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Automating downloads from Customer Connect (formally MyVMware)

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I recently came across a really cool project called vmw-cli which was built by Andrew Obersnel, an Engineer who works over in our Network and Security Business Unit (NSBU) at VMware. This CLI tool enables you to login to MyVMware and based on your entitlements, download any VMware binary or application just like you would using a web browser but now you can completely automate it from the command-line! The CLI is written as a Node.js application and you can consume as a CLI which requires Node.js to be installed or you can just run it as a Docker Container.

UPDATE (01/24/22): There is now a new VMware Customer Connect CLI (vcc) that is OSS as part of the VMware Labs Github repo. For more details on how to use this new CLI, please check out the README in the repo.

In the example below, I will take you through on how to use vmw-cli using the Node.js CLI method. If you prefer to use the Docker Container, you can simply refer to the Github project page for more details.

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Quick Tip - How to clear all Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) Migrations in the vSphere UI

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During the development of my Cloud Motion with vSphere Replication automation script for Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX), I extensively used the HCX vSphere UI for testing and debugging purposes.


Under the Migration view, you can see all active and completed migrations, including any failed migration attempts. In my particular environment, there had been a few hundred migrations and with my additional testing, that added quite a few more. Although you can filter by name or sort by the type of operation, it was still not very convenient for me while developing the script. I wanted a quick way to view the details after calling the HCX APIs and by the time I jumped to the UI, I would have missed a few of those updates.

In speaking with one of the HCX Engineers, I found out that you could simply drop all migration history from the internal database (this would remove all the history for past migrations including failures). In general, I do not see this being something customers would have a need for in Production, as you would want to keep all the history for auditing or debugging purposes. This is probably more for demo or testing purposes and below are the instructions on how to clear all migrations from your HCX Manager.

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Enhancements to Hybrid Linked Mode (HLM) in VMC using the new vCenter Cloud Gateway

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It has been almost a year since VMware introduced the Hybrid Linked Mode (HLM) capability, which provides customers with a consistent operating experience for managing and consuming resources from both their on-premises and VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) environments. Feedback from customers on HLM has been fantastic, especially when new or prospective VMC customers learn about HLM for the very first time. Customers were pleasantly surprised at how seamless the experience was when consuming VMC resources, using a familiar interface, the vSphere UI.

Here is a quick recap of what HLM provides today:

  • HLM allows customers to link a single VMC instance to a single on-prem SSO Domain which can contain one or more vCenter Servers (Enhanced Linked Mode) while maintaining separate administrative domains (e.g. on-prem user is Administrator while VMC user is CloudAdmin only)
  • SSO Domains will be different between on-prem and VMC, however it is a 1:1 relationship
  • A trust is established where the on-prem vCenter Server trusts the incoming connections from VMC as they share the same Active Directory identity source. Data is sync'ed uni-directionally from on-prem to VMC
  • Can be configured at any point in the on-prem vCenter Server lifecycle, no restrictions to initial install and can easily be un-linked unlike ELM
  • Both Embedded & External vCenter Server deployments are supported
  • HLM supports different versions of vCenter Server between on-prem (6.5d+) and VMC, especially as VMC will almost always run a newer version of vSphere
  • Users MUST login to VMC vCenter Server for single-pane of glass management (H5 Client supported only), logging into on-prem vCenter Server will NOT show VMC vCenter Server
  • Roles are NOT replicated due to the restrictive access model in VMC

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