vCenter Server – Page 14

Quick Tip - Using HTTP(s) proxy for connecting to 3rd party Content Library in vSphere 6.0

05.27.2015 by William Lam // 11 Comments

A couple of weeks back I was asked by a customer who was interested in subscribing to my 3rd Party Content Library which hosted several of my Nested ESXi and VSAN OVF Templates. The problem was that in his environment, like many others, he did not have direct access internet access from within vCenter Server for the Content Library subscription to be created. The customer was wondering if the Content Library feature supported a proxy server which is a very common method for Enterprise customers to provide access to external sites requiring internet access. The Content Library Service does provide a way to configure a proxy server and below are the instructions for configuring both the VCSA and vCenter Server for Windows.

UPDATE (09/27/17): As of vSphere 6.5 Update 1, the Proxy Configurations for the Content Library has been pulled directly into the service itself and you no longer have to manually edit the Java wrapper.conf files. You can now access the proxy configurations by using the vSphere Web Client going to Administration->System Configuration->Services->Content Library Service->Transfer Service as shown in the screenshot below. For 6.0 and 6.5, you will need to continue to follow the instructions below on editing the wrapper.conf file.

vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA)

The configuration file that you will need to edit is /usr/lib/vmware-vdcs/wrapper/conf/wrapper.conf and below are the three lines to add:

wrapper.java.additional.20=-Dhttps.proxySet=true
wrapper.java.additional.21=-Dhttps.proxyHost=proxy.server.com
wrapper.java.additional.22=-Dhttps.proxyPort=8080

Once you have saved your changes, you will need to restart the Content Library service for the changes to go into effect by running the following command:

/etc/init.d/vmware-vdcs restart

The proxy server will now be used and assuming the proper ACL's have been added on the proxy server itself to allow traffic from your vCenter Server to the appropriate destination site, you should now be able to use the Content Library to subscribe to my 3rd Party Content Library.

vCenter Server for Windows

The configuration file that you will need to edit is C:\Program Files\VMware\vCenter Server\vdcs\wrapper\conf\wrapper.conf and below are the three lines to add:

wrapper.java.additional.20=-Dhttps.proxySet=true
wrapper.java.additional.21=-Dhttps.proxyHost=proxy.server.com
wrapper.java.additional.22=-Dhttps.proxyPort=8080

Once you have saved your changes, you will need to restart the Content Library service for the changes to go into effect by going to the Windows services panel.

vCenter Server 6.0 Tidbits Part 8: Useful ldapsearch queries for vmdird

05.06.2015 by William Lam // Leave a Comment

Last week I demonstrated how you can connect to the VMware Directory Service (vmdird) in vSphere 6.0 using JXPlorer, a graphical LDAP browser to extract useful information such as all the deployed vCenter Servers and Platform Services Controllers in your environment. I have also shown in past articles on how you can also retrieve this information programmatically which I have described here and here. Since vmdird is an LDAP-based system, we can also easily retrieve this information using simple LDAP commands that you may already be familiar with.

Disclaimer: Please take extreme caution when connecting to the vmdird database, this is primary for educational purposes. You should take extreme care in making changes while in the database else you can negatively impact your environment.

For performing search queries within an LDAP system, we can use the ldapsearch command which is available among other commands within the VCSA as well as other *NIX based system including Mac OS X. You can use this command to connect to both Windows and the VCSA running either an Embedded deployment or just the Platform Services Controller services.

Below are three useful ldapserach queries for identifying all deployed vCenter Servers and Platform Services Controllers including the SSO Site Name. The parameters highlighted below in blue will need to be modified based on your environment. The -h parameter specifies the Hostname/IP Address of your PSC, the -w parameter is the SSO Administrator password and the dc property is the name of SSO Domain.

Finding all deployed vCenter Servers:

/opt/likewise/bin/ldapsearch -h psc-01.primp-industries.com -w 'VMware1!' -x -D "cn=Administrator,cn=Users,dc=vghetto,dc=local" -b "ou=Computers,dc=vghetto,dc=local" -s one "objectclass=computer" cn

Finding all deployed Platform Service Controllers:

/opt/likewise/bin/ldapsearch -h psc-01.primp-industries.com -w 'VMware1!' -x -D "cn=Administrator,cn=Users,dc=vghetto,dc=local" -b "ou=domain controllers,dc=vghetto,dc=local" -s one "objectclass=computer" cn

Finding SSO Site Name:

/opt/likewise/bin/ldapsearch -h psc-01.primp-industries.com -w 'VMware1!' -x -D "cn=Administrator,cn=Users,dc=vghetto,dc=local" -b "cn=Sites,cn=Configuration,dc=vghetto,dc=local" "objectclass=container"

vCenter Server 6.0 Tidbits Part 4: Finding all deployed vCenter Servers

04.16.2015 by William Lam // 2 Comments

In vSphