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SMART drive data now available using vSAN Management 6.6 API

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One of the major storage enhancements that was introduced in vSphere 5.1 as part of the new I/O Device Management (IODM) framework was the addition of SMART (Self Monitoring, Analysis And Reporting Technology) data for monitoring FC, FCoE, iSCSI, SAS protocol statistics, this is especially useful for monitoring the health of an SSD device. Historically, there was not a public vSphere API to consume this information and customers had to rely on ESXCLI which is not very friendly from a programmatic standpoint.


One of the nice enhancements that was introduced in vSAN 6.6 from an API standpoint is that you can now access SMART data using the vSAN Management 6.6 API. The other really cool thing about this enhancement is that although this API was added under the vSAN Management API, you do not actually have to be using vSAN to be able to use this new API!

There are two methods in which you can access the SMART data:

  • vCenter Server - When connecting to a vCenter Server, you can access the VsanQueryVcClusterSmartStatsSummary() method which is available as part of the VsanVcClusterHealthSystem and you simply just provide it the name of a vSphere Cluster.
  • ESXi Host - When connecting directly to an ESXi host, you can access the VsanHostQuerySmartStats() method which is available as part of the HostVsanHealthSystem.

To demonstrate how these two new APIs work, I have create two sample scripts: vsan-smarts-data-sample.py using vSAN Management SDK for Python and VSANSmartsData.ps1 using the new PowerCLI Get-VsanView cmdlet.

Here is an example of running the python sample:

python vsan-smarts-data-sample.py -s 192.168.1.200 -u '*protected email*' -p 'VMware1!' -c VSAN-Cluster


Here is an example of running the PowerCLI sample:

Get-VSANSmartsData -Cluster VSAN-Cluster

New vSAN Management 6.6 API / SDKs / CLIs

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With all the new awesome capabilities that have been introduced in vSAN 6.6, there is just as much Automation goodness that will be available for our customers to consume to help them easily mange and operate at scale.

vSAN Management 6.6 API

Below are all the new Managed Objects that have been introduced in the new vSAN Management 6.6 API. This does not even cover all the new methods or object types. For the complete list of vSAN 6.6 APIs, be sure to check out the vSAN Management 6.6 API Reference Guide here.

  • VsanVcsaDeployerSystem – Virtual Center Service Appliance deployment APIs onto vSAN datastore, operating at both vCenter Server and ESXi Host sides
  • VsanVdsSystem – vSAN system optimized VDS related operations, especially migrations from VSS to VDS
  • VsanUpdateManager – VIB installation engine operating at vSAN cluster level (optimized for vSAN clusters)
  • VsanCapabilitySystem – APIs to query vSAN capability, available on both vCenter and ESXi
  • VsanMassCollector – vSAN system management query API's to access data and managed object properties, operating at a vSAN Cluster level in vCenter Server only
  • VsanPhoneHomeSystem – vSAN online health related query API, operating at a vSAN Cluster level in vCenter Server only

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Easily try out vSAN 6.6 Encryption feature using KMIP Docker Container

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One of biggest feature introduced in the upcoming vSAN 6.6 release is the native vSAN Data-at-Rest Encryption capability. My good friend Duncan Epping even posted a video recently demo'ing the feature and showing how easy it is to enable with just a couple of clicks. Just like VM Encryption which was introduced in vSphere 6.5, vSAN Encryption also requires a Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) Server which needs to be associated with your vCenter Server.

The really nice thing about this is that because both VM Encryption and vSAN Encryption uses the exact same encryption library, as long as you have a supported KMS (which you can find over on the VMware KMS HCL here, more are being certified and added), you can actually leverage the same KMS for both types of encryption across different vSphere Clusters with different requirements. For the ultra paranoid, you could even "double" encrypt by running Encrypted VMs on top of a vSAN Encrypted Datastore 😉

As with any feature that relies on 3rd party tools, it can take some time to acquire evaluational licenses. For those of you who would like to try out either vSAN or VM Encryption from a functional standpoint, you can quickly get started in under a few minutes by using the KMIP Docker Container that I had built last year. This is a great way to familiarize yourself with the workflow or even try out some of the new vSphere and vSAN APIs if you plan to automate the KMIP configuration or even deployment of encrypted VMs. Another great use case for this is doing live demos and all you need is just a couple of Nested ESXi VMs and a Docker Container Host like Photon OS or even just your laptop for example. Below are the instructions on how to get started.

Disclaimer: It is also very important to note that you should NOT be using this for any production workloads or any VMs that you care about. For actual production deployments of VM Encryption or vSAN Encryption, you should be leveraging a production grade KMIP Server as PyKMIP stores the encryption keys in memory and will be lost upon a restart. This will also be true even for the virtual appliance, so this is really for quick evaluational purposes, do NOT run anything important that you care about due to the risks mentioned earlier.

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