PowerCLI strange behaviour of variable

Question

Trying to collect few properties of VMs, but for some reasons all entries in the output contains the info about the last VM only

The $CSV basically contains a couple of VM names:

VMName
Centos1
Centos2

Here is the code I'm using:

$VMdata = @()
$line = '' | Select VMName, VMToolStatus, VMToolVersion, UUID, Tag, Notes

foreach($entry in $csv){
    $line.VMName = $entry.VMname
    $line.VMToolStatus = (get-vm $entry.VMname).ExtensionData.Guest.ToolsRunningStatus
    $line.VMToolVersion = (get-vm $entry.VMname).ExtensionData.Guest.ToolsVersion
    $line.UUID = (get-vm $entry.VMname).ExtensionData.Config.UUID
    $line.Notes = (get-vm $entry.VMname).Notes
    $line.Tag = get-vm $entry.VMname | Get-TagAssignment | Select -ExpandProperty Tag  | select Name
    $VMdata += $line
}

$VMdata | Export-Csv -Path c:\report.csv -NoTypeInformation -Force

here is the CSV output - as you can see both lines contain info about VM Centos2.

"VMName","VMToolStatus","VMToolVersion","UUID","Tag","Notes","StartupOrder"

"CentOS2","guestToolsRunning","2147483647","564d7fd7-e58f-e546-ecdf-c347e35cd453",,"Test Note",

"CentOS2","guestToolsRunning","2147483647","564d7fd7-e58f-e546-ecdf-c347e35cd453",,"Test Note",

When I debug it I can see that after first cycle $line is updated with correct information of VM Centos1 and then it is added to $VMData.

However, when the second cycle starts, e.g. after executing line.VMName = $entry.VMname I can see that both variables $line and $VMdata are updated with CentOS2 name.

So, my question is why $VMdata gets updated along with $line?

I used this piece of code before and it worked just fine.

I am running the following version of PS

Major  Minor  Build  Revision
-----  -----  -----  --------
5      1      14393  1480

VMware PowerCLI 6.5 Release 1 build 4624819

PowerCLI strange behaviour of variable

1 Answers