How To: Use PowerCLI to find (and disconnect) all CD Drives on VMs [Field Notes]

Problem

VMs that leave ISOs mounted cause problems. I’d like to find all the VMs that have CD-ROM drives loaded with ISOs, look over that list, and then remove them if necessary.

Solution (NOTE: Update)

The first solution I provided here wasn’t that great, so I’m updating this post. The original contents have been changed because they previously would disconnect the entire CD-ROM drive, vs. just un-mounting the ISO. As you can imagine, pulling the equivalent of ripping a CD-ROM drive out while a machine is running can cause some interesting behavior. The solution below outlines a much better way to do this.

Two one-line PowerCLI scripts will help us with this.

Firstly, to search for all Connected CD-ROMs for all VMs:

Get-VM | Where-Object {$_.PowerState –eq “PoweredOn”} | Get-CDDrive | FT Parent, IsoPath

And as long as there aren’t any you need to keep up, you can just select them all and then set the state to “No Media” for each CD-Drive:

Get-VM | Where-Object {$_.PowerState –eq “PoweredOn”} | Get-CDDrive | Set-CDDrive -NoMedia -Confirm:$False

Note the -Confirm:$False to allow it to just proceed with what it needs to do.