When you start PowerCLI for the first time, you will get the following screen:

You are asked to participate in the VMware Customer Improvement Program (CEIP). Type J to participate in the CEIP or type L to leave.

If you didn't get the text from the preceding screenshot, you may get the following error message:

. : File C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\vSphere PowerCLI\Scripts\Initialize-PowerCLIEnvironment.ps1 cannot be loaded because running scripts is disabled on this system. For more information, see about_Execution_Policies at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=135170.

Then, read the following section,  Modifying the PowerShell execution policy, to solve this problem.

If this is the first time that you are using Microsoft PowerShell on the computer on which you installed PowerCLI, you have to change the execution policy to be able to start PowerCLI.

The Microsoft PowerShell execution policies define when you can run scripts or load configuration files. The possible values for the execution policy are Restricted, AllSigned, RemoteSigned, Unrestricted, Bypass, and Undefined.

You can check the current execution policy setting with the following command:

PowerCLI C:\> Get-ExecutionPolicy

Get-ExecutionPolicy is a Microsoft PowerShell commandlet (cmdlet). Cmdlets are commands built into PowerShell or PowerCLI. They follow a verb-noun naming convention. The get cmdlets retrieve information about the item that is specified as the noun part of the cmdlet.

Set the execution policy to RemoteSigned to be able to start PowerCLI and run scripts written on the local computer with the Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned command.

In the following screenshot of the PowerCLI console, you will see the output of the Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned command if you run this command in a PowerCLI session started with Run as Administrator.

You can get more information about execution policies by typing the following command:

PowerCLI C:\> Get-Help about_Execution_Policies

To get more information about signing your scripts, type the following command:

PowerCLI C:\> Get-Help about_signing

If you want certain PowerCLI commands to be executed every time you start a PowerCLI session, you can put these commands in a PowerShell profile. The commands in a PowerShell profile will be executed every time you start a new PowerCLI session. There are six PowerShell profiles, two specific for the PowerShell console, two specific for the PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE), and two used by both the PowerShell console and the PowerShell ISE. The PowerShell console and the PowerShell ISE have their own profiles for:

The two profiles used by both the PowerShell console and the PowerShell ISE are:

You can retrieve the locations for the different profiles of the PowerShell console by executing the following command in the PowerShell console. In this command, the $PROFILE variable is a standard PowerShell variable that returns an object containing the locations of the PowerShell profiles. This object is piped to the Format-List -Force command to display all of the properties of the $PROFILE object in a list:

PowerCLI C:\> $PROFILE | Format-List -Force


    AllUsersAllHosts       : C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\p
                         rofile.ps1
AllUsersCurrentHost    : C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\M
                         icrosoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1
CurrentUserAllHosts    : C:\Users\robert\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\
                         profile.ps1
CurrentUserCurrentHost : C:\Users\robert\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\
                         Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1
Length                 : 76

As you can see in the output of the preceding command, the $PROFILE object has four properties AllUsersAllHosts, AllUsersCurrentHost, CurrentUserAllHosts, and CurrentUserCurrentHost that contain the locations of the different profiles.

To list the locations of the PowerShell profiles of the PowerShell ISE, you have to execute the preceding command in the PowerShell ISE. This gives the following output:

PS C:\> $PROFILE | Format-List -Force


    AllUsersAllHosts       : C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\p
                         rofile.ps1
AllUsersCurrentHost    : C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\M
                         icrosoft.PowerShellISE_profile.ps1
CurrentUserAllHosts    : C:\Users\robert\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\
                         profile.ps1
CurrentUserCurrentHost : C:\Users\robert\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\
                         Microsoft.PowerShellISE_profile.ps1
Length                 : 79 

The default value for the $PROFILE variable is the value of the $PROFILE.CurrentUserCurrentHost property. So you can use $PROFILE instead of $PROFILE.CurrentUserCurrentHost.

You can determine if a specific profile exists by using the Test-Path cmdlet. The following command will test if the profile specified by $PROFILE exists:

PowerCLI C:\> Test-Path -Path $PROFILE
False

If a profile does not exist, as in the preceding example, you can create the profile using the New-Item cmdlet. If the directories in the path do not exist, by using the -Force parameter the New-Item cmdlet will create the directories. The following command will create the current user/current host profile and will also create the missing directories in the path:

PowerCLI C:\> New-Item -Path $PROFILE -ItemType file -Force

         Directory: C:\Users\robert\Documents\WindowsPowerShell

    Mode             LastWriteTime        Length  Name
----           ------------------     ------  ----
-a--           1/7/2017   2:01 PM          0  Microsoft.PowerShell_pro
                                              file.ps1

After creating the PowerShell profile, you can edit the profile using the PowerShell ISE with the following command:

PowerCLI C:\> ise $PROFILE

If you put the commands from the preceding section, Modifying the PowerShell execution policy, the new colors of the messages will be used in all of your PowerCLI sessions.