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Quick Tip - Configuring HTTP proxy for VAMI via CLI

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An HTTP Proxy is commonly used by customers who do not have direct internet access from within their datacenter to either upload logs or download patches from a particular website. I recently had to configure this within our environment to ensure we could patch against the external repository as we also have the same restriction as majority of our customers. To configure a proxy server for a VMware Virtual Appliance, you can do so using the VAMI interface under the Network section as seen in the screenshot below.

vami-proxy-configuration

I was looking to configure this from the command-line and through some quick test, here is how you do it. There is a command called /opt/vmware/share/vami/vami_set_proxy which accepts two parameters: proxy server and the proxy port.

Here is an example of how the command works:

/opt/vmware/share/vami/vami_set_proxy proxy.vghetto.com 3128

You can view the current proxy settings by running the following command:

/opt/vmware/share/vami/vami_proxy

There are two additional commands that show only the proxy server and proxy port respectively:

/opt/vmware/share/vami/vami_proxy_port
/opt/vmware/share/vami/vami_proxy_server

One thing you may have noticed is that these commands do not support configuring a proxy username or password as the VAMI UI does. After looking at the script does, I found that it is just writing it out into /etc/environment configuration file. If you require a proxy username and password, you could just directly edit the file and append the following as an example:

http_proxy=http://username:*protected email*:3128

Thank you for voting for virtuallyGhetto!

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As you probably may have heard, the results of the Top 25 Virtualization Bloggers for 2014 was just announced yesterday. If you have not seen the results, I highly recommend you check out the special Google hangout recording hosted by Eric Siebert, John Troyer Rick Vanover & David Davis. I was not able to watch the live recording yesterday but I did find out about my results over Twitter while jumping between meetings. I was completely shocked when I heard that I had been voted the #2 blogger right behind the Michael Jordan of Virtualization Blogging Duncan Epping as well as the #1 scripting blog for the second year in a row. I am very honored and humbled to be listed among such talented and respected folks in the Virtualization Community.

I wanted to take this moment and thank everyone who voted for me and to thank all of my readers who have followed me and supported me throughout the years. I truly appreciate it! I also would like to congratulate all my fellow bloggers who made the list, it is really great to see that everyone is willing to share their expertise and experiences with the greater community. Keep it up everyone!

 

Exploring VSAN APIs Part 7 - VSAN Datastore Folder Management

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In addition to storing your Virtual Machines, you may also want to use the VSAN Datastore to store your operating system ISOs in case you do not have an external repository and would like to keep everything local. If you use the vSphere Web Client to perform this operation, you will notice that you will need to first create a top-level directory before you can upload an ISO or a file to the VSAN Datastore.

vsan-datastore-directory-management-0
The reason for this is that the VSAN Datastore does not support files in the top level directory, so you will have to first create a top-level directory and then upload the files under that directory. To create these top-level directories, a new DatastoreNameSpaceManager is introduced in the vSphere 5.5 API which manages the creation and deletion of these directories. Once these top-level directories exists, you can then use the regular fileManager API to manage your files and sub-directories within the VSAN Datastore. To demonstrate the creation of a top-level directory and sub-directory in a VSAN Datastore, I have created a sample vSphere SDK for Perl script called vsanDatstoreFolderMgmt.pl

 Disclaimer:  These scripts are provided for informational and educational purposes only. It should be thoroughly tested before attempting to use in a production environment.

In this example, I will create a top-level directory in the VSAN Datastore called ISO and then a sub-directory under that called Linux by running the following command:

./vsanDatstoreFolderMgmt.pl --server vcenter55-1.primp-industries.com --username root --vsan-datastore vsanDatastore --root-folder ISO --sub-folder Linux

vsan-datastore-directory-management-1
The script will first call the DatastoreNameSpaceManager CreateDirectory() API method which will then create the top-level directory and then using the fileManager's MakeDirectory() API method to create the sub-directory. If we take a look at our VSAN Datastore using the vSphere Web Client, we can see that our new top-level directory has been created along with our sub-directory.

vsan-datastore-directory-management-2
For deleting sub-directories and the top-level directories, there is the DeleteDatastoreFile_Task() and DeleteDirectory() API method respectively.

  1. Exploring VSAN APIs Part 1 – Enable VSAN Cluster
  2. Exploring VSAN APIs Part 2 – Query available SSDs
  3. Exploring VSAN APIs Part 3 – Enable VSAN Traffic Type
  4. Exploring VSAN APIs Part 4 – VSAN Disk Mappings
  5. Exploring VSAN APIs Part 5 – VSAN Host Status
  6. Exploring VSAN APIs Part 6 – Modifying Virtual Machine VM Storage Policy
  7. Exploring VSAN APIs Part 7 – VSAN Datastore Folder Management
  8. Exploring VSAN APIs Part 8 – Maintenance Mode
  9. Exploring VSAN APIs Part 9 – VSAN Component count
  10. Exploring VSAN APIs Part 10 – VSAN Disk Health