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How to debug NSX-T API Automation with PowerCLI?

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I recently needed to deploy the latest version of NSX-T (2.5) for some work I was doing with Project Pacific and of course it was related to Automation 🙂 It has been some time since I have touched the NSX-T Manager API (2.0) and although most of my existing code still worked, there were some things that broke due to API deprecation and also net new functionality that I needed to use.

I normally use PowerCLI for my Automation work and/or for prototyping purposes, not only is it easy to do but PowerCLI is still one of the most popular tool used by our customers and it means that they can easily benefit from my work. However, one of my pet peeves when working with the NSX-T APIs and PowerCLI is simply the lack of useful error messages. Here is the generic error message that you would normally see even checking the $Error[0].Exception.ServerError variable, it generally does not contain anything useful or actionable.

A server error occurred: 'com.vmware.vapi.std.errors.invalid_request': . Check $Error[0].Exception.ServerError for more details.

Here is a concrete example where I am attempting to create a new Transport Zone but I am purposing leaving out a required parameter and as you can see from the output, the same generic error message is shown and not very actionable.


I normally debug NSX-T API issue whether it is a syntax or usage problem by SSH'ing to the NSX-T Manager and monitoring the actual API logs to figure out what is actually going. It usually has exactly what I am looking for in terms of the actual server error message along with details on how to fix the problem.

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Automating HCX Multi-Site Service Mesh configuration using the new HCX PowerCLI cmdlets

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With the latest Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) R121 release, the new HCX Multi-Site Service Mesh configuration option is now the default and preferred method for setting up HCX. In fact, the legacy "HCX Components" method, which is focused on deploying individual HCX Appliances has been deprecated in the latest release and will be removed in the future, in favor of the new simplified deployment option.


As many of you know, I have been doing quite a bit of HCX Automation with VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) and with the recent PowerCLI 11.3 release which now includes new HCX Multi-Site Service Mesh (MSSM) cmdlets, I figured this would be a good time to update my automation to take advantage of the new HCX MSSM feature.

While trying out the new MSSM cmdlets, I ran into a couple of issues which took me awhile to figure out. The issue stems from the fact that you can not simply create some of the MSSM objects such as a Network or Compute Profile and then save the output to a variable for use with other CSSM cmdlets, which I found to be quite strange as that is one of the biggest benefit of PowerShell and being able to pipe objects between cmdlets. You have to perform a "GET" operation on the object that you had just created because the types returned are different between the New and Get cmdlets. In any case, here is a sample end-to-end workflow using the new MSSM cmdlets as I figured others may run into this problem scratching their head and the PowerCLI documentation was not very clear about this behavior, at least it was not apparent to me.

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Instant Clone Apple MacOS

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Whether you are a brand new startup working on the next hot mobile app or an established Enterprise or Consumer brand company, development and testing of Apple iOS and/or MacOS is simply a reality in todays world. The vast majority of these customers accomplish this by running Apple MacOS on vSphere, either within their own on-premises datacenter or leveraging MacStadium, the largest MacOS Cloud hosting provider, who also runs their Mac infrastructure using VMware vSphere.

The ability to quickly build/test and deploy your application (Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery) can mean the difference of having an edge over you competitor or being able to keep up with the demands of your business. Many customers have benefited from using vSphere platform and with technologies like Linked Clones, which allows you to quickly spin up a new VM without having to perform a complete full clone, it means you can build and test your application even faster.

In vSphere 6.7, we introduced a major enhancement to Instant Clone, which you can read more about here and here. One of the questions I have been seeing lately is whether Instant Clone can be applied to MacOS guests? The answer is absolutely! In fact, Matt Moriarity, who works for TravisCI, recently shared some tidbits on how to get a MacOS Mojave guests to see the updated MAC Address to ensure that there are no network conflicts when performing an Instant Clone.

The majority of the "hard" work to use Instant Clone is really from within the GuestOS and the customization script that needs to be developed. In fact, Instant Clone is pretty OS agnostics and you can even Instant Clone Microsoft Windows 98 and 2000, if you really wanted to 😀

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