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Exploring VSAN APIs Part 6 – Modifying Virtual Machine VM Storage Policy

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One of the biggest benefit of VSAN is the ability to specify granular storage policies on a per Virtual Machine basis. These storage policies is managed through VMware's Storage Policy Based Management system and is automatically enforced by VSAN to ensure compliance. A VM Storage Policy can be assigned during the initial deployment of a Virtual Machine or it can be modified afterwards, for example if the Virtual Machine's SLA's has changed because the workload has changed. From the vSphere Web Client, modifying a Virtual Machine's VM Storage Policy is simply selecting the VM Storage Policy and re-applying which is also available programmatically through the vSphere API.

Using the vSphere API method ReconfigVM_Task(), you will be able to modify the VM Storage Policy for the VM Home Namespace and/or individual Virtual Disks. To modify the VM Home Namespace, there is a property defined at the root of the Virtual Machine config spec called vmProfile which accepts the VM Storage Policy ID extracted from the SPBM API. To modify the VM Storage Policy for an individual Virtual Disk, you will need to set the profile property which is exposed on a Virtual Device with the VM Storage Policy ID. To demonstrate this functionality, I have created a sample vSphere SDK for Perl script called changeVMStoragePolicy.pl

Disclaimer:  These scripts are provided for informational and educational purposes only. It should be thoroughly tested before attempting to use in a production environment.

In my environment, I have a Virtual Machine called VM1 which has been defined with a VM Storage Policy called "Copper" as seen in screenshot below:

change-vm-storage-policy-0
Let's say I want to change the Virtual Machine's VM Storage Policy to another policy called "Aluminum", I first need to extract the VM Policy ID from SPBM API and then pass it into the script like the following:

./changeVMStoragePolicy.pl --server vcenter55-1.primp-industries.com --username root --vmname VM1 --profileid cd6908b2-0704-4733-ad9b-a9a8f200ab0a

change-vm-storage-policy-1
Once the Virtual Machine has been reconfigured, we can then take a look in our vSphere Web Client and we can see the VM Storage Policy has now been changed and VSAN will automatically enforce these new requirements.

change-vm-storage-policy-2
If you wish to assign a VM Storage Policy as part of a new Virtual Machine creation, you just need to set the vmProfile and profile properties which is similar to a reconfiguration operation.

  1. Exploring VSAN APIs Part 1 – Enable VSAN Cluster
  2. Exploring VSAN APIs Part 2 – Query available SSDs
  3. Exploring VSAN APIs Part 3 – Enable VSAN Traffic Type
  4. Exploring VSAN APIs Part 4 – VSAN Disk Mappings
  5. Exploring VSAN APIs Part 5 – VSAN Host Status
  6. Exploring VSAN APIs Part 6 – Modifying Virtual Machine VM Storage Policy
  7. Exploring VSAN APIs Part 7 – VSAN Datastore Folder Management
  8. Exploring VSAN APIs Part 8 – Maintenance Mode
  9. Exploring VSAN APIs Part 9 – VSAN Component count
  10. Exploring VSAN APIs Part 10 – VSAN Disk Health

Extending RVC to support renaming VM Storage Policies

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I was recently using RVC (Ruby vSphere Console) to setup one of my VSAN lab environments and I had noticed that in the SPBM namespace, that you could create and delete a VM Storage Policy, but you could not rename an existing one. The great thing about RVC is that it is very extensible and I thought it would be useful to have a spbm.profile_rename command, so I decided to build it!

The management of VM Storage Policies is performed through the SPBM API and there is a method called PbmUpdate() which allows you to rename an existing VM Storage Policy. In my environment, I exclusively use the VCSA (vCenter Server Appliance) and in the /root directory, you should see a .rvc directory. To extend the SPBM namepace, you just need to create a new file called spbm.rb which should contain the following snippet of code:

opts :profile_rename do
  summary "Rename a VM Storage Profile"
  arg :profile, nil, :lookup => RbVmomi::PBM::PbmCapabilityProfile
  arg :name, "New name", :type => :string
end

def profile_rename profile, name
  _catch_spbm_resets(nil) do
    pbm = profile.instance_variable_get(:@connection)
    pm = pbm.serviceContent.profileManager
    spec = PBM::PbmCapabilityProfileUpdateSpec(
      :name => name,
    )
    pm.PbmUpdate(:profileId => profile.profileId, :updateSpec => spec)
  end
end

Once you have saved the file, you can now connect to RVC and you should see a new command called spbm.profile_rename which takes an existing VM Storage Policy and the new name of the policy.

