We recently had to check for discrepancies in configurations of ESXi hosts in a datacenter. While they should be identical, we have had issues with DNS working on some hosts while some don’t. So I developed a script that outputs the DNS servers configured on every host of the entire vCenter to a CSV file. (Note: This outputs the IPs of the DNS servers)
Its a one-liner so its not difficult to execute, check it out :
$vcenter = "vcenter_name"
Connect-VIServer $vcenter
Get-VMHost | Select Name, @{N='DNS Server(s)';E={$_.Extensiondata.Config.Network.DnsConfig.Address -join ' , '}} | Export-Csv 'esx_dns_info.csv'
Code breakdown:
Basically what we are doing is getting the data that is hidden inside the data that is pulled by the Get-VMHost module -in this case it’s under extension data/config/Network/DNSConfig/Address – which fetches the IP’s of these servers.
Why I used the -join ‘,’ is that a single ESXi host may have multiple DNS servers configured for redundancy, but this will not be outputted properly with CSV. So what I’m doing is joining the list of IPs to a single line separated by a comma.
Then finally pipe all that data in to the Export-CSV module that will export it to a CSV file I’ve named “esx_dns_info.csv”
And that is it – simple as that. Hope that was a easy and clear guide to getting the DNS servers associated with an ESX host.
If you liked it, please share the news! Happy Scripting!
