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Getting started with the new VSAN 6.2 Management API

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As I have previously written, with the release of VSAN 6.2 (vSphere 6.0 Update 2), a new VSAN Management API has been introduced which allows developers, partners and administrators to automate all aspects of VSAN functionality including: complete lifecycle (install, upgrade, patch), monitoring (including RVC and VSAN Observer capabilities), configuration and troubleshooting. Simply put, anything that you can do from the vSphere Web Client UI or the RVC CLI from a VSAN standpoint, you will be able to completely automate using one of the four new VSAN Management SDKs: Python, Ruby, Java and C#.

In this article, I will show you how to quickly get started with the new VSAN Management API by exercising two of the VSAN Management SDKs: Python and Ruby. Another must bookmark is the VSAN Management API Reference Guide which provides more details on the individual APIs and how they work.

Step 1 - Download the VSAN Management SDK of your choice. You can find the VSAN Management SDK downloads in either of two locations:

In this example, I will be using the VSAN Management for Python and Ruby.

Step 2 - Extract the VSAN Management SDK zip file which should give you a directory that contains a README on how to setup the SDK and three folders as shown in the screenshot below:

Screen Shot 2016-03-17 at 6.27.58 AM
The bindings directory contains the language specific library to the VSAN Management API. The docs folder contains the offline copy of the VSAN Management API Reference Guide and lastly the sample directory contains a basic sample to connect to VSAN Cluster as well as an individual ESXi host contributing to a VSAN Cluster.

Step 3 - Each of the VSAN Management SDKs extends the existing vSphere Management SDKs. This means that you will need to have the appropriate vSphere Management SDK installed on your system before you can proceed further. In our example, Python requires pyvmomi (vSphere SDK for Python) and Ruby requires rbvmomi (vSphere SDK for Ruby). If you are on Mac OS X, it is pretty easy to install these packages. Make sure you are running the latest version of these SDKs.

Installing pyvmomi:

pip install pyvmomi

Upgrading pyvmomi: (if you already have it installed)

pip install --upgrade pyvmomi

Installing rbvmomi:

gem install rbvmomi

Step 4 - Copy the VSAN Management SDK library file over to the samples directory.

VSAN Mgmt SDK for Python:

cp bindings/vsanmgmtObjects.py samplecode/

VSAN Mgmt SDK for Ruby:

cp bindings/vsanmgmt.api.rb samplecode/

Step 5 - At this point, we can quickly verify that everything was setup correctly by going into the samplecode directory and then run one of the following commands below. If everything is working as expected, then you should see the usage information being printed out. If you do not, the issue is most likely with vSphere Management SDK either not being the latest version or not configured in the default library path for the sample to access.

VSAN Mgmt SDK for Python:

python vsanapisamples.py

Screen Shot 2016-03-17 at 6.43.32 AM
VSAN Mgmt SDK for Ruby:

ruby vsanapisamples.rb

Screen Shot 2016-03-17 at 6.43.56 AM
Step 6 - Now that we have verified our VSAN Management SDK installation was successful, we can now connect to a real VSAN Cluster. To do so, run the following command and specify your vCenter Server along with the credentials as well as the name of the VSAN Cluster. If successful, you should see the status for each of your VSAN hosts and its current state as seen in the screenshot below.

VSAN Mgmt SDK for Python:

python vsanapisamples.py -s 192.168.1.139 -u '*protected email*' -p 'VMware1!' --cluster VSAN-Cluster

Screen Shot 2016-03-17 at 6.54.38 AM
VSAN Mgmt SDK for Ruby:

ruby vsanapisamples.rb -o 192.168.1.139 -u '*protected email*' -k -p 'VMware1!' VSAN-Cluster

Screen Shot 2016-03-17 at 6.56.34 AM
Step 7 - Each individual ESXi hosts that participate in the VSAN Cluster also exposes an VSAN Management API endpoint. We can use this exact same sample to connect to one of the hosts to get some additional information. To do so, run the following command and specify your ESXi hosts along with the credentials.

