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vSphere Content Library versioning 

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A question came up the other day on how versioning is handled when using the vSphere Content Library feature and specifically when you update an existing VM template that already exists in the Content Library (CL, which I will be using throughout the article). Having used CL since vSphere 6.0 which I have also written about it extensively here, I knew that it had a built-in versioning mechanism which would automatically increment as new updates were applied to the VM Templates stored in CL.

One thing that I do not think many folks are aware of is that you can actually retrieve the CL Item Version within the vSphere Web Client. You can do by just adding the "Content Version" column by right clicking on column headers and select show/hide columns to add or remove specific fields.


I figured, this was pretty straight forward and shared my findings with the individual and thought that was it. While working on my Content Library PowerCLI community module, I came to learn there was more than one version that was being returned by the CL API.

Here is an example screenshot showing the three different versions using the Get-ContentLibraryItems (not to be confused with the OOTB Get-ContentLibraryItem cmdlet):


Taking a look at the API documentation, it was still not 100% clear on what all these versions provided and also when would they increment? I reached out to one of the CL Engineers, Eric who then provided me more information on how each of these versions are being used. Lets go through each one of them and I will include an example which also helped me understand how these different "versions" actually work.

Content Version - This particular version will increment as changes are made to the actual file content itself. This is also the same version that is available in the vSphere Web Client UI as shown earlier.

Lets now go through an example workflow to show when this version will get incremented:

  1. Create a new VM called Foo (ContentVersion=N/A)
  2. Clone VM Foo into CL called Foo VM Template (ContentVersion=1)
  3. Clone completes for Foo VM Template (ContentVersion=2) <--The reason this is 2 and not 1 is that when the initial CL Item is created (think of it as a placeholder), the Content Version is incremented
  4. Deploy Foo VM Template to new VM called Bar (ContentVersion=2, no changes on deploy)
  5. Update VM Bar with some changes and clone Bar back to Foo VM Template (ContentVersion=3) <--Changes were made and we now increment the Content Version

Metadata Version - This particular version will only increment for changes made to either the name or description of the CL template.

Version - This particular version is used for concurrency control and this will always increment along with the Metadata Version for local libraries.

Lets now go through an example workflow for a local library to show how these two versions get incremented:

  1. Create a new VM called Foo (MetadataVersion=N/A)
  2. Clone VM Foo into CL called Foo VM Template (MetadataVersion=1, Version=1)
  3. Update the description of Foo VM Template (MetadataVersion=2, Version=2)
  4. Deploy Foo VM Template to new VM called Bar (MetadataVersion=2, Version=2, no changes on deploy)
  5. Update VM Bar with some changes and clone Bar back to Foo VM Template (MetadataVersion=3, Version=3)

Lets now go through an example workflow for a subscribed library to show how these two versions get incremented:

  • Create a new VM called Foo on a local library named CL1 (MetadataVersion=N/A)
  • Clone VM Foo into CL called Foo VM Template (MetadataVersion=1, Version=1)
  • Update the description of Foo VM Template (MetadataVersion=2, Version=2)
  • Create a new subscribed library to CL1 which will download Foo VM Template (MetadataVersion=2, Version=1) <--MetadataVersion must match the publisher, but version does not have to match

After going through a few of these exercises with a few dummy VMs and using my Get-ContentLibaryItems function, I was able to get a better grasp on CL versioning. Hopefully this helpful for anyone who might want to use the CL APIs to track changes between their VM templates and/or files or just being able to see this within the vSphere Web Client UI.

vSphere Content Library PowerCLI community module

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I was recently doing some work with the vSphere Content Library and I needed to extract some information using the Content Library API. I was hoping there were a few out of the box PowerCLI cmdlets but to my surprise, there was only one cmdlet called Get-ContentLibraryItem which did not get into the level of details that I was looking for, which was on a per-file level rather than item-level. I had also search the web to see if anyone had built any functions and although a few existed, none that did the very basics which was retrieving all libraries, library items and library item files.

