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Alternative Way of Extracting VIN (vSphere Infrastructure Navigator) Information

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Here is an alternative method of extracting the super useful information from VIN (vSphere Infrastructure Navigator) which I stumbled across while troubleshooting an earlier VIN 1.2 deployment. This method is much simpler from a data extraction point of view and has less prerequisites compared to the first method documented here and here, but it does require a bit more data processing.

Once VIN is up running, there are a set of zip files that are created in /var/log/vadm/results which are name with the virtual machines MoRef ID. We can quickly view the contents of one of these files (without needing to extract the zip file) by using zcat, here is the command to view one of the zip files: zcat /var/logs/vadm/vm-238.zip

From the screenshots above, we can see it contains the same set of information as displayed in the VIN UI. The information is broken down into several section including high level summary of the VM, individual processes running in the virtual machine, application/services known by VIN as well as a netstat table.

Instead of operating on these files directly, you should make a separate copy of the directory for further processing. Since the file name contains the VM's MoRef ID instead of the human readable VM display name, I wrote a quick script called extractVINData.sh which creates a copy of data and rename the files to VM display name.

To use the script, you just need to download it and upload it to your VIN appliance (make sure you set the execute permission on the script). Then just run the script and it will automatically copy the directory to /root/vin-results and translate the VM MoRef ID by correlating with the /var/log/vadm/engine.log file.

Here is a screenshot of the script output:

So if you do not mind some parsing, you can easily extract the data VIN is collecting by simply SSHing to the VIN appliance and periodically copying out /var/log/vadm/results directory. From my quick test, this directory is automatically updated as new VMs are brought online and inventoried by VIN.

VCSA (vCenter Server Appliance) 5.1 VCDB & SSODB Password

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I recently helped answer a question internally about the default credentials to the VCSA 5.1 (vCenter Server Appliance) vCenter Server and SSO (Single-Sign On) Database for troubleshooting purposes. I thought I share the details in case this might help others.

With the release of the vSphere 5.1, the VCSA now runs VMware's vPostgres database for both the VCDB and SSODB. You should also know there is no default credentials for the database as the passwords are automatically generated during the initial application install and the database password will be unique on every VCSA.

However, you can still retrieve the password for both the VCDB as well as SSODB (this took a bit of digging in the appliance).

Disclaimer: You should not have any reason to go into the actual DB of either vCenter Server or SSO other than potential troubleshooting with VMware Support. Please use caution if you do choose to connect to the DB, as you can potentially impact your system.

VCDB Credentials:
You can view the credentials for the VCDB in the following file: /etc/vmware-vpx/vcdb.properties

Here is a screenshot of the file content as well as using psql client located on the VCSA (/opt/vmware/vpostgres/1.0/bin/psql) to connect to the VCDB:

SSODB Credentials:
You can view the credentials for the SSODB in the following file: /usr/lib/vmware-sso/webapps/lookupservice/WEB-INF/classes/config.properties

Here is a screenshot of the file content as well as using psql client located on the VCSA to connect to the SSODB:

Extracting Information from VIN (vSphere Infrastructure Navigator) Part 2

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In my previous article Extracting Information from VIN (vSphere Infrastructure Navigator) Part 1, we took a look at the data VIN was collecting through an interface called Jolokia. Utilizing a tool called j4psh, we were able to easily view and explore the data in VIN remotely. In this article, we will take a look at how easily you can extract the data we explored in the previous article using a very simple script.

While going through the Jolokia website and walking through the tutorial, I found there were several programmatic clients that could be used to connect to the Jolokia service which includes Java, Javascript and Perl. Since I am most familiar with Perl, I wrote a very simple Perl script called getVINData.pl leveraging the information from my previous article.

Disclaimer: This is not officially supported by VMware, use at your own risk.

Before using the script, you will need to run through the two per-requisites outlined in the previous blog article: VIN appliance setup and installation of Jmx4Perl. Once you have completed these two steps, you are now ready to execute the script (make sure the script has the executable permission set). The script is pretty straight forward it accepts two input parameter: VIN hostname/IP Address and the name of the virtual machine you wish to query.

In the example below, I am connecting to my VIN host which has an IP Address of 172.30.0.150 and I am querying a virtual machine with the name Analytics VM (one of the vC Ops VMs).

From the screenshot above we can see the following:

  • The vCenter Server that VIN is currently registered to
  • VM Summary information
  • Applications/Services currently running on the VM
  • VM Dependencies

If we take a look at the vSphere Web Client and the VIN data for this particular VM, we should see the same set information:

Though the script already contains quite a bit of information, it is just a sample of what can be done. With further exploration you can easily extend the script to extract other pieces of information and possibly even use other scripting/programming languages to connect to this interface. As I mentioned before, VIN is a very powerful tool for your vSphere infrastructure and now you can gain additional benefits by leveraging it's valuable data externally!