William Lam

Easily retrieve VM memory overhead using the vSphere 6.0 API

01.29.2016 by William Lam // 1 Comment

A handy API that was introduced in vSphere 6.0 is the ability to easily retrieve the amount of memory overhead for a given Virtual Machine. Though this was not a common task, it was not trivial to find and often required customers to scoure the various VM logs. In vSphere 6.0, we now have a module called the Overhead Memory Manager which provides a very simple API method called the LookupVmOverheadMemory() to retrieve this information. I know this question has come up from time to time and I figure I do a quick blog about it as I have not seen anyone write about this API yet.

I have created example implementation using PowerCLI to exercise this API which I have called Get-VMMemovehead.ps1 Once the method is loaded, you pipe the output of the Get-VM cmdlet to this new operation as seen in the screenshot below:

Get-VM "vcenter60-2" | Get-VMMemOverhead

Cheatsheet for the entire VMware AppCatalyst API using cURL

01.22.2016 by William Lam // 1 Comment

There were a few questions recently about the required syntax for specific VMware AppCatalyst operations when consuming the REST API using cURL. I figured I put together a quick "cheatsheet" that contains cuRL examples for the entire VMware AppCatalyst API which not only would it help me in future but could also benefit others. Like many, I also learn by example and having explicit samples to start with is a great way to get familiar with a new technology or product. If you are new to VMware AppCatalyst and would like a quick run down on how to quickly get started, be sure to check out my getting started article here for more details.

While going through the AppCatalyst API, I did find a couple of API operations which had some inconsistencies and did not strictly adhere to the JSON format. Thanks to Roman Tarnvski for providing the solution. I am hopeful that these issues will be resolved in a future update of AppCatalyst as I do like the ease of use of their API. For the majority of the API, the self documentation via the AppCatalyst API Explorer is accurate, which you can see from the screenshot below.

Before you can interact with the AppCatalyst REST API, you will need to start the AppCatalyst Daemon by running the following command:

/opt/vmware/appcatalyst/bin/appcatalyst-daemon

Once the AppCatalyst Daemon is running, you can open a new terminal and start working with the REST API via cURL or any other tool of choice.

1. Create a new VM from the default Photon OS VM template:

You technically only need to specify the unique "id" property, but you can also give a display name for the VM by using the "name" property.

curl -d '{"id":"VM1", "name":"MyAppCat-VM1"}' -X POST localhost:8080/api/vms

2. Clone a VM from an existing VM:

Similar to creating a new VM, you also have option of using the "tag" property to associate additional metadata with the VM.

curl -d '{"id":"VM2", "parentid":"VM1", "name":"MyAppCat-VM2", "tag":"Development"}' -X POST localhost:8080/api/vms

3. List all VMs

curl -X GET localhost:8080/api/vms

4. Get a specific VM:

To retrieve a specific VM, you will need to power on the VM before this operation is allowed. I did find it strange that this was the case, but perhaps this could be enhanced in the future to not have this requirement, especially if you want to pull out details such as the "tag" property.

curl -X GET localhost:8080/api/vms/VM1

5. Power On a VM:

curl -d 'on' -X PATCH localhost:8080/api/vms/power/VM1

Note: Other VM Power Operations: off, shutdown, suspend, pause & unpause

6. Get the power state of a VM:

curl -X GET localhost:8080/api/vms/power/VM1

7. Get the IP Address of a VM:

curl -X GET localhost:8080/api/vms/VM1/ipaddress

8. Enable folder sharing for a VM:

curl -d "true" -X PATCH localhost:8080/api/vms/VM1/folders

9. Create a shared folder mapping for a VM:

The "guestPath" property is not an absolute path within the guestOS, but rather a logical name. For more details about shared folders in AppCatalyst, please have a look at this article here. Currently there is only one "flags" property with the value of 4 which enables read/write, please refer to the article in the link above for more details about folder sharing in AppCatalyst.

curl -d '{"guestPath":"shared-folder","hostPath":"/Users/wlam/git","flags":4}' -X POST localhost:8080/api/vms/VM1/folders

10. List all shared folders to a VM:

curl -X GET localhost:8080/api/vms/VM1/folders

11. List a specific shared folder for a VM:

curl -X GET localhost:8080/api/vms/VM1/folders/shared-folder

12. Delete a shared folder for a VM:

curl -X DELETE localhost:8080/api/vms/VM1/folders/shared-folder

13. Delete VM:

curl -X DELETE localhost:8080/api/vms/VM1

How to change the default ports on the vCenter Server Appliance in vSphere 6.0?

01.20.2016 by William Lam // 13 Comments

When deploying the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA), there are a set default network ports that are already pre-defined by VMware. It is generally recommended to stick with these defaults unless you have a really good reason to modify them. I am a big fan of strong defaults which can help reduce the number of steps it takes to deploy the VCSA, however I do understand that there are some organizations who may have specific security requirements which requires them to change some of the default ports. It is also important to note that changing the default network ports post-installation is not supported.

Disclaimer: This is not officially supported by VMware, please use at your own risk.

If you deploy the VCSA using the new Guided UI installer, you will not be able to modify the default network ports. However, if you deploy using the new Scripted CLI installer, you do have the option of overriding some of the default ports. Below is a table of the ports that can be modified which includes the variable name, default port number and their port usage which is described in the vSphere 6.0 documentation here. The variable port names are required in the JSON configuration file if you decide to modify from the default.

Variable Name	Port	Port Usage
rhttpproxy.ext.port1	80	HTTP Reverse Proxy Port
rhttpproxy.ext.port2	443	HTTPs Reverse Proxy Port
syslog.ext.port	514	Syslog Service Port
vpxd.ext.port1	902	ESXi Heartbeat port
syslog.ext.tls.port	1514	Syslog Service TLS port
netdumper.ext.serviceport	6500	ESXi Dump Collector port
autodeploy.ext.serviceport	6501	Auto Deploy Service port
autodeploy.ext.managementport	6502	Auto Deploy Management port
sts.ext.port1	7444	Secure Token Service port
vsphere-client.ext.port1	9443	vSphere Web Client port

Under the "Networking" section of the JSON configuration file, there is a "Ports" field which accepts a JSON encoded string of the ports you wish to modify. It actually took me a bit of time to figure out the exact syntax as this was not clearly documented anywhere. Lets say we wish to change the default HTTPS Reverse Proxy from 443 to 13443 and PSC's STS port from 7444 to 7441, you will need to specify it as shown in the example below. The key is properly escape the inner-double quotations since ports accepts a single string input.

"network": {
    "hostname": "192.168.1.140",
    "dns.servers": [
        "192.168.1.1"
    ],
    "gateway": "192.168.1.1",
    "ip": "192.168.1.140",
    "ip.family": "ipv4",
    "mode": "static",
    "prefix": "24",
    "ports": "{\"rhttpproxy.ext.port2\":\"13443\",\"sts.ext.port1\":\"7441\"}"
},

If everything was successful, when you connect to the VCSA, you should see that we no longer use the default port of 443 to connect to the vCenter Server as you can see from the screenshot below.

If you ever wonder what ports were selected for either a vCenter Server or Platform Services Controller, you can easily find that by following the instructions in this article.

For customers using the Windows version of vCenter Server, you do have the option of modifying the default ports using the Guided UI since there is no guarantee these ports are not in use as VMware does not control the underlying OS. You can also use the Windows Scripted CLI to modify the default ports which you can find more information here.