Get VMHost FC HBA WWN Info Most Quickly with PowerCLI

People know about getting VMHost HBA info via PowerCLI -- there are plenty of posts about doing so, generally via Get-VMHostHba.  Since that works great, there is barely a reason to write something else to do the same thing, save one reason that is near and dear to our vNugglets hearts:  speed.  We made this a couple of years ago, have tweaked it a few times, and now it seems like time to post it (like, maybe it will be helpful in an upcoming post, or something?  So exciting).

This function uses everybody's favorite PowerCLI cmdlet Get-View.  The speed reward:  well worth it.  For example:

Technique	Time, 28 hosts	Time, 270 hosts
Get-VMHostHba	61.9s	720s
Get-VMHostHBAWWN	1.32s	14.1s
improvement:	46x	51x

More than 45 times faster?  I'm in.  Now for the function, complete with examples in comment-based help:  (double-click anywhere in the code to Select All)

function Get-VMHostHBAWWN {
<#    .Description
    Get the Port- and Node WWN(s) for HBA(s) in host(s). Feb 2012, vNugglets
    .Example
    Get-VMHostHBAWWN -VMHost myhost0.dom.com
    VMHostName       DeviceName  HBAPortWWN               HBANodeWWN               HBAStatus
    ----------       ----------  ----------               ----------               ---------
    myhost0.dom.com  vmhba1      10:00:00:00:00:00:00:ca  20:00:00:00:00:00:00:ca  online
    myhost0.dom.com  vmhba2      10:00:00:00:00:00:00:83  20:00:00:00:00:00:00:83  online
    Get the HBA WWNs for hosts whose name match the pattern myhost0.dom.com
    .Example
    Get-VMHostHBAWWN -VMHost ^my.+
    VMHostName       DeviceName  HBAPortWWN               HBANodeWWN               HBAStatus
    ----------       ----------  ----------               ----------               ---------
    myhost0.dom.com  vmhba1      10:00:00:00:00:00:00:ca  20:00:00:00:00:00:00:ca  online
    myhost0.dom.com  vmhba2      10:00:00:00:00:00:00:83  20:00:00:00:00:00:00:83  online
    mytest1.dom.com  vmhba1      10:00:00:00:00:00:00:da  20:00:00:00:00:00:00:da  online
    mytest0.dom.com  vmhba2      10:00:00:00:00:00:00:93  20:00:00:00:00:00:00:93  online
    Get the HBA WWNs for hosts whose name match the pattern ^my.+
    .Example
    Get-Cluster mycluster | Get-VMHostHBAWWN
    ...
    Get the HBA WWNs for hosts in the cluster "mycluster"
    .Outputs
    PSCustomObject
#>
[CmdletBinding()]param(
    ## Name pattern of the host for which to get HBA info (accepts regex patterns)
    [parameter(Mandatory=$true,ParameterSetName="SearchByHostName")][string]$VMHostName_str,
    ## Name pattern of the cluster for whose hosts to get HBA info (accepts regex patterns)
    [parameter(Mandatory=$true,ParameterSetName="SearchByCluster",ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName)][Alias("Name")][string]$ClusterName_str
) ## end param
Begin {
    ## helper function for formatting WWN as hex string with colon-separators
    function _Format-AsHexWWNString {
        param([parameter(Mandatory=$true)][long]$WWN_long)
        (("{0:x}" -f $WWN_long) -split "(\w{2})" | ?{$_ -ne ""}) -join ":"
    } ## end function
}

Process {
    ## params for the Get-View expression for getting the View objects
    $hshGetViewParams = @{
        ViewType = "HostSystem"
        Property = "Name", "Config.StorageDevice.HostBusAdapter"
    } ## end hashtable
    Switch ($PSCmdlet.ParameterSetName) {
        ## if host name pattern was provided, filter on it in the Get-View expression
        "SearchByHostName" {$hshGetViewParams["Filter"] = @{"Name" = $VMHostName_str}; break;} ## end case
        ## if cluster name pattern was provided, set it as the search root for the Get-View expression
        "SearchByCluster" {$hshGetViewParams["SearchRoot"] = (Get-Cluster $ClusterName_str).Id; break;}
    } ## end switch

    Get-View @hshGetViewParams | Foreach-Object {
        $viewHost = $_
        $viewHost.Config.StorageDevice.HostBusAdapter | Where-Object {$_ -is [VMware.Vim.HostFibreChannelHba]} | Foreach-Object {
            New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property ([ordered]@{
                VMHostName = $viewHost.Name
                DeviceName = $_.Device
                HBAPortWWN = _Format-AsHexWWNString -WWN $_.PortWorldWideName
                HBANodeWWN = _Format-AsHexWWNString -WWN $_.NodeWorldWideName
                HBAStatus = $_.Status
            }) ## end new-object
        } ## end foreach-object
    } ## end foreach-object
} ## end process
} ## end function

Not terribly fancy, but something to get it done more quickly (FaF, in fact).  And, handy for other things down the road.  Like, oh, using the WWN info when creating some initiator groups on your XtremIO array?  What a good idea.

Oh, and if you have not yet seen/used parameter splatting, this provides a decent example of that, too -- the hashtable of parameters used on line 54.  Enjoy!