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Exploring new VCSA VAMI API w/PowerCLI: Part 2

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In Part 2 of this series, we take a look at how to monitor the health of your vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) by retrieving some of the health metrics that are exposed by the Virtual Appliance Management Interface (VAMI).

VAMI UI Area of Focus

Regardless if you have an Embedded VCSA, External PSC or External VCSA node, there are four basic health metrics that are shown in the VAMI UI today: overall health of the system, CPU, memory and the last time the health check was performed. If you are running an Embedded VCSA or External VCSA, there is an additional health metric for the vCenter Server Database (VCDB) as shown in the screenshot below. Interestingly, while going through the health APIs, I also found a few more metrics that are currently not displayed in the VAMI UI today. These additional metrics include Swap, Storage and Software packages which can also be useful to monitor, especially on the storage front.

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Copying files from a USB (FAT32 or NTFS) device to ESXi

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It is not uncommon, especially in troubleshooting scenarios where you might find yourself needing to transfer files to or from an ESXi host using a USB device as it may not be reachable on the network. Another common case for directly attaching a USB device to an ESXi host is to transfer a large amount of Virtual Machines that were exported from another system and rather than streaming the content from your desktop, you may want to connect it directly to ESXi host. In fact, I had this very use case when I was a customer after we had acquired a company and needed to transfer their assets to our infrastructure. The IT admins just copied everything onto a USB device and then shipped us the drive for processing.

Historically, it was understood that ESXi could only access a USB device (requires disabling the USB arbitrator service) if it contains a FAT16 partition which are then automatically mounted under the /vmfs/volumes/ path. The biggest issue with FAT16 is that the size of the partition has to be <=2GB which severely limits its use for larger files. Another alternative that came up in recent years years is that you could run VMFS on a USB device, but that obviously would require you to format the USB device with VMFS and it would only be readable between ESXi hosts. If you were looking for something more generic like FAT32 which supports a larger partition size, it was assumed this was not possible, at least I was under that impression.

It was only recently as part of a project I had been working on where I was re-visiting this topic that I had discovered that other partition types such as FAT32 and even NTFS from a USB device could actually be accessed by ESXi 6.x. The assumption that I and probably others had made was that just because the partitions were not visible or mounted by ESXi, it does not mean the underlying USB device would also not be accessible. To access a FAT32 partition from a USB device in ESXi, you can use the mcopy utility from the ESXi Shell and for accessing an NTFS partition from a USB device in ESXi, you can use ntfscat utility. It actually took me some trial/error to get the correct syntax, but you can see how to use the utilities below.

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Exploring new VCSA VAMI API w/PowerCLI: Part 1

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One of the most most exciting developments in vSphere 6.5 with respect to Automation is the introduction of several new REST APIs included in the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA). In addition to covering some of the existing capabilities like vSphere Content Library and Tagging, customers will now have access to a new basic Virtual Machine management API that has been greatly simplified compared to the traditional vSphere SOAP API and access to the VCSA's Virtual Appliance Management Interface API, also known to most as the VAMI.

I am particular excited about the VAMI REST API as this is where customers will be able to manage the entire full lifecycle of their VCSA/PSC which will eventually include all Day 2 operations as well as Install, Upgrade, Migrate and Recovery capabilities. This initial release of the VAMI REST API covers most of the functionality found in the current VAMI UI by going to https://[VCSA]:5480 after your VCSA or PSC has been deployed.

Not having spent a whole lot of time with the new VAMI REST API, I figured a good way for me to learn more about the APIs was to consume it and what better way than using PowerCLI? With PowerCLI 6.5 R1 (Windows version) release, there is a new Connect-CisServer and Get-CisService cmdlet that provides you access to these new REST APIs including the VAMI APIs. As I explore the new VAMI APIs, I plan to create a new VAMI PowerCLI Module that contains functions exerising some of the new APIs that you see today in the VAMI UI.

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