ruby

New vSAN Management 6.6 API / SDKs / CLIs

04.18.2017 by William Lam // 2 Comments

With all the new awesome capabilities that have been introduced in vSAN 6.6, there is just as much Automation goodness that will be available for our customers to consume to help them easily mange and operate at scale.

vSAN Management 6.6 API

Below are all the new Managed Objects that have been introduced in the new vSAN Management 6.6 API. This does not even cover all the new methods or object types. For the complete list of vSAN 6.6 APIs, be sure to check out the vSAN Management 6.6 API Reference Guide here.

VsanVcsaDeployerSystem – Virtual Center Service Appliance deployment APIs onto vSAN datastore, operating at both vCenter Server and ESXi Host sides
VsanVdsSystem – vSAN system optimized VDS related operations, especially migrations from VSS to VDS
VsanUpdateManager – VIB installation engine operating at vSAN cluster level (optimized for vSAN clusters)
VsanCapabilitySystem – APIs to query vSAN capability, available on both vCenter and ESXi
VsanMassCollector – vSAN system management query API's to access data and managed object properties, operating at a vSAN Cluster level in vCenter Server only
VsanPhoneHomeSystem – vSAN online health related query API, operating at a vSAN Cluster level in vCenter Server only

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Getting started with the new VSAN 6.2 Management API

03.17.2016 by William Lam // 4 Comments

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:

VMware Developer Center, under the SDK tab
vSphere Download page under Automation Tools & SDK(s) Tab

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:

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

VSAN Mgmt SDK for Ruby:

ruby vsanapisamples.rb

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

VSAN Mgmt SDK for Ruby:

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

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

VSAN Mgmt SDK for Ruby:

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

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.

How to run the VSAN Observer in "collection" mode in the background?

05.18.2014 by William Lam // 1 Comment

The VSAN Observer is a very powerful tool that allows you to get in-depth performance analysis of your VSAN environment. One of the really useful feature is the ability to run the VSAN Observer in "collection" mode by using the --generate-html-bundle option. Something that I have noticed when running the VSAN Observer in collection mode is that you not close the current SSH session, else the collection will stop. I have even tried running the VSAN Observer using RVC's not very well known "script" feature and then back-grounding the process, but after a minute or so the collection also just stops.

The only workaround that I have found is by using Screen, a full-screen windows session manager usually found on most Linux/UNIX and Mac OS X systems. Having used Screen in the past life as a Systems Administrator, I can say it is an extremely useful tool when needing to perform long running tasks and not have to worry about your SSH session being disconnected. You can start a session, disconnect and then re-connect at a later time to monitor the progress.

If you are on a Mac, then Screen should have already been installed. Below are the steps to run the VSAN Observer in the VCSA using Screen:

Step 1 - Start screen and give the session a name such as "VSAN-Observer" for example:

screen -S VSAN-Observer

Step 2 - SSH to your VCSA and login to RVC and start the VSAN Observer using the collection mode as you normally would. For step by step instructions, check out Rawlinson Rivera's article here on setting up the VSAN Observer.

Step 3 - Once the VSAN Observer is running, enter the following key combinations which will detach your Screen session:

Crtl+a d

Step 4 - To list the available Screen sessions, you can run the following command:

screen -list

Step 5 - To re-attach to your Screen session, you will need to specify the session name. In our example, it was called VSAN-Observer:

screen -r VSAN-Observer

An alternative to Step 2, instead of running the VSAN Observer interactively, I actually prefer to run the VSAN Observer using RVC's script option. It is just less typing for me and makes it easy to collect stats across multiple VSAN environments

To do so, you will need to create a script file that contains the following:

# William Lam
# www.virtuallyghetto.com
# RVC script for running VSAN Observer

datacenter_name = "VSAN-Datacenter"
cluster_name = "VSAN-Cluster"
vsan_html_output_directory = "/storage/core"
vsan_observer_runtime = "1"

# Do not edit beyond here #

puts "Enabling VSAN Observer collection for: #{cluster_name} ..."
rvc_exec("vsan.observer --run-webserver --force --generate-html-bundle #{vsan_html_output_directory} --max-runtime #{vsan_observer_runtime} /localhost/#{datacenter_name}/computers/#{cluster_name}")

The RVC script option actually accepts a Ruby script to execute and if we take a look at the script, we are just passing some arguments to the vsan.observer command.

To use the RVC script instead of interactively logging in, you can run the following command:

rvc -s [SCRIPT-NAME] [USERNAME:PASSWORD]@localhost

I think a nice feature enhancement to the VSAN Observer is the ability to automatically background the collection process without having to rely on the existing SSH connection, perhaps this is something Christian may consider for a future update to RVC 🙂 In the meantime, this is a pretty decent work around