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Quick Tip - Retrieving the vSAN Rekey Interval using PowerCLI

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Since the release of vSAN 6.5.1, the PowerCLI team has introduced a number of high level vSAN cmdlets (current list HERE) that can be used to automate a variety of tasks. While the existing vSAN cmdlets are quite extensive and continues to get updated with new functionality, it will never be able to cover the rich set of functionality that is provided by vSAN.

For functionality that is not available in the high level vSAN cmdlets, user can still perform the task using PowerCLI, but they will need to directly access the underlying API, in this case the vSAN Management API.

Note: This concept also applies to other high level PowerCLI cmdlets, if you are unable to locate the functionality, then most likely you will need to interrogate the API using PowerCLI.


In the case of retrieving the vSAN Data-in-transit encryption rekey interval, which is not available in the high level Get-VsanClusterConfiguration cmdlet, we can easily retrieve it with the following PowerCLI snippet:

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PowerCLI 13.0 on Photon OS

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I received a question from Andrea Peetz, asking whether the new Image Builder cmdlets, which is part of the new PowerCLI 13.0 release would work with Photon OS 3.0 (PH3)? After speaking with the PowerCLI team, it looks like Photon OS 3.0 is not compatible with the new cmdlets. If you attempt to use one of the Image Builder cmdlets like Get-EsxSoftwareDepot, you will get the following error:

Unable to cast object of type 'System.IO.FileStream' to type 'System.IO.Pipes.PipeStream'.


With that said, if you do not require the Image Builder cmdlets, then the rest of the PowerCLI cmdlets should work just fine.

While I have not used PH3 for quite some time now, I do use Photon OS 4.0 (PH4) on a regular basis. I was curious if I would have better luck with the new Image Builder cmdlets. Unlike PH3 which ships with Python 3.7, which is the required version for the Image Builder cmdlets, PH4 ships with a newer version of Python which is 3.10 and will not work with PowerCLI. We can still meet this requirement, but we will need to install Python via pyenv.

After a quick test, I was able to get the basic Image Builder cmdlets working and while going through a complete end-to-end workflow to make sure everything was working, I ran into a slightly different issue. When using the Export-EsxImageProfile cmdlet to export an ESXi Image Profile to an ISO file, I got the following error:

Can not instantiate 'certified' policy: VibSign module missing.

Quickly debugging the issue with the PowerCLI team, it looks like the VibSign module that has been compiled has a dependency on OpenSSL 1.1 and PH4 ships with OpenSSL 3.0 by default. Luckily, I was able to find a workaround by building the required file from the latest stable OpenSSL 1.1 release. Once the dependency was fulfilled, I was able successfully complete the Image Builder workflow!


Similiar to PH3, if you do not require the use of the Image Builder cmdlets, PowerCLI 13.0 can be installed on PH4 using the instructions below. If you do need to use the Image Builder cmdlets on PH4, you will need to run Step 2 below as that is a required step. I have also reported both of these issues with the PowerCLI team.

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Heads Up - Unable to open VIB archive in streaming mode using Export-EsxImageProfile with PowerCLI 13.0

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An issue that I ran into after upgrading to the latest PowerCLI 13.0 release after it GA'ed was attempting to export an ESXi image profile that I had created to an ISO file using the Export-EsxImageProfile cmdlet and immediately hit the following error:

Export-EsxImageProfile: Error retrieving file for VIB 'VMware_bootbank_esx-update_8.0.0-1.0.20513097': ('vib20/esx-update/VMware_bootbank_esx-update_8.0.0-1.0.20513097.vib', "Unable to open VIB archive in streaming mode: '_SharedFile' object has no attribute 'writing'").

I am an avid use of this cmdlet and have never ran into this issue before and I was not sure if this could be related to the porting of the Image Builder and Auto Deploy cmdlets to PowerShell Core, which was new with the PowerCLI 13.0 release. I have already filed an internal bug and the PowerCLI Engineering team have not had a chance to look at it, but over the past week, I have noticed a number of reports on my blog, VMTN community forums, Reddit and Twitter that other users were also hitting this issue.

As I have already responded in a few of these channels already, a bug has been filed and there is currently not a work around that I am aware of. As I have any updates, I will update this article with more details.

UPDATE - Several readers have informed me that if you update to Python 3.7.9 or greater, the issue should go away.

The options right now is to either use the vSphere Image Builder UI OR vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) UI or the new vLCM PowerCLI cmdlets, both of which requiring a vCenter Server running vSphere 8.0.