You can install and use PowerCLI both in Windows and Linux. First, install PowerShell Core on your Linux host. Then run the following commands in the console to install VMware PowerCLI:

pwsh
Install-Module -Name VMware.PowerCLI

Import the module to your session:

Import-Module VMware.PowerCLI

Basic PowerCLI Commands to Manage VMware vSphere and VMs

You can get a list of cmdlets in PowerCLI modules as follows (over 2200 commands are available):

Get-Command –Module *vmware*

To disable VMware?Customer Experience Improvement Program?(CEIP) notification:

Set-PowerCLIConfiguration -Scope AllUsers -ParticipateInCeip $false

To connect to vCenter Server or an ESXi host:

Connect-VIServer <vCenter_or_ESXi_FQDN>

Connect-VIServer Error: Invalid server certificate. Use Set-PowerCLIConfiguration to set the value for the InvalidCertificateAction option to Prompt if you'd like to connect once or to add a permanent exception for this server.
Additional Information: Could not establish trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel with authority.

To display a list of virtual machines registered on your ESXi (or vCenter) server:

Get–VM

To show powered off VMs only:

Get-VM | Where {$_.Powerstate -ne “PoweredOn”} | Select Name, VMHost, NumCPU, MemoryMB, Version|Format-Table

To start a virtual machine:

Start-VM -VM MUNTestVM1

To restart a VM correctly (using VMware tools agent):

Restart-VMGuest -VM MunTestVM1 -Confirm:$False

To shut down a VM:

Shutdown-VMGuest -VM MunTestVM1 -Confirm:$False

To display a list of snapshots for a VM:

Get-VM -VM MunTestVM1 | Get-Snapshot| Format-List

To move a running VM to another host using VMotion, the Move-VM command is used. For example, you want to move all VMs from mun-esxi1 to mun-esxi2:

Get-VMHost mun-esxi1|Get-Vm| Move-VM –Destination (Get-VMHost mun-esxi2)

To create a new virtual machine, use the New-VM cmdlet:

New-VM –Name MunTestVM1 -VMHost mun-esxi1 –ResourcePool Production –DiskGB 20 –DiskStorageFormat Thin –Datastore MUN_MSA2000_Prod1

Use the Set-VM cmdlet in order to change virtual machine settings.

Using PowerCLI cmdlets, you can interact with a guest operating system of your virtual machines. To do it, VMware Tools must be installed in the VM. You can update VMware Tools as shown below:

Get-VMGuest MunTestVM1 | Update-Tools

Using Invoke-VMS, you can run a script or program in a guest Windows OS:

$script = '"%programfiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MSInfo\msinfo32.exe" /report "%tmp%\inforeport"'
Invoke-VMScript -ScriptText $script -VM MunTestVM1 -HostCredential $hostCred -GuestCredential $VMCred -ScriptType Bat

To copy a file to all VMs, run this command:
Get-VM | Copy-VMGuestFile -Source C:\PS\get-size.ps1 -Destination C:\PS\ - LocalToGuest -GuestUser administrator -GuestPassword P@ssdr0w2

The module contains cmdlets to manage clusters, datacenters, datastores, and ESXi hosts:

Get-VMHost
Get-Datacenter
Get-Cluster
Get-Datastore
Get-VirtualPortGroup

To display a list of ESXi hosts in a cluster:

Get-Cluster munprod1 | Get-VMHost | sort name

Put a specific ESXi host into maintenance mode:
Set-VMhost -VMHost mun-esxi1 -State Maintenance

To connect an iSCSI LUN to an ESXi host and create a VMFS datastore on it:
Get-ScsiLun -VmHost mun-esxi1 | ft
New-Datastore -Name 'mun_iscsi_datastore' -VMHost mun-esxi1 -Path naa.6000xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -Vmfs

PowerCLI Example Scripts

There are some examples of using PowerCLI to get information about VMware infrastructure items and to automate some actions on the website. You can use the examples from the following articles to write your own PowerCLI scripts:

• Checking Free Disk Space on VMFS Datastores
• Map VMware Virtual Disks (VMDK Files) and Windows Drive Volumes
• How to Find VMware VMs by IP or MAC Address?
• Configure SNMP on VMware ESXi Hosts
• How to Force Restart a Stuck VMware VM?
• Injecting Drivers into the ESXi Installation Image
• VMware VM Consolidation Needed Status Alarm
• Upgrading VM Hardware Version

vSphere PowerCLI is a powerful tool to manage and automate your VMware infrastructure. PowerCLI includes more than 2000 cmdlets to manage cloud and on-premises VMware infrastructure (vSphere,vSAN, vRealize Operations Manager, vCloud Director, Site Recovery Manager, Horizon, NSX-T, VMware Cloud Services, VMware Cloud on AWS, etc.).