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vi-fastpass esxcli and resxtop bug resolved in vMA 5

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Awhile back I wrote about an resxtop bug found in vMA 4.1 in which it no longer functions with vMA's vi-fastpass component and still requires you to provide the username and password even though vi-fastpass has been initialized for a given target. There was also a slight quirk when using esxcli and vi-fastpass, in which you had to specify in addition the --server of your ESX(i) host which allowed you to utilize vi-fastpass.

With the latest release of vMA 5, both of these issues have now been resolved for both ESXi 5 and ESX(i) 4.x. I would highly recommend you download the latest version if you would like to make use the vi-fastpass component in vMA.

Here is an example of using vi-fastpass with resxtop:

vi-admin@vma50-1:~> vifptarget -s himalaya.primp-industries.com
vi-admin@vma50-1:~[himalaya.primp-industries.com]> resxtop

Here is an example of using vi-fastpass with esxcli:

vi-admin@vma50-1:~> vifptarget -s himalaya.primp-industries.com
vi-admin@vma50-1:~[himalaya.primp-industries.com]> esxcli

Automating the New Integrated VIX/Guest Operations API in vSphere 5

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VMware hinted earlier this year that the future of the VIX API would eventually be integrated into the core vSphere API, it looks like the wait is finally over. With the latest release of vSphere 5, the VIX API is no longer a separate API but consolidated into the core vSphere API which allows users to perform guest level operations directly to a virtual machine that is running VMware Tools.

There is now a new managed object called GuestOperationsManager which provides functionality for Authentication (authManager), File management (fileManager) and process management (processManager). The API is actually quite easy to use as you need to first acquire a guest auth credential within the guest and then you can perform any of the various guest operations using this credential cache.

I wanted to show the power of the VIX API by creating a vSphere SDK for Perl script called guestOpsManagement.pl that implements majority of the VIX/Guest Operations for users to manage from a centralized script. You will need to have a system that has the vCLI installed or use VMware vMA and to utilize the new VIX operations, your virtual machines must have the latest VMware Tools installed.

You can download guestOpsManagement.pl script here. 

The script supports 12 different VIX Operations which are described below:

Operation Description
validate Allows a user to validate guest credentials without performing any VIX Operation
ps Performs a process listing within the guestOS
startprog Starts a program within the guestOS
kill Kills a particular process within the guestOS
ls Perorms a listing of a particular directory within the guesOS
mkdir Creates a directory within the guestOS
rmdir Removes a directory within the guestOS
rm Removes a file within the guestOS
mv Move/Rename a file within the guestOS
mvdir Move a directory within the guestOS
copyfromguest Download a file from within the guestOS to local system
copytoguest Upload a file to the guestOS from a local system
Here is an example of performing the "validate" operation:

./guestOpsManagement.pl --server vcenter50-1 --username root --vm vMA5 --operation validate --guestusername root

Here is an example of performing the "ps" operation:

./guestOpsManagement.pl --server vcenter50-1 --username root --vm vMA5 --operation ps --guestusername root

In the next example, we will kill off the "tail" process as listed above.

Here is an example of performing the "kill" operation:

./guestOpsManagement.pl --server vcenter50-1 --username root --vm vMA5 --operation kill --guestusername root --pid 13198

Here is an example of performing the "startprog" operation:

./guestOpsManagement.pl --server vcenter50-1 --username root --vm vMA5 --operation startprog --guestusername root --working_dir /root --program_path /usr/bin/touch --program_args /root/virtuallyghetto

Note: There is known vSphere SDK for Perl bug for the return value of a "long" which will be resolved in GA release of vSphere SDK for Perl 5.0. You should not see the "error" message when running this operation

Here is an example of performing the "ls" operation:

./guestOpsManagement.pl --server vcenter50-1 --username root --vm vMA5 --operation ls --guestusername root --filepath_src /var/log

Here is an example of performing the "mkdir" operation:

./guestOpsManagement.pl --server vcenter50-1 --username root --vm vMA5 --operation mkdir --guestusername root --filepath_src /tmp/virtuallyghetto

