Question

I’m not sure whether to call this a need for multi-threading, job-based, or async, but basically I have a Powershell script function that takes several parameters and I need to call it several times with different parameters and have these run in parallel.

Currently, I call the function like this:

Execute "param1" "param2" "param3" "param4"

How can I call this multiple times without waiting for each call to Execute return to the caller?

Currently I’m running v2.0 but I can update if necessary

EDIT: here’s what I have so far, which doesn’t work:

$cmd = {
    param($vmxFilePath,$machineName,$username,$password,$scriptTpath,$scriptFile,$uacDismissScript,$snapshotName)
    Execute $vmxFilePath $machineName $username $password $scriptTpath $scriptFile $uacDismissScript $snapshotName
}

Start-Job -ScriptBlock $cmd -ArgumentList $vmxFilePath, $machineName, $username $password, $scriptTpath, $scriptFile, $uacDismissScript, $snapshotName

I get an error:

cannot convert ‘system.object[]’ to the type ‘system.management.automation.scriptblock’ required by parameter ‘initializationscript’. specified method is not supported

EDIT2: I’ve modified my script but I still get the error mentioned above. Here’s my mod:

$cmd = {
    param($vmxFilePath,$machineName,$username,$password,$scriptTpath,$scriptFile,$uacDismissScript,$snapshotName)
    Execute $vmxFilePath $machineName $username $password $scriptTpath $scriptFile $uacDismissScript $snapshotName
}

Start-Job -ScriptBlock $cmd -ArgumentList $vmxFilePath, $machineName, $username $password, $scriptTpath, $scriptFile, $uacDismissScript, $snapshotName

Answer 1

No update necessary for this. Define a script block and use Start-Job to run the script block as many times as necessary. Example:

$cmd = {
  param($a, $b)
  Write-Host $a $b
}

$foo = "foo"

1..5 | ForEach-Object {
  Start-Job -ScriptBlock $cmd -ArgumentList $_, $foo
}

The script block takes 2 parameters $a and $b which are passed by the -ArgumentList option. In the example above, the assignments are $_ → $a and $foo → $b. $foo is just an example for a configurable, but static parameter.

Run Get-Job | Remove-Job at some point to remove the finished jobs from the queue (or Get-Job | % { Receive-Job $_.Id; Remove-Job $_.Id } if you want to retrieve the output).