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How to Generate VM Remote Console URL for vSphere 5.x Web Client

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There was a question last week on the VMTN community forums about generating a shortcut URL to a virtual machine's remote console in the new vSphere 5 Web Client. For those of you who have used the vCenter's Web Access may recall the option to generate a desktop shortcut to a particular virtual machine's remote console which includes ability to obfuscate the generated URL that could then be provided to your users.

With the updated vSphere 5 Web Client, there is not an option to generate the remote console URL but there is a link that you could manually copy and provide to your users. This of course is not ideal but after a tinkering, I was able to figure out how to generate the remote console URL for any virtual machine in the new vSphere 5.x Web Client.

I also created a vSphere SDK for Perl script awhile back called generateVMRemoteConsoleURL.pl which helps users automate the URL generation for vSphere 4.x environments, it has now been updated to support vSphere 5.

Here is an example of what the URL looks like for vSphere 5.0:

https://reflex.primp-industries.com:9443/vsphere-client/vmrc/vmrc.jsp?vm=EE26E7F6-591B-4256-BD7A-402E5AC9E0A8:VirtualMachine:vm-1506

Here is an example of what the URL looks like for vSphere 5.1 & 5.5:

https://reflex.primp-industries.com:9443/vsphere-clien/vmrc/vmrc.jsp?vm=urn:vmomi:VirtualMachine:vm-1506:EE26E7F6-591B-4256-BD7A-402E5AC9E0A8

There are basicallythree important components to the URL:

  • Hostname of the vCenter Server - reflex.primp-industries.com
  • The vCenter instanceUUID which used to uniquely identify a vCenter Server - EE26E7F6-591B-4256-BD7A-402E5AC9E0A8
  • The MoRef ID of the virtual machine - vm-1506

Since the Web Client does not support URL customization, you only need to provide the name of a virtual machine to the generateVMRemoteConsoleURL.pl script and the URL will be generated for you.

Here is an example execution of the script:

Now you can take the URL output from the script and enter it into a supported web browser. You will then be asked to authenticate before it allows you to access the remote console of a particular virtual machine.

You can now provide links to specific virtual machines

How to Ack & Reset vCenter Alarm implementing hidden API method

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There was a recent question in the VMTN developers forum around automating the acknowledgment and resetting of a triggered vCenter alarm using vSphere SDK for Perl. This is actually a trivial task using the vSphere Client, you would first identify the alarm and acknowledge the alarm by right clicking on the alarm and selecting "Acknowledge Alarm". To reset the alarm, you would right click on the alarm and select "Reset Alarm to Green".

To automate this task using the vSphere SDK for Perl which uses the vSphere API, you would perform the same two API operations. Doing a search, you will find a method called AcknowledgeAarm which should does exactly that, but if you try to search for method to reset an alarm, you will notice no such method exists. This was something I was aware of since vSphere 3.5 API, but never understood why it was kept hidden.

Here is a screenshot of the alarmManager in the vSphere MOB and you will notice no methods pertains to resetting an alarm:

You might ask, how is the vSphere Client performing this operation and what API method is it using? Sadly, this operation is one of the many hidden API methods that VMware choose to hide and not public expose for various reasons.

However, there are several ways of identifying some of these hidden vSphere API methods and properties. When you install the vSphere Client on your workstation, there is a catalog directory (e.g. C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\4.1\Catalogs\Default)  that is created based on the version of vSphere and within the vim directory, there are these *.vmsg files that contain information regarding the VIM API (Virtual Infrastructure Management API) and searching within these files, you will find some hidden goodies.

Searching the task.vmsg file and within the alarm section, you will see a method name called setAlarmStatus:

alarm.AlarmManager.setAlarmStatus.label = "Set alarm status"
alarm.AlarmManager.setAlarmStatus.summary = "Sets the status of an alarm for an entity"

As you can see, there are other methods with respect to the alarmManager that is documented, but the method above is not documented in the vSphere API reference. We can take this information and further validate by using the vSphere MOB to see what parameters are required for this method.

By generating the proper URL, you can see the method is exposed and the required parameters to this function:

We can perform one additional confirmation to ensure that the method above is actually the method the vSphere Client is performing when resetting an alarm. The tool that we will use here is Onyx, yep, it is not only useful for PowerCLI but for all vSphere developers and administrators. I created a dummy alarm that would trigger if a VM is powered on or powered off and by running Onyx to capture the API calls when acknowledging and resetting an alarm.

Here is the output from Onyx:

As you can see, the two operations uses the AcknowledgeAlarm and the hidden SetAlarmStatus API method. We now can definitively say that the above hidden API method is being used and now we need to figure out how we can incorporate this method into the existing vSphere SDK for Perl.

In this example, I will be working with the vSphere SDK for Perl found on vMA 4.1, but the same set of changes will apply to vCLI 4.x being installed on a Windows or Linux system. There are two client Perl stubs or Perl Modules that contains prototype and definition of a vSphere API method:

/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/VMware/VIM25Stub.pm (prototype definition)
/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/VMware/VIM25Runtime.pm (method definition)

We will first edit the VIM25Runtime.pm module and if you are on vMA, you will need to use 'sudo' to edit the file. We will add the SetAlarmStatus entry try similar the AcknowledgeAlarm method:

Next we will edit the VIM25Stub.pm and again it will be very similar to an existing method, but now we must populate the parameters based on what we discovered from the vSphere MOB:

Now we are ready to implement this method in a vSphere SDK for Perl Script. I quickly threw together a script that helps manages your vCenter alarms using the CLI by listing all active and triggered alarms in either a red or yellow state.

Download Script: alarmManagement.pl

Here is an example of listing all triggered alarms that are either in a red or yellow state:

Here is an example of acking and resetting the above alarm and utilizing the new hidden API method that was just implemented:

There you have it, a method that was once hidden is no longer =)

If you are interested in locating other hidden API goodies, take a look at this post on How to browse the internal vSphere APIs

How to unregister vCenter plugin/extension using the MOB

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I saw a post on the VMTN forums the other day about unregistering a vCenter plugin. The user had a bad installation of an early preview of NetApp's VSC utility. After uninstalling the plugin, the user was still unable to unlink the plugin from vCenter. There is actually a pretty simple solution to this problem which can be accomplished by using the vSphere MOB.

UPDATE (10/16/22) - As of vSphere 8, you can now easily unregister vCenter plugins within the vSphere UI. Select the specific plugin and then click on remove button.

Here are the instructions to remove a specific plugin/extension from your vCenter server:

1. Point your web browser to your vCenter server: https://your_vc_server/mob and login.

2. Click on content:

3. Locate and click on ExtensionManager:

4. Click on the plugin you are interested in removing:

5. Record the plugin key id which will be used to remove the plugin:

6. Now, go back to previous page and at the bottom click on the function "UnregisterExtension". A new window will open and ask for the plugin key id which was recorded from above. Enter the key and click on the "Invoke Method" to remove the plugin

You can now refresh the page and you will see that the plugin is no longer available. You can restart your vSphere Client to see that the plugin has now been removed.

The following operation can also be performed using a script, here is a vSphere SDK for Perl script that does just that: pluginExtensionManager.pl