This is a quick blog post of creating a PowerCLI or PowerShell profile and having powercli modules or commands available using native windows PowerShell without installing powercli or having native admin privileges on a windows server or desktop pc.
Install PowerCLI Offline
You can install all VMware PowerCLI modules in offline mode by using a ZIP file. Download Zip File from link here
You might need to install PowerCLI on a local machine with no Internet connectivity due to security reasons and deployment restrictions. If you are using such an environment, you can download the PowerCLI ZIP file on a computer with Internet access, transfer the ZIP file to your local machine and install PowerCLI.
Prerequisites
Verify that your system is compatible with PowerCLI. See the Compatibility Matrix on the PowerCLI home page.
Verify that PowerShell is available on your system. For Linux and macOS, you must install PowerShell. See how to install PowerShell on different platforms.
For Windows, if you have PowerCLI 6.5 R1 or earlier, uninstall it.
Download the PowerCLI ZIP file from the PowerCLI home page and transfer the ZIP file to your local machine.
Procedure
Open PowerShell on your local machine.
Create profile using below if not already there
Test-Path $profile
New-Item -path $profile -type file –force
Once created open the profile and add below line to ignore invaliud cert in vcenter connection
Import-Module VMware.VimAutomation.Core
Set-PowerCLIConfiguration -InvalidCertificateAction Ignore -Confirm:$false
To view the folder paths to which you can extract the PowerCLI ZIP file, run the command:$env:PSModulePath
Extract the contents of the PowerCLI ZIP file to one of the listed folders.
Copy and paste the content of the zip file to the modules folder as per below
For Windows, run the command to unblock the copied files.Get-ChildItem -Path 'folder_path' -Recurse | Unblock-FileReplace folder_path with the path to the folder where you extracted the contents of the ZIP file.
(Optional) Verify that the VMware PowerCLI modules have installed successfully.Get-Module VMware* -ListAvailable
Results
You can now run PowerCLI on your local machine.
If you have admin persmission and access to internet, you can run below command in admin mode to install PowerCLI
## To install individual module
Install-Module VMware.VimAutomation.Core -AllowClobber
## To install all modules
Install-Module VMware.PowerCLI
