I recently needed to deploy the latest version of NSX-T (2.5) for some work I was doing with Project Pacific and of course it was related to Automation 🙂 It has been some time since I have touched the NSX-T Manager API (2.0) and although most of my existing code still worked, there were some things that broke due to API deprecation and also net new functionality that I needed to use.
I normally use PowerCLI for my Automation work and/or for prototyping purposes, not only is it easy to do but PowerCLI is still one of the most popular tool used by our customers and it means that they can easily benefit from my work. However, one of my pet peeves when working with the NSX-T APIs and PowerCLI is simply the lack of useful error messages. Here is the generic error message that you would normally see even checking the $Error[0].Exception.ServerError variable, it generally does not contain anything useful or actionable.
A server error occurred: 'com.vmware.vapi.std.errors.invalid_request': . Check $Error[0].Exception.ServerError for more details.
Here is a concrete example where I am attempting to create a new Transport Zone but I am purposing leaving out a required parameter and as you can see from the output, the same generic error message is shown and not very actionable.
I normally debug NSX-T API issue whether it is a syntax or usage problem by SSH'ing to the NSX-T Manager and monitoring the actual API logs to figure out what is actually going. It usually has exactly what I am looking for in terms of the actual server error message along with details on how to fix the problem.
