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It is that time of the year again, Eric Siebert who runs the popular vSphere-land.com website has just opened up the polls for the Top 25 VMware Virtualization Blogs. This year the voting is not only for the top 25 blogs, but Eric has also introduced categories for best storage, scripting, news information blog, etc. that you can also vote for. I already have a few that I will definitely be voting for such as Steve Jin, Duncan Epping, Frank Denneman and Alan Renouf but also new comers like Chris Colotti.

Here are the top 10 popular posts on virtuallyGhetto for 2011 to help make your decision and vote for virtuallyGhetto!

  1. Automating ESXi 4.1 Kickstart Tips & Tricks
  2. Getting started with vMA 
  3. New vSphere Health Check 5.0 & ghettoVCB Script
  4. How to Enable Support for Nested 64bit & Hyper-V VMs in vSphere 5
  5. How to Run Windows 8 on vSphere 5
  6. Automating ESXi 5 Kickstart Tips & Tricks 
  7. How to Enable Nested vFT (virtual Fault Tolerance) in vSphere 5
  8. When Can I Run Apple OSX on vSphere 5?
  9. How to inject custom drivers into an ESXi 4.1 image using vibddi?
  10. vSphere Tagging Feature Not So Invisible

Vote For Ghetto! Thanks for your support

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    Extracting GuestOS IDs From vCloud Director

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    There was an interesting question on the VMTN forums last week on capturing the list of supported guest operating systems using the vCloud APIs. This feature is currently not available today using the vCloud API, as it there is no way to extract the list of supported guestOS identifiers. If you take a look at the vCloud Director User Guide, you can get a list of supported guestOSes, but it does not translate to the API identifiers that is needed when provisioning a VM in vCloud Director.

    The list of supported guestOS types are stored in the vCloud Director database and you can extract the guestOS IDs if you have access to the database or a DBA that manages the database. Using the following SQL query, you can get the list of supported guestOSes that includes the API ID and description. Since the list of guestOSes are inserted upon installation, I have already captured the output for a default vCloud Director 1.5 instance for your reference.

    Disclaimer: This SQL query is not supported by VMware nor should you directly access the vCloud Database as a best practice without the consent of VMware Support.

    In this example, I am querying the list of default guestOSes from a vCloud Director 1.5 instance that was installed on Oracle XE database.

    First you need to set several environmental variables for your respective ORACLE_HOME, ORACLE_SID and update your PATH variable (your paths will vary based on your installation + OS):

    [root@vcd ~]# export ORACLE_HOME=/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe
    [root@vcd ~]# export ORACLE_SID=XE
    [root@vcd ~]# export PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/bin

    Next we will login using sqlplus and you will need to know the username and password of the vCloud Director database that was configured during installation:

    [root@vcd ~]# sqlplus "vcloud/vcloud"
    SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.2.0 Production on Tue Nov 1 19:30:24 2011
    Copyright (c) 1982, 2011, Oracle. All rights reserved.
    Connected to:
    Oracle Database 11g Express Edition Release 11.2.0.2.0 - 64bit Production

    Before we execute the query, we need to set a few parameters to help with the readability of the output:

    SET ECHO OFF
    SET WRAP OFF
    SET FEEDBACK OFF
    SET PAGESIZE 0
    SET HEADING OFF

    Now we are ready to execute the SQL statement:

    SQL> select internal_name||' == '||display_name from guest_os_type order by display_name;

    Note: I am not a SQL expert nor DBA, I am sure there are other variations of formatting.

    Here is a screenshot of the execution above:

    The list of supported default guestOS types in vCloud Director 1.5 is 80:

