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VSAN 6.2 extends vSphere API to include new VSAN Management APIs

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In addition to all the new capabilities and enhancements included in the release of VSAN 6.2 (vSphere 6.0 Update 2) which you can read more about here and here; VSAN 6.2 also introduces a new VSAN Management API which extends the existing vSphere APIs that our customers are quite familiar with.

This new VSAN Management API will allow developers, partners and administrators to automate all aspects of VSAN functionality including: complete lifecycle (install, upgrade, patch), monitoring (including VSAN Observer capabilities), configuration and troubleshooting. There will be two new service endpoints /vsan for an ESXi host and /vsanHealth for vCenter Server respectively which will provide access to the new VSAN Management API interfaces.

UPDATE: (03/17/16) - Check out this article here on how to quickly get started with the new VSAN Management API.

Below are the list of new vSphere Managed Objects that provide the different VSAN capabilities:

Managed Object Functionality ESXi or VC
HostVsanHealthSystem VSAN Health related configuration and query APIs ESXi only
HostVsanSystem VSAN related configuration and query APIs ESXi only
VsanObjectSystem VSAN object related status query and storage policy setting APIs ESXi & VC
VsanPerformanceManager VSAN Performance related configuration and query APIs ESXi & VC
VsanSpaceReportSystem VSAN cluster space usage related query APIs VC only
VsanUpgradeSystem Used to perform and monitor VSAN on-disk format upgrades VC only
VsanUpgradeSystemEx VSAN upgrade and disk format conversion related APIs VC only
VsanVcClusterConfigSystem VSAN cluster configuration setting and query APIs VC only
VsanVcClusterHealthSystem VSAN Health related configuration and query APIs VC only
VsanVcDiskManagementSystem VSAN disks related configuration and query APIs VC only
VsanVcStretchedClusterSystem VSAN Stretched Cluster related configuration and query APIs VC only

Note: There will be a VSAN Management API Reference guide similar to the vSphere API Reference Guide which will be released as part of VSAN 6.2. There, you will find much greater detail on each of the new vSphere Managed Objects and their associated methods and usage.

For customers interested in consuming this new VSAN Management API, there will be initially five language specific bindings also known as an SDK (Software Development Kit) that will be available for download when VSAN 6.2 is generally available:

Additional language bindings are being worked on and if you have any feedback on what you might like to see next, feel free to leave a comment.

Docker Container for the Ruby vSphere Console (RVC)

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The Ruby vSphere Console (RVC) is an extremely useful tool for vSphere Administrators and has been bundled as part of vCenter Server (Windows and the vCenter Server Appliance) since vSphere 6.0. One feature that is only available in the VCSA's version of RVC is the VSAN Observer which is used to capture and analyze performance statistics for a VSAN environment for troubleshooting purposes.

For customers who are still using the Windows version of vCenter Server and wish to leverage this tool, it is generally recommended that you deploy a standalone VCSA just for the VSAN Observer capability which does not require any additional licensing. Although it only takes 10 minutes or so to setup, having to download and deploy a full blown VCSA to just use the VSAN Observer is definitely not ideal, especially if you are resource constrained in your environment. You also may only need the VSAN Observer for a short amount of time, but it could take you longer to deploy and in a troubleshooting situation, time is of the essence.

I recently came across an internal Socialcast thread and one of the suggestion was why not build a tiny Photon OS VM that already contained RVC? Instead of building a specific Photon OS that was specific to RVC, why not just create a Docker Container for RVC? This also means you could pull down the Docker Container from Photon OS or any other system that has Docker installed. In fact, I had already built a Docker Container for some handy VMware Utilities, it would be simple enough to just have an RVC Docker Container.

The one challenge that I had was that the current RVC github repo does not contain the latest vSphere 6.x changes. The fix was simple, I just copied the latest RVC files from a vSphere 6.0 Update 1 deployment of the VCSA (/opt/vmware/rvc and /usr/bin/rvc) and used that to build my RVC Docker Container which is now hosted on Docker Hub here and includes the Dockerfile in case someone was interested in how I built it.

