Powershell: Add NFS Datastore to Multiple ESX Hosts

Adding a datastore to an esx host isn’t to time consuming or difficult but to save a little bit of time and avoid the repetitiveness, here’s a script to do it for you. This script will mount an NFS datastore. Of course, you can change the protocol by using a different switch like -cifs.

$esx = (Get-Content esx_servers.txt)
$Host_Name = (Read-Host "Enter the server (ex:storage-server-san:")
$Path = (Read-Host "Enter the path (ex:/vol/vol/ds_name):")
$Name = (Read-Host "Enter the name of the datastore:")

foreach($server in $esx){
Get-VMHost $server | New-Datastore -Nfs -NfsHost $Host_Name -Path $Path -Name $Name
}

The script asks for the following information:
1. Storage server
2. Path to the storage location
3. Datastore Name

Note: The script will only mount the SAME datastore on each esx server you specify. You’ll need to create a text file called “esx_servers.txt” in the same location as the script and enter the esx server names in it.

UPDATE: I’ve had to modify this script to add multiple datastores to multiple esx hosts. Here is the updated code:

$servers = @()
$paths = @()
$datastores = @()

$answer = "y"

while($answer -eq "y"){
$servers += Read-Host "Enter the server (ex:usadc-nas05a-san)"
$paths += Read-Host "Enter the path (ex:/vol/vol/ds_name)"
$datastores += Read-Host "Datastore name ?"
$answer = Read-Host "Enter another NFS mount?"}

$Error.Clear()

Get-Content servers.txt | %{
$esx = Get-VMHost -Name $_
$countNFS = $servers.Count
if($countNFS -ne 0){
0..($countNFS - 1) | %{
$esx | New-Datastore -Nfs -NfsHost $servers[$_] -Path $paths[$_] -Name $datastores[$_] | Out-Null
if($Error.count -gt 0){
$Error | out-file ('c:\powershell scripts\logs\' + $esx + '.txt') -append
$Error.Clear()
}
}
}
}