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esxcli Part2 - Automating esxcli using vMA

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In the previous article, esxcli Part1, we discussed what esxcli is and what it can be used for. In this article, we will show you how you can automate and perform a common esxcli operation against a set of ESX and/or ESXi hosts using vMA. As mentioned in the previous article, esxcli needs to be executed against a specific host, it is not vCenter aware and cannot connect to vCenter to perform an operation against a host.

One of the pre-requisites before starting is that all ESX and ESXi hosts need to be managed by vMA and accessible using vi-fastpass authentication. Please refer to the vMA documentation on configuring this on vMA.

Download:esxcli-automation.pl

The following script is based off of useVIFastpassOnvMAToRunPerlScriptWithoutClearTextPassword.pl. The modified script utilizes the vi-fastpass library to properly access a set of target(s) and performs the specified esxcli operation without having to provide credentials to each and every host.

The following example will demonstrate iSCSI multipath configuration on two hosts using the method described by Duncan Epping in this article.

1) Create a file containing the list host to perform the operations against:

[vi-admin@scofield ]$ cat hosts
esxi4-1.primp-industries.com
esxi4-3.primp-industries.com

2. Run the script with the specific esxcli parameters as you would normally by passing it into the --cmd_option argument (double quote the arguments):

Binding iSCSI interface to vmk0

[vi-admin@scofield ]$ ./esxcli-automation.pl --hostlist hosts --cmd_option "swiscsi nic add -n vmk0 -d vmhba33"
Executing script on "esxi4-1.primp-industries.com" ...
Executing script on "esxi4-3.primp-industries.com" ...
Binding iSCSI interface to vmk1

[vi-admin@scofield ]$ ./esxcli-automation.pl --hostlist hosts --cmd_option "swiscsi nic add -n vmk1 -d vmhba33"
Executing script on "esxi4-1.primp-industries.com" ...
Executing script on "esxi4-3.primp-industries.com" ...

3. Verify iSCSI multipathing has been properly configured:

[vi-admin@scofield ]$ ./esxcli-automation.pl --hostlist hosts --cmd_option "swiscsi nic list -d vmhba33"
Executing script on "esxi4-1.primp-industries.com" ...
vmk0
pNic name: vmnic0
ipv4 address: 172.30.0.183
ipv4 net mask: 255.255.255.0
ipv6 addresses:
mac address: 00:50:56:92:69:7a
mtu: 1500
toe: false
tso: true
tcp checksum: false
vlan: true
link connected: true
ethernet speed: 1000
packets received: 167051261
packets sent: 232132
NIC driver: e1000
driver version: 8.0.3.1-NAPI
firmware version: N/A
vmk1
pNic name: vmnic1
ipv4 address: 172.30.0.184
ipv4 net mask: 255.255.255.0
ipv6 addresses:
mac address: 00:50:56:92:68:6c
mtu: 1500
toe: false
tso: true
tcp checksum: false
vlan: true
link connected: true
ethernet speed: 1000
packets received: 145924
packets sent: 54502
NIC driver: e1000
driver version: 8.0.3.1-NAPI
firmware version: N/A
Executing script on "esxi4-3.primp-industries.com" ...
vmk0
pNic name: vmnic0
ipv4 address: 172.30.0.233
ipv4 net mask: 255.255.255.0
ipv6 addresses:
mac address: 00:50:56:92:33:95
mtu: 1500
toe: false
tso: true
tcp checksum: false
vlan: true
link connected: true
ethernet speed: 1000
packets received: 138535
packets sent: 8026
NIC driver: e1000
driver version: 8.0.3.1-NAPI
firmware version: N/A
vmk1
pNic name: vmnic1
ipv4 address: 172.30.0.234
ipv4 net mask: 255.255.255.0
ipv6 addresses:
mac address: 00:50:56:92:27:65
mtu: 1500
toe: false
tso: true
tcp checksum: false
vlan: true
link connected: true
ethernet speed: 1000
packets received: 145924
packets sent: 112
NIC driver: e1000
driver version: 8.0.3.1-NAPI
firmware version: N/A

Now you will be able to automate any of the supported esxcli operations against multiple hosts!

