WilliamLam.com

PowerShell community module for Application Transformer for VMware Tanzu

by // Leave a Comment

In the previous blog post, we explored the Application Transformer for VMware Tanzu REST API and how it can be used for automation and more advanced workflows. To simplify the consumption of the App Transformer REST API and how I started to explore and learn about the APIs, I created a PowerShell module for App Transformer that implements a number of the App Transformer REST API that can easily be consumed using the following functions:

  • Connect-AppTransformer
  • Get-AppTransformerApplication
  • Get-AppTransformerComponent
  • Get-AppTransformerComponentSignature
  • Get-AppTransformerCredential
  • Get-AppTransformerNetworkInsight
  • Get-AppTransformerVCenter
  • Get-AppTransformerVM
  • New-AppTransformerCredential
  • New-AppTransformerCredentialAssociation
  • New-AppTransformerNetworkInsightCloud
  • New-AppTransformerVCenter
  • Remove-AppTransformerCredential
  • Start-AppTransformerIntrospection


🥳 To help celebrate the official GA of Application Transformer for VMware Tanzu today, I have just published my PowerShell Community Module for App Transformer into the PowerShell Gallery!

[Read more...]

Programmatically interact with the VMware Product Lifecycle Matrix

by // 2 Comments

I recently came across a really cool automation solution from Dale Coghlan who built a PowerShell module to interact with the VMware Configuration Maximum (Config Max) Tool.

Although the Config Max tool does not currently provide an API, there is still a way to interact with it programmatically. Behind the scenes, the application uses JSON for its payload which can then be retrieved programmatically using PowerShell or any other language for that matter to perform an HTTP GET. I also know the Config Max team quite well, as I had worked with them to incorporate the VMware Cloud on AWS configuration maximums which also required a few enhancements to the tool. If you have any feedback, feel free to drop a comment and I will be happy to share it with them and one of my first asks when I met the team, was to provide a public REST API 🙂

After sharing Dale's tweet, I saw a question about doing something similiar for the VMware's Product Lifecycle Matrix, which is a website that helps customers understand the support lifecycle of a given VMware product/solution. The product lifecycle site has also been recently revamped and although it also does not have a public API, using Chrome Developer Tools (super useful tool) to quickly inspect, it looks like you can also programmatically grab the payload which also happens to be using JSON 🙂

Disclaimer: The VMware Product Lifecycle Matrix does not provide a public API, this also means there are no guarantees or compatibility that the trick outlined below will continue to work going forward. This is why you want to have a public, documented and supported API.

[Read more...]

Workspace One Access (vIDM) Powershell Module to automate creating 3rd Party Identity Provider

by // 1 Comment

One of the projects I am currently working on involves  Workspace One Access (formally VMware Identity Manager) and configuring a 3rd Party Identity Provider for Identity Federation. As with anything, using the UI for the first time to validate the workflow is perfectly fine for me but after that, I normally prefer to automate, especially as I was rebuilding this particular setup a few times. I saw that Workspace One Access (WSO Access) had a REST API but I was surprised that there were no APIs for actually managing the configurations.


I figured before giving up, I should see at least see how the UI was performing these operations as "some API" should exists and started up one of my favorite browser tools Chrome Developer Console to inspect the HTTP requests. I came to learn there were an additional set of "Jersey" APIs (no background on the Jersey name, but its part of the API URI) that might do exactly what I was looking for. After a bit of trial/error, I was able to fully automate the creation of both a WSO Access Directory as well as 3rd Party Identity Provider.

[Read more...]