    guestOS Identifier guestOS Descriptioin
    asianux3Guest Asianux 3 (32-bit)
    asianux3_64Guest Asianux 3 (64-bit)
    asianux4Guest Asianux 4 (32 bit)
    asianux4_64Guest Asianux 4 (64 bit)
    centosGuest CentOS 4/5/6 (32-bit)
    centos64Guest CentOS 4/5/6 (64-bit)
    dosGuest DOS
    debian4Guest Debian GNU/Linux 4 (32-bit)
    debian4_64Guest Debian GNU/Linux 4 (64-bit)
    debian5Guest Debian GNU/Linux 5 (32-bit)
    debian5_64Guest Debian GNU/Linux 5 (64-bit)
    debian6Guest Debian GNU/Linux 6 (32 bit)
    debian6_64Guest Debian GNU/Linux 6 (64 bit)
    freebsdGuest FreeBSD (32-bit)
    freebsd64Guest FreeBSD (64-bit)
    win2000AdvServGuest Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server
    win2000ProGuest Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
    win2000ServGuest Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
    win31Guest Microsoft Windows 3.1
    windows7Guest Microsoft Windows 7 (32-bit)
    windows7_64Guest Microsoft Windows 7 (64-bit)
    win95Guest Microsoft Windows 95
    win98Guest Microsoft Windows 98
    winNTGuest Microsoft Windows NT 4
    winNetDatacenterGuest Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition (32-bit)
    winNetDatacenter64Guest Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition (64-bit)
    winNetEnterpriseGuest Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition (32-bit)
    winNetEnterprise64Guest Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition (64-bit)
    winNetStandardGuest Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition (32-bit)
    winNetStandard64Guest Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition (64-bit)
    winNetWebGuest Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Web Edition
    winLonghornGuest Microsoft Windows Server 2008 (32-bit)
    winLonghorn64Guest Microsoft Windows Server 2008 (64-bit)
    windows7Server64Guest Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit)
    winNetBusinessGuest Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003
    winVistaGuest Microsoft Windows Vista (32-bit)
    winVista64Guest Microsoft Windows Vista (64-bit)
    winXPProGuest Microsoft Windows XP Professional (32-bit)
    winXPPro64Guest Microsoft Windows XP Professional (64-bit)
    netware5Guest Novell NetWare 5.1
    netware6Guest Novell NetWare 6.x
    os2Guest OS/2
    oesGuest Open Enterprise Server
    oracleLinuxGuest Oracle Linux 4/5/6 (32 bit)
    oracleLinux64Guest Oracle Linux 4/5/6 (64 bit)
    otherGuest Other (32-bit)
    otherGuest64 Other (64-bit)
    other24xLinuxGuest Other 2.4x Linux (32-bit)
    other24xLinux64Guest Other 2.4x Linux (64-bit)
    other26xLinuxGuest Other 2.6x Linux (32-bit)
    other26xLinux64Guest Other 2.6x Linux (64-bit)
    otherLinuxGuest Other Linux (32-bit)
    otherLinux64Guest Other Linux (64-bit)
    rhel2Guest Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2
    rhel3Guest Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 (32-bit)
    rhel3_64Guest Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 (64-bit)
    rhel4Guest Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (32-bit)
    rhel4_64Guest Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (64-bit)
    rhel5Guest Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (32-bit)
    rhel5_64Guest Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (64-bit)
    rhel6Guest Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (32-bit)
    rhel6_64Guest Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (64-bit)
    openServer5Guest SCO OpenServer 5
    openServer6Guest SCO OpenServer 6
    unixWare7Guest SCO UnixWare 7
    eComStationGuest Serenity eComStation 1
    eComStation2Guest Serenity eComStation 2
    solaris10Guest Sun Solaris 10 (32-bit)
    solaris10_64Guest Sun Solaris 10 (64-bit)
    solaris11_64Guest Sun Solaris 11 (64 bit)
    solaris8Guest Sun Solaris 8 (experimental)
    solaris9Guest Sun Solaris 9 (experimental)
    sles10Guest Suse Linux Enterprise 10 (32-bit)
    sles10_64Guest Suse Linux Enterprise 10 (64-bit)
    sles11Guest Suse Linux Enterprise 11 (32-bit)
    sles11_64Guest Suse Linux Enterprise 11 (64-bit)
    slesGuest Suse Linux Enterprise 8/9 (32-bit)
    sles64Guest Suse Linux Enterprise 8/9 (64-bit)
    ubuntuGuest Ubuntu Linux (32-bit)
    ubuntu64Guest Ubuntu Linux (64-bit)

    If you have ever worked with the vSphere API, you will notice the guestOS API IDs are exactly the same as the guestOS Identifiers found in the vSphere API. vSphere 5 supports a total of 105 guestOSes and 80 of those are supported in vCloud Director.

    A feature request has already been submitted to be able to query for the list of supported guestOSes using the vCloud API. For now, this is another way of retrieving API guestOS identifier without having to manually create each guestOS type through the web interface and query for the identifier.

    vCloud Director Report 1.0.0

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    Over the winter holiday I started to explore the vCloud API and one of our SDKs, vCloud SDK for PHP. VMware provides two additional vCloud SDKs: Java and .NET. I had used Java in college and I wanted to stay away from anything Windows related, so I thought I give PHP a try and it was the closest thing to Perl 😉

    Since this was my first time using the vCloud API and SDK, I thought what better way to learn than to create a script similar to my vSphere Health Check Report for vCloud Director? This not only helped me to understand the objects in vCloud Director from an API perspective but no such reporting tool exists today for administrators and end users of vCloud Director.

    Here is an example of what a report could look like: vCloudDirectorReport.html

    To use the script, you will need the following per-requiste:

    • Install vCloud SDK for PHP, take a look at article on how to get setup.
    • Running vCloud Director 1.5 (Script uses the new API Query Service)
    • Download both config.php which includes configuration parameters for the script and vmwarevCloudDirectorReport.php script.

    To get a list of the available commandline options, just type "php vmwarevCloudDirectorReport.php":

    php vmwarevCloudDirectorReport.php

Error: missing required parameters
Usage:

[Script]
VMware vCloud Director Report v1.0.0

[Description]
This script provides a detail report of your VMware vCloud Director system

[Usage]
# php vCloudReport.php -s -u -p [Options]

-s|--server [req] IP or hostname of the vCloud Director.
-u|--user [req] User name in the form user@organization for the vCloud Director instance.
-p|--pswd [req] Password for user.
-t|--type [req] Type of report [system|orgadmin|orguser].

[Options]
-r|--report [opt*] Name of html output file (e.g. vCloudReport.html).

[Examples]
# php query.php -s 127.0.0.1 -u admin@system -p password -t system
# php query.php -s 127.0.0.1 -u admin@coke -p password -t orgadmin
# php query.php -s 127.0.0.1 -u admin@pepsi -p password -t orguser

    The config.php can be used to store the vCloud URL and credentials or you may specify it via the commandline using -s, -u and -p arguments. In addition, you will also need to specify -t flag which is based on the type of user you are logging into whether that is system (administrator), orgadmin or orguser.

    The report can easily be customized by toggling parameters in config.php which includes the following parameters:

    Depending on the report type, certain flags will be applicable. By default, all flags are enabled but you my disable ones you do not wish to see.

    Here is an example of the script logging into vCloud Director instance with the administrator account in the System organization:

    This is the first iteration of the script, I plan on adding additional information and if you have any feedback/suggestions, please leave a comment below.