VSAN Mgmt SDK for Python:

python vsanapisamples.py -s 192.168.1.190 -u root -p vmware123

Screen Shot 2016-03-17 at 7.00.28 AM
VSAN Mgmt SDK for Ruby:

ruby vsanapisamples.rb -o 192.168.1.190 -u root -p vmware123

Screen Shot 2016-03-17 at 6.59.46 AM
As you can see, it is pretty straight forward on getting the new VSAN Management SDK up and running. The provided sample only scratches the surface of what is possible and for a complete list of capabilities within the new VSAN Management API, be sure to check out the VSAN Management API Reference document for more information. I am really looking forward to seeing what solutions our customers and partners develop using this new API. If you would like to contribute code samples back to the community or just find new samples be sure to check out the VMware Developer Center Sample Exchange. 

VSAN 6.2 extends vSphere API to include new VSAN Management APIs

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In addition to all the new capabilities and enhancements included in the release of VSAN 6.2 (vSphere 6.0 Update 2) which you can read more about here and here; VSAN 6.2 also introduces a new VSAN Management API which extends the existing vSphere APIs that our customers are quite familiar with.

This new VSAN Management API will allow developers, partners and administrators to automate all aspects of VSAN functionality including: complete lifecycle (install, upgrade, patch), monitoring (including VSAN Observer capabilities), configuration and troubleshooting. There will be two new service endpoints /vsan for an ESXi host and /vsanHealth for vCenter Server respectively which will provide access to the new VSAN Management API interfaces.

UPDATE: (03/17/16) - Check out this article here on how to quickly get started with the new VSAN Management API.

Below are the list of new vSphere Managed Objects that provide the different VSAN capabilities:

Managed Object Functionality ESXi or VC
HostVsanHealthSystem VSAN Health related configuration and query APIs ESXi only
HostVsanSystem VSAN related configuration and query APIs ESXi only
VsanObjectSystem VSAN object related status query and storage policy setting APIs ESXi & VC
VsanPerformanceManager VSAN Performance related configuration and query APIs ESXi & VC
VsanSpaceReportSystem VSAN cluster space usage related query APIs VC only
VsanUpgradeSystem Used to perform and monitor VSAN on-disk format upgrades VC only
VsanUpgradeSystemEx VSAN upgrade and disk format conversion related APIs VC only
VsanVcClusterConfigSystem VSAN cluster configuration setting and query APIs VC only
VsanVcClusterHealthSystem VSAN Health related configuration and query APIs VC only
VsanVcDiskManagementSystem VSAN disks related configuration and query APIs VC only
VsanVcStretchedClusterSystem VSAN Stretched Cluster related configuration and query APIs VC only

Note: There will be a VSAN Management API Reference guide similar to the vSphere API Reference Guide which will be released as part of VSAN 6.2. There, you will find much greater detail on each of the new vSphere Managed Objects and their associated methods and usage.

For customers interested in consuming this new VSAN Management API, there will be initially five language specific bindings also known as an SDK (Software Development Kit) that will be available for download when VSAN 6.2 is generally available:

Additional language bindings are being worked on and if you have any feedback on what you might like to see next, feel free to leave a comment.

pyvmomi (vSphere SDK for Python) 5.5.0-2014.1 released!

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I just saw an awesome update from Shawn Hartsock, a fellow VMware colleague. For those of you who do not know him, Shawn works in our Ecosystems and Solutions Engineering (EASE) organization and is the primary maintainer of VMware's pyvmomi (vSphere SDK for Python) open-source project. The pyvmomi project was open sourced since last December which I had written about here, it has received over 3K+ downloads and has a very active community. Much of this success has been due to the hard from Shawn fostering an active community around pyvmomi.

The announcement today from Shawn is a new release of pyvmomi at version 5.5.0-2014.1:

As mentioned earlier, the pyvmomi project is a very active project and Shawn is constantly engaging with users looking for feedback, suggestions or requests for new samples to build. If you are interested in vSphere Automation and would like to leverage Python, be sure to check out the pyvmomi Github repository! Lastly, if you have written some cool scripts/applications or would like to request specific sample scripts, be sure to send a pull request to Shawn as we would love to see more contributions and collaborations from the community!