Here is an example of performing the "rmdir" operation:

./guestOpsManagement.pl --server vcenter50-1 --username root --vm vMA5 --operation rmdir --guestusername root --filepath_src /tmp/virtuallyghetto

Note: If you would like to perform a recursive directory delete, you will need to specify the --recursive, please use with caution

Here is an example of performing the "rm" operation:

./guestOpsManagement.pl --server vcenter50-1 --username root --vm vMA5 --operation rm --guestusername root --filepath_src /root/virtuallyghetto

Here is an example of performing the "mv" operation:

./guestOpsManagement.pl --server vcenter50-1 --username root --vm vMA5 --operation mv --guestusername root --filepath_src /root/steve_jablonsky --filepath_dst /root/hans_zimmer

Here is an example of performing the "mvdir" operation:

./guestOpsManagement.pl --server vcenter50-1 --username root --vm vMA5 --operation mvdir --guestusername root --filepath_src /tmp/foo --filepath_dst /tmp/bar

Here is an example of performing the "copyfromguest" operation:

./guestOpsManagement.pl --server vcenter50-1 --username root --vm vMA5 --operation copyfromguest --guestusername root --filepath_src /var/log/messages

Here is an example of performing the "copytoguest" operation:

./guestOpsManagement.pl --server vcenter50-1 --username root --vm vMA5 --operation copytoguest --guestusername root --filepath_src /home/vi-admin/test.pl --filepath_dst /root/test.pl

There is also complete perl docs for this script which can be called using the following command:

perldoc guestOpsManagement.pl

New SRM 5 APIs

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There was a question about in one of my previous articles HBR (Host Based Replication) CLI for SRM 5 on whether there were any new/updates to the SRM 5 APIs. There are no official VMware SRM SDK's today as far as I know that can be consumed by toolkits such as PowerCLI, vSphere SDK for Perl, VI Java, etc. There is however an SRM Web Services API that can be used and has existed since the early days of SRM 1.0 as noted here in the documentation. Users that would like to use this API would need to create their own language bindings (stubs) based on WSDL (Web Services Description Language) provided by VMware.

Here are the list of available operations in the SRM 1.0 API:

  • SrmLogin
  • SrmLogout
  • GetApiVersion
  • ListRecoveryPlans
  • RecoveryPlanSettings
  • RecoveryPlanStart
  • RecoveryPlanPause
  • RecoveryPlanResume
  • RecoveryPlanCancel
  • RecoveryPlanAnswerPrompt
  • GetFinalStatus

In the SRM 5 API, there are 33 new operations not including the existing ones from 1.0:

  • ListProtectionGroups
  • ListInventoryMappings
  • GetInfo
  • GetPeer
  • ListProtectedVms
  • ListProtectedDatastores
  • ListAssociatedVms
  • GetProtectionState
  • ProtectionGroupListRecoveryPlans
  • ProtectionGroupQueryVmProtection
  • ProtectVms
  • UnprotectVms
  • AssociateVms
  • UnassociateVms
  • GetTasks
  • IsComplete
  • GetProtectionStatus
  • ListPlans
  • GetHistory
  • RecoveryPlanGetInfo
  • RecoveryPlanGetPeer
  • Start
  • Cancel
  • ListPrompts
  • AnswerPrompt
  • GetResultCount
  • GetRecoveryResult
  • GetResultLength
  • RetrieveStatus
  • RetrieveContent
  • SrmLoginLocale
  • SrmLoginSites
  • SrmLogoutLocale

During the SRM 5 beta, I did not see an updated API documents but I suspect the details and the implementation of these new operations will be available when SRM 5 is GA (generally available).

In the meantime, if you are on the SRM 5 beta and would like to get more details, you can retrieve the WSDL in several ways.

The first option is view the WSDL from your web browser by pointing it to your SRM server using the following URL: http://[srm-hostname]:8096/srm.wsdl

 
Note: Make a note of the URL protocol, it actually does not support HTTPS, but just normal HTTP when retrieving the WSDL

The second option is to browse the filesystem of the SRM server and the WSDL file can be found under the following path: C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager\www