Currently I’m working very hard on my upcoming Dutch VMUG presentation. While I was testing the demo part which is going to be real cool btw, I discovered a real useful feature in the Virtualization EcoShell. The EcoShell Provides pre-defined and customizable reports as well as automated maps without hassle in HTML, XML and CSV formats, including support for Microsoft Visio. But if you want to hassle with XML, what’s the best way? The example screenshots show how to export a selection of data stores to an XML file and then create an Microsoft Excel Map by importing the XML from the file. Excel really does a good job with creating an XML-based representation objects from the EcoShell. The under laying technique is based on the Export-Clixml cmdlet, it creates an XML-based representation of an object or objects and stores it in a file. You can then use the Import-CLIXML cmdlet to re-create the saved object based on the contents of that file. This cmdlet is similar to ConvertTo-XML, except that Export-Clixml stores the resulting XML in a file. ConvertTo-XML returns the XML, so you can continue to process it in Windows PowerShell.
