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Hidden HA and VPXA Configurations

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Applying the strings method as described in my last article, I decided to also take a look at /opt/vmware/vpxa/vpx/vpxa binary to see if there were anymore hidden goodies. To my surprise, I was able to locate additional HA and VPXA advanced configuration options. While going through and testing some of the HA advanced options, I found that only 19 out of 47 have not been documented and much of the documentation I found online was from Mr. Duncan Epping's blog. This really shows how open Duncan has been around the advanced options with VMware HA, if only VMware as a whole could be so open with the other advanced options that are used throughout VMware but left undocumented.

I do have to stress, these are configurations that are not documented and probably not supported unless directed by VMware. You should be very careful if you decide to play with some of these options and ensure you do not test on a production environment, don't say I did not warn you 🙂

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Upcoming vSphere.Next Features Hinted in vSphere 4.1 APIs?

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Back in December, I created a VTMN document - How to browse the internal vSphere APIs which shows you how to access some of the undocumented vSphere API properties and methods. This was done prior to vSphere 4.1 release, but by looking at the python SDK stubs located on an ESX or ESXi host, you can see some of the some of the upcoming features that would eventually be released in vSphere 4.1.

Here is a look at some of these features found in the vSphere 4.0 SDK stubs:

Features known:

API STRING FEATURE
vim.version.drs Distributed Resource Scheduler
vim.version.dvs Distributed Virtual Switch
vim.version.ft Fault Tolerance
vim.version.ipv6 IPv6

Features eventually known:

API STRING FEATURE
vim.version.iorm I/O Resource Management what is now known as Storage I/O Control or SIOC

Features unknown:

API STRING FEATURE
vim.version.fed Unknown - (Federation?)
vim.version.lc Unknown - (Related properties in API referenced Linked Clones)
vim.version.logan Unknown - (Related properties in API referenced MediaAnalysisManager
vim.version.policy Unknown - (Rrelated properties in API referenced PolicyManager
vim.version.svm Unknown - (Rrelated properties in API referenced svmVmxDiskCopy)
vim.version.uber Unknown

Now, looking at vSphere 4.1 SDK stubs, I noticed a slew of new "potential" features that VMware is or maybe working on:

vim.version.cvp - ?unknown? (Client Virtualization Platform? below are properties and methods associated with this feature)

  • SetDisplayTopologyModes
  • VirtualMachinePowerPolicyPowerMode
  • VirtualMachinePowerPolicyCpuMode
  • requestedReplicationCanBeDeferred
  • userAllowedToDeferReplication
  • policyCacheLifetime

vim.version.dev - ?device? (below are properties and methods associated with this feature which seem to be related to FCoE support with vSphere)

  • DiscoverFcoeHbas
  • FcoeConfigFcoeSpecification
  • removeFcoeHba
  • userAllowedToDeferReplication

vim.version.h20 - (unknown, but related properties in API referenced PropertyProviderManager)

  • InternalPropertyProviderManager

vim.version.hbr - ?unknown? (Host Based Replication? below are properties and methods associated with this feature)

  • hostBasedReplicationSupported

vim.version.vcp - ?unknown? (VM Component Protection? below are properties and methods associated with this feature)

  • ClusterVmComponentProtectionSettings
  • ClusterVmComponentProtectionSettingsFtVmReaction

What you see here are not just string text found in the SDK stubs, these features are actually implemented in the current release of vSphere 4.1. Though undocumented, if you can reverse engineer where these methods and properties are located, you can actually execute them.

Here is an example of executing discoverFcoeHbas method via the MOB which is part of the Host's StorageSystem:

I am no fortune teller, but I suspect we may see some of these features much sooner than later 😉