WilliamLam.com

govcsim - Neat incubation project (vCenter Server & ESXi API based simulator)

by // 12 Comments

I know many of my readers have inquired about VCSIM (vCenter Server Simulator) which was a really useful tool that served a variety of use cases, but unfortunately it had stopped working with the VCSA 6.0 release. VCSIM is another topic that is near and dear to me and it is something I continue to push and advocate for internally at VMware. Earlier this week, I came to learn about a cool new incubation project that Doug MacEachern had been working on for some time now. Doug is an awesome VMware developer working on the vSphere Integrated Containers (vIC) project and he is also well known for his active contributions to both govmomi (vSphere SDK for Go) and govc CLI.

As you can probably guess from the title, the name of the project is called govcsim and it is a vCenter Server and ESXi API based simulator written using govmomi. It creates a vCenter Server model with a datacenter, hosts, cluster, resource pools, networks and a datastore. The naming of the objects is similar to that of the original VCSIM mode that was included with the VCSA. The number of resources can be increased or decreased using the various resource type flags. Resources can also be created and removed using the API. Doug had developed the tool to provide an easy way for their team to test some of the work they are doing with vIC. The tool is still under incubation but continues to received enhancements. In fact, the other day when I had used it for the first time, I had found a couple of issues which Doug resolved immediately.

I got a chance to give govcsim a spin the other day and currently you can connect to it using govmomi, govc, pyvomi (vSphere SDK for Python) or rbvmomi (vSphere SDK for Ruby). It currently does not work with PowerCLI (connects but no inventory), I know this is something Doug is currently looking into. You might also be able to connect using other vSphere SDKs but these are the ones that Doug and I have tried so far.

[Read more...]

Project USB to SDDC - Part 1

by // 2 Comments

A couple of weeks back, Alan Renouf and I co-presented at the Sydney and Melbourne VMUG UserCon, here are some great write-ups about the events here and here. We were very honored to have been invited out and to also deliever the closing keynote. Having traveled halfway around the world, we thought it was only fitting to share something really special.

For the last couple of months, we had been working on a small pet project that I personally had been referring to as the "vGhetto SDDC". This was not something we had not shared with anyone before and thought the VMUG UserCon was the perfect venue to demo our new project. For the session, we decided to rename the project/session to USB to SDDC (better ring than the previous title) which might give you a hint on what the project might be about.

The inception for this project really stemmed from the work we did at last years VMworld Hackathon which was another idea that both Alan and I had came up and worked with the VMware Code team to deliver at both VMworld US and Europe. Like all great Automation stories, the motivation for this project was born out of pure laziness. With the huge success of the Hackathon at VMworld US, there was a huge demand for us to also deliver it again at VMworld Europe.

[Read more...]

How to determine when a Virtual Machine is ready for additional operations?

by // 3 Comments

This might sound like a pretty simple and basic question, right? However, the answer will actually depend on what you are trying to do. The motivation for this blog post actually stemmed from a conversation I had with one of our Engineers who works over in our core Platform Management Infrastructure which includes VMware Tools, Guest OS Customization, Guest Operations, etc. Although I was aware of some of these methods in determining when a VM was ready, I came to learn about a few new other methods that I was not aware of before. This is really one of the things I love about my job, constantly learning new things and diving deeper into our technologies and sharing that back with our customers to help enable them and their business.

So, what does it even mean for a Virtual Machine to be "ready"? Is it when the VM is powered on? Is it when the VM obtains an IP Address? Is it when the GuestOS is fully customized or is it when I can SSH or RDP to the system? Depending on what you are trying to accomplish, the answer will vary. In addition to that, there are two distinct VM states to consider. The first being the actual Virtual Machine state and the second being the GuestOS state.

Virtual Machine State

The VM state is pretty straight forward, it describes the "Hard" power state of the VM which can either be powered on, powered off or suspended. As you can probably guess, you will need to make sure the VM is powered on before you attempt to check whether the GuestOS is ready 🙂

Using the vSphere API, you can find the VM powerState under:

VirtualMachine->Runtime->powerState

Here is a PowerCLI snippet using the out of box cmdlet to get the power state for a VM named "air":

Get-VM -Name air | Select PowerState

Here is a PowerCLI snippet that uses the vSphere API via Get-View to retrieve the exact same information:

$vm = Get-View -ViewType Virtualmachine -Property Name,Runtime -Filter @{"name"="air"}
$vm.Runtime.PowerState

[Read more...]