Disabling Copy Paste – The PowerCLI way

Today I needed to disable the VMware tools/console copy & paste functionality… on a lot of VMs (well… more than one is a lot). In doing this, I came across these directions from vmzare:

How To disable copy and paste operations between the guest operating system and remote console ?

1. Log on to the VI Client and select the virtual machine from the inventory panel.
2. The configuration page for this virtual machine appears with the Summary tab displayed.
3. Click Edit Settings.
4. Click Options > Advanced > Configuration Parameters to open the Configuration
5. Parameters dialog box.
6. Click the Add button

Type the following values in the Name field Value column.

Name Field Value Field
isolation.tools.copy.enable false
isolation.tools.paste.enable false
isolation.tools.setGUIOptions.enable false

And they worked awesomely too. However to do this for more than a single VM, I needed a different plan of attack. Knowing I already had most of the script written from my set-keydelay.ps1 post. In fact, I only needed to change a few lines for this one, lovingly titled disable-copypasta.ps1:

Like set-keydelay, this will take a VM object from the pipeline, and apply our config settings. Note, the VM will likely need a reboot before the settings completely take effect. Hope this has been useful. If you have questions, drop a line in the comments, or on twitter @cody_bunch

Note: Edited to include an updated, working Disable-CopyPasta.ps1

Tagged as: automation, PowerCLI, powershell