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Exploring the vCloud Networking & Security API Using Ruby

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In my previous article I demonstrated how you can easily use Ruby and the HTTParty Gem to access the vCloud API. As mentioned at the end of the article I also performed a similar exercise for the vCloud Networking and Security API and here is the sample Ruby script I reated called vcns.rb.

Before getting started, you will need to have the following installed on your system:

You will also need to access to a vCloud Networking and Security 5.x environment to use this script.  To begin, create a file called config-vcns.yml which contains the credentials to your vCNS system and will be used to login. Here is what the file should look like the following:

:username: admin
:password: default
:site: https://vcns.primp-industries.com

The script provides the following output:

  • vCNS Configuration
  • vCNS Edge Gateway(s) Details
  • Syslog Service Details
  • HA Service Details
  • Firewall Service Details
  • DNS Service Details
  • SSL-VPN Service Details
  • IPSec Service Details
  • DHCP Service Details
  • NAT Service Details
  • Load Balancer Service Details

Here is a screenshot of running the vcns.rb script:

As you can see, you can easily implement any of the features provide from the vCloud Networking and Security API, with some basic knowledge of how the API works (of course the documentation examples help too!). To further demonstrate this, I thought for kicks and giggles, I would take a part of the script and apply it to another language, this time using PowerShell (yep, you heard right!).

Luckily, it turns out my colleague Alan Renouf already wrote an awesome little PowerShell module for vShield (vCNS) awhile back. With some knowledge of the vCNS API, it was trivial to add a new command called get-vShieldEdge which Alan did not have that would list all the vCNS Edge Gateways that have been deployed.

Here is what the the code looks like in Ruby:

Here is what the code looks like for PowerShell:
Minus the language syntax, it looks pretty similar right? Both Ruby and PowerShell are accessing the same vCNS API. As long as you know how the API works, it is pretty easy to switch between programming/scripting languages.

To show the above code works, here is screenshot using the new get-vShieldEdge command:

If you are interested in further automation of vCNS, I would highly recommend you take a look at the vCloud Networking and Security API Programming Guide.

Useful Resources:

Exploring the vCloud API Using Ruby

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While working on something that was completely random, I started to play around a bit with the Ruby programming language. I had a few questions and I reached out to a buddy of mine who is Ruby developer and in doing so I was introduced to a very cool Ruby gem called HTTParty. For those of you who are not familiar with Ruby gems, it is a packaged library or application for Ruby, similar to an rpm or pkg file. The neat thing about HTTParty is that it makes working with REST APIs extremely easy and processing XML request/responses into Ruby objects without too much effort.

With the bit of knowledge I gained from my buddy, I wanted to see how easy it would be to apply this to the vCloud API using Ruby and HTTParty. To my surprise, it was actually pretty easy!

Disclaimer: I am not a developer nor even a Ruby novice. This is probably the second or third time I have used Ruby.

Before getting started, you will need to have the following installed on your system:

The following vCloud APIs are implemented in the sample below:

To demonstrate the use of Ruby & HTTParty, I created a very simple Ruby script called vcd.rb which primarily deals with vApp operations.

To use the script, you will need to create a file called config-vcd.yml which contains the credentials to your vCloud Director instance. Here is what the file should look like:

:username: administrator@system
:password: supersecretpassword
:site: https://vcd.primp-industries.com

Note: This example assumes you are running vCloud Director 5.1 (but sample can be modified to support 1.5)

Here is an example of listing all vApps for the given Organization you are logging into:

Here is an example of listing a specific vApp:

Here is an example of performing several operations on the vApp:

At the end of this little exercise, I was pretty impressed at how easy it was to work with REST APIs using Ruby and HTTParty. I think the toughest part for me personally was getting used to Ruby's syntax which I was not familiar with. I also extended this exercise to the vCloud Networking and Security REST APIs which I will share in another blog post.

Useful Resources:

 

Why Are There Two VMX Files?

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Have you noticed that for a powered on virtual machine in vSphere 5.1, there is now an additional VMX file that ends with an ~ (tilde) found within the virtual machine's configuration directory?

This was an observation that was made by a few folks and some thought it might be related to a virtual machine's lock file which is created when a virtual machine is powered on. After a bit of research, it turns out this extra VMX file is not a lock file but actually an "edit file". This edit file is a copy of the original VMX file and when changes are required, they are applied to the edit file first. Once the changes are complete, the edit file is then atomically swapped with the original VMX file which helps prevent potential VMX file corruption. In the worst case event where the original VMX file is somehow corrupted, the virtual machine can be restored using the edit file.

This is another reason why you should not be manually editing a virtual machine's VMX file, especially when it is still powered on. For any VMX configuration changes, you should be automating using the vSphere API through the use of either PowerCLI or the vSphere SDK for Perl. For more information on automating advanced settings across your virtual machines, please take a look at this article.

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