Here is an example of what that would look like where I have a VM Storage Policy called "Platinum" and I want to rename it to "Adamantium":

spbm.profile_rename localhost/Datacenter/storage/vmprofiles/Platinum/ Adamantium

VMware VSAN APIs

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For customers who are currently evaluating VMware VSAN, the vSphere Web Client is the primary interface for managing and configuring VSAN. However, these exact same VSAN operations can also be accessed programmatically from an Automation perspective. Given that I had spent quite a bit of time playing with VSAN in the lab and exploring some of its APIs, I thought it might be useful to share some of the common VSAN operations mapped to their respective APIs.

There are two main categories of operations that you should be aware of when working with VSAN:

  • VSAN specific operations
  • VM Storage Policy operations

VSAN Operations

The VSAN specific operations are available as part of the vSphere 5.5 API and the list below are the supported operations:

Enable/Disable VSAN on a vSphere Cluster (automatic claiming):

Manual Disk Claiming for an ESXi host:

  • Each ESXi host provides a vsanSystem manager at configManager->vsanSystem which provides the following methods for disk management
    • AddDisks_Task()
    • InitializeDisks_Task()
    • QueryDisksForVsan()
    • QueryHostStatus()
    • RemoveDisk_Task()
    • RemoveDiskMapping_Task()
    • UpdateVsan_Task()

Enable VSAN traffic type for a VMkernel interface

  • Use the ReconfigureComputeResource_Task() and set spec->vsanHostConfigSpec->HostSystem to the ESXi host you wish to configure and  spec->vsanHostConfigSpec->networkInfo->port->device to the specific VMkernel interface you wish to enable VSAN traffic type on

Internal VSAN manager for accessing low level CMMDS (Clustering Monitoring, Membership and Directory Services), object & disk management APIs:

  • Each ESXi host provides a vsanInternalSystem manager at configManager->vsanInternalSystem which provides the following methods for working with the lower level system of VSAN
    • QueryCmmds()
    • QueryObjectsOnPhysicalVsanDisk()
    • QueryPhysicalVsanDisks()
    • QueryVsanObjects()

Change the VM Storage Policy for a Virtual Machine Home OR Virtual Machine Home and Virtual Disk:

Change the VM Storage Policy for Virtual Machine Virtual Disk:

  • Use the ReconfigVM_Task() and set spec->deviceChange->device to the specif Virtual Disk to be reconfigured and set  spec->deviceChange->vmProfile to the VM Storage Policy ID

Enter Maintenance Mode for an ESXi host in a VSAN Cluster:

  • Use the EnterMaintenanceMode_Task() and set spec->
    maintenanceSpec->vsanMode->objectAction to the specific data accessibility mode defined here

Create and Delete directories on a VSAN Datastore:

SPBM

For VM Storage Policies, VSAN leverages the SPBM (Storage Policy Based Management) framework which allows administrators to create policies that define specific storage capabilities such as performance and reliability that can then be applied to a Virtual Machine. The SPBM API is exposed as a separate API endpoint in vCenter Server and will be required if you wish to create additional VM Storage Policy leveraging VSAN storage capabilities.

Query list of available VM Storage Profiles defined:

Create VM Storage Policy:

Delete VM Storage Policy:

Check VM Storage Policy Compliance:

Given a Virtual Machine Home or Virtual Disk, provide associated VM Storage Profile:

Given a VM Storage Profile, provide the associated Virtual Machine Home or Virtual Disk:

PbmQueryAssociatedEntity
PbmQueryAssociatedProfiles

Hopefully this provides a good overview of some of the common VSAN / SPBM operations and their associated API methods. If I have some spare cycles, I may create some sample scripts leveraging some of these API methods. In the meantime, you can check out these RVC (vSphere SDK for Ruby) modules leveraging both VSAN and SPBM APIs here and here.

Additional Resources: