPU, MemoryGB | Sort-Object Name | ConvertTo-HTML -Fragment
	#Create HTML report
	#-Head parameter could be omitted if header is declared in body
	ConvertTo-Html -Title "Test Title" -Head "<div id='title'>PowerCLI Reporting</div>$br<div id='subtitle'>Report generated: $(Get-Date)</div>
	" -Body " $Css $PageBoxOpener $ReportVmHost $BoxContentOpener $VmHost $PageBoxCloser $br $ReportGetCluster $BoxContentOpener $GetCluster $PageBoxCloser $br $ReportGetVmCluster $BoxContentOpener $GetVmCluster $PageBoxCloser
	" | Out-File $OutputPath\Report.html

view raw Fancy Reports.ps1 hosted with ❤ by GitHub

$PageBoxOpener, $ReportVmHost, $BoxContentOpener, etc. variables are used to delimit the divs upon which CSS style will be applied.

To better understand how this works the schema of the page generated by the script above can be represented as:

 <div id='title'>  
      PowerCLI Reporting  
 </div>  
 <div id='subtitle'>  
      Report generated: $(Get-Date)  
 </div>  
 <div id='box1'> #Box Delimiting Report  
      <div id='boxheader'> #First Report Header  
           Get-VMHost $LocationName  
      </div>  
      <div id='boxcontent'> #First Report Table  
           Get-VMHost ...  
      </div>  
      <div id='boxheader'>  
           Get-Cluster $ClusterName  
      </div>  
      <div id='boxcontent'>  
           Get-VMHost ...  
      </div>  
      <div id='boxheader'>  
           Get-VM $ClusterName  
      </div>  
      <div id='boxcontent'>  
           Get-VMHost ...  
      </div>  
 </div>  

That's all!!