To use the RVC Docker Container, you just need access to a Linux Container Host, for example VMware Photon OS which can be deployed using an ISO or OVA. For instructions on setting that up, please take a look here which should only take a minute or so. Once logged in, you just need to run the following commands to pull down the RVC Docker Container and to star the container:

docker pull lamw/rvc
docker run --rm -it lamw/rvc

ruby-vsphere-console-docker-container-1
As seen in the screenshot above, once the Docker Container has started, you can then access RVC like you normally would. Below is an quick example of logging into one of my VSAN environments and using RVC to run the VSAN Health Check command.

ruby-vsphere-console-docker-container-0
If you wish to run the VSAN Observer with the live web server, you will need to map the port from the Linux Container Host to the VSAN Observer port which runs on 8010 by default when starting the RVC Docker Container. To keep things simple, I would recommend mapping 80->8010 and you would run the following command:

docker run --rm -it -p 80:8010 lamw/rvc

Once the RVC Docker Container has started, you can then start the VSAN Observer with --run-webserver option and if you connect to the IP Address of your Linux Container Host using a browser, you should see the VSAN Observer Stats UI.

Hopefully this will come in handy for anyone who needs to quickly access RVC.

Automating full configuration of a VSAN Stretched Cluster using RVC

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A couple of weeks back I had spent some time setting up several VSAN Stretched Clusters in my lab for some testing and although it was extremely easy to setup using the vSphere Web Client, I still prefer to stand up the environment completely automated 🙂

In looking to automate the VSAN Stretched Cluster configuration, I was interested in something that would pretty much work out of the box and not require any additional download or setup. The obvious answer would be to use the Ruby vSphere Console (RVC) is a really awesome tool that is available as part of vCenter Server included in both Windows vCenter Server and the VCSA.

For those of you who have not used RVC before, I highly recommend you give it a try and you can take a look at this article to see some of the cool features and benefits. I am making use of the RVC script option which I have written about in the past here to perform the VSAN Stretched Configuration. One of the new RVC namespaces that have been introduced in vSphere 6.0 Update 1 is the vsan.stretchedcluster.* commands and the one we are specifically interested in is the vsan.stretchedcluster.config_witness command.

There are a couple of things the script expects from an environment setup, so I will just spend a few minutes covering the pre-reqs and the assumptions before diving into the script. I will assume you already have a vCenter Server deployed and configured with an empty inventory. I also assume you have already deployed at least two ESXi hosts and a VSAN Witness VM that meets all the VSAN pre-reqs like at least one VSAN enabled VMkernel interface and associated disk requirements. Below is a screenshot of the vSphere Web Client of the initial environment.

automate-the-full-configuration-of-vsan-stretched-cluster-using-rvc-0
Next, we will need to download the RVC script deploy_stretch_cluster.rb and upload that to your vCenter Server. Before you can execute the script, you will need to edit the script and adjust the variable names based on your environment. Once you have saved the changes, you can then run the RVC script by running the following command:

rvc -s deploy_stretch_cluster.rb [VC-USERNAME]@localhost

Here is a screenshot of running the script on the VCSA using Nested ESXi VMs + VSAN Witness VM for the Stretched Clustering configuration:

aautomate-the-full-configuration-of-vsan-stretched-cluster-using-rvc-1
If everything executed successfully, you should see a "Task result: success" which signifies that the VSAN Witness VM was successfully added to the VSAN Stretched Cluster. If we now refresh the vSphere Web Client and under the Fault Domains configurations in the VSAN Cluster, we now see both our 2-Node VSAN Cluster and the VSAN Witness VM.

automate-the-full-configuration-of-vsan-stretched-cluster-using-rvc-2

Hopefully this script can also benefit others who are interested in quickly standing up a VSAN Stretched Cluster, especially for evaluation or testing purposes. Enjoy getting your VSAN on!