Reboot Virtual Machines by name wildcard

Scenario

Reboot multiple Virtual Machines on a single vCenter server based on a name with a wildcard.

All of my Virtual Desktops, and ONLY virtual desktops are prefixed by the characters vm- or vm7-, so I wrote a powershell script to reboot these. I then added a Scheduled Task on my vCenter server to execute the script.

https://github.com/willisiw/ShellScripts/blob/master/reboot-vm-bulk.ps1

Prerequisites

vCenter 4 or vCenter 5 with
Windows PowerShell
VMWare Power CLI http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2032946

Windows Scheduled Task

Program:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe

Arguments:
-file C:\scriptfolder\reboot-vms.ps1

Code for reboot-vms.ps1

# Add the vmware snapin for powershell
Add-PSSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core

# Set some variables.
$datestart = (get-date -uformat %Y-%m-%d)

# Name a logfile to capture results.
$logfile = "VMReboot_" + $datestart + ".txt"

# Put the date in the logfile.
echo  "New Log ($datestart) - ($logfile)" >> $logfile

# Your vcenter server and credentials
$vcenter = "vcenter.yourdomain.com"
$username = ""
$password = ""

# Establish Connection
connect-viserver -server $vcenter -user $username -password $password
echo  "Connected - ($vcenter)" >> $logfile

# get list vm's to reboot.  Please CUSTOMIZE THIS before you run it.
$vmdesktops = Get-VM vm-*
# Add (+=) more vm's to reboot.
$vmdesktops += Get-VM vm7-*

# add dedsktop list to logfile
echo  "Desktops - ($vmdesktops)" >> $logfile

foreach ($vm in $vmdesktops)

{

    echo "Restart-VMGuest ($vm) at (get-date)" >> $logfile
     # Reboot VM using vmtools
    Restart-VMGuest $vm
    # space out the reboots by 6 minuites or 360 seconds.
     ping -n 360 localhost

}
# COMPLETED