UPDATE (05/05/19) - Updated module with a new function for creating a subscribed Content Library, below is an example:

New-SubscribedContentLibrary -LibraryName NestedESXi -DatastoreName vsanDatastore -SubscriptionURL https://download3.vmware.com/software/vmw-tools/lib.json -SubscriptionThumbprint "7a:c4:08:2d:d3:55:56:af:9f:26:43:65:d0:31:99:0b:d2:f3:d8:69" -OnDemand

UPDATE (11/14/17) - I have recently updated the Content Library module to enhance the Get-ContentLibrary function and added several additional functions listed below

  • Set-ContentLibrary
  • New-ExtReplicatedContentLibrary
  • Remove-SubscribedContentLibrary
  • New-LocalContentLibrary
  • Remove-LocalContentLibrary
  • Copy-ContentLibrary

Not having worked with the Content Library APIs before, I figure this would be a good learning opportunity and created a PowerCLI module called ContentLibrary.psm1 which contains the following functions:

  • Get-ContentLibrary
  • Get-ContentLibraryItems
  • Get-ContentLibraryItemFiles

Before you can make use of these functions, make sure to connect to the CIS endpoint of your vCenter Server using the Connect-CisServer cmdlet.

Here is a screenshot of the vSphere Web Client showing all available Content Libraries:


Here is an example of retrieving the same information using the following command:

Get-ContentLibrary


Note: You also have the ability to filter for the name of a specific Content Library by using the -LibraryName parameter

Here is a screenshot of the vSphere Web Client showing the individual Items within a Content Library:


Here is an example of retrieving the same information using the following command:

Get-ContentLibraryItems -LibraryName Test


Note: You also have the ability to filter for the name of a specific Content Library Item by using the -LibraryItemName parameter

Although the granularity when using the vSphere Web Client is at a Content Library Item, using the Content Library API, you can get additional information on the Item itself which is then composed of a set of files. The following command will allow you to retrieve all Files or you can use -LibraryItemName parameter to filter on a specific Item.

Get-ContentLibraryItemFiles -LibraryName Test -LibraryItemName TinyVM

New Nested ESXi 6.x Content Library 

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A few years back I had showed how you could create and host your own 3rd Party vSphere Content Library which allows customers to decouple their content from the underlying vSphere environment and centralizing their content and making it available to number of vCenter Servers by simply just having an HTTP(s) endpoint. The other huge benefit is being able to take advantage of the existing web content tools for optimizing delivery or retrieval whether that is replication, caching, etc. and not relying a single vCenter Server for providing Content Library publication. In addition to showing how to create your own content libraries, I also had built my own 3rd Party vSphere Content Library which contains a variety of my Nested ESXi Templates (empty VM shells) running on Amazon S3 which can be consumed by anyone as long as you are running vCenter Server 6.0 or newer.

Although the empty Nested ESXi Templates were quite useful for myself and customers, it would have also been nice to include my pre-built Nested ESXi Virtual Appliances which I had recently updated to support vSphere 6.0 Update 3 and vSphere 6.5d (vSAN 6.6). Thanks to Dana Nourie, who runs our wildly popular VMware Flings Program, was kind enough to help me with the content hosting and now anyone can also subscribe to my Nested ESXi VA's and automatically have the content sync down using the vSphere Content Library feature.

UPDATE 1 (07/31/17) - The Nested ESXi Content Library has been updated to include the latest ESXi 6.5 Update 1 VA. If you are already subscribing to the library, it should have already pulled down the content (or at least the metadata which you can then force synchronization) or you can simply subscribe to the library and have access to the latest ESXi VA.

UPDATE 2 (05/07/18) - The Nested ESXi Content Library has been updated to include the latest ESXi 6.5 Update 2 VA. If you are already subscribing to the library, it should have already pulled down the content (or at least the metadata which you can then force synchronization) or you can simply subscribe to the library and have access to the latest ESXi VA.

To get started, just create a new vSphere Content Library and enter the following subscription URL: https://download3.vmware.com/software/vmw-tools/lib.json 


You can either download the content immediately or only when you need to use it. I recommend the former since its only two images which totals up to a whopping 1GB 😉

Once the creation of the Content Library has been completed, you should see the following two Nested ESXi VAs in the library which are now ready for deployment!


For more information about the Nested ESXi 6.0u3/6.5d VA's and how they work, please have a look at this blog post here. For more information about the Nested ESXi Templates and how to subscribe to the 3rd Party vSphere Content Library, please have a look at this blog post here.