In Part3, we will take a look at automating esxcli operations in a Windows environment using Powershell.

esxcli Part1 - What is esxcli?

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esxcli is a new CLI (commandline interface) framework in vSphere that provides a modular architecture for various components called namespaces running in the VMkernel. Some of these namespaces are nmp (Native Multipathing Plugin) for the new VMware Pluggable Storage Architecture, corestorage for claim rules used for masking certain devices to a host, and swiscsi for managing iSCSI interface.

esxcli can be executed within the classic ESX Service Console, the unsupported Busybox console in ESXi or using the vCLI's remote version of esxcli. There are currently 3 namespaces (nmp,corestorage and swiscsi) with the current release of vSphere and we may see others introduced in future releases of vSphere. One important thing to note is that because these modules run within the host, using the vCLI's version of esxcli, you will need to authenticate to the host first to see what modules will be available for access. Currently, esxcli is not vCenter aware, meaning you must connect to a specific ESX or ESXi host when performing an operation.

Here is an example of esxcli executed without connecting to the host first:

Here is an example of esxcli being executed after connecting to the host:

When invoking the esxcli command, you may also notice an esxcli.log is generated. If the command is successfully executed, the log will generally be empty, but if there was an error you may want to take a look at esxcli.log if the command does not provide any output to the screen.

Here is an example of using an auth configuration file and because of the case sensitivity of esxcli, the VI_PROTOCOL entry is failing with HTTPS vs https:

[vi-admin@scofield ~]$ cat esxcli.log

[root CRITICAL] Exception:Unsupported protocol
[root CRITICAL] Traceback (most recent call last):
File "esxcli.py", line 387, in _GetStub
File "/vmware/esx40-dev/esx40/bora/vim/py/esxcli/Session.py", line 239, in stub
File "/vmware/esx40-dev/esx40/bora/vim/py/esxcli/Session.py", line 299, in Login
Exception: Unsupported protocol

There is not a whole lot of information available to the public about esxcli. From what I understand after talking to a few VMware engineers, esxcli has an API, but it is currently not exposed to the public for consumption. Not only is there an API, but 3rd party providers or users can potentially create their own modules and install it using the VIB format also known as vSphere Installation Bundle.

Some well known packages that are currently being distributed in the VIB format today are: Cisco Nexus 1000V VEM, HP Insight Manager Agent, EMC PowerPathV/E, Xsigo ESX IB drivers and VMware ESX/ESXi/vMA updates, to name a few. Hopefully in the future, VMware will expose the esxcli API functionality to the developer ecosystem.

Here are a few blog posts with detail examples on using esxcli with the various namespaces:

Stay tuned for Part2 and Part3 where we will look at automating esxcli operations using both the vSphere SDK for Perl and Windows PowerShell!

Is the release vSphere 4.0 Update 2 imminent?

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There's already been some chatter in the community regarding vSphere 4.0 Update 2, including a VMware KB article:

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1021023
http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2010/03/30/whats-the-point-of-setting-iops1/
http://www.vladan.fr/vsphere-4-update-2-is-next/
http://virtualization.info/en/news/2010/03/vsphere-40-update-2-to-add-new-ha.html
http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2010/03/29/cool-new-ha-feature-coming-up-to-prevent-a-split-brain-situation/

While recently downloading a copy of ESX 4.0u1 for testing, I noticed the download URL was the following:

http://www.vmware.com/downloads/download.do?downloadGroup=ESX40U1

The link will generally take you to landing page to login if you have not ready logged in:

I thought I try to plug-in "2" and see what happens, to my surprise it actually displayed some interesting text:

http://www.vmware.com/downloads/download.do?downloadGroup=ESX40U2

When you login, it will throw an error that the download group does not exists.

However, if you tried another invalid entry say "ESX40U3", you'll get an error all together such as the following even before logging in:

http://www.vmware.com/downloads/download.do?downloadGroup=ESX40U3

So does this mean vSphere 4.0 Update 2 about to be released? Your guess is as good as mine, we will just have to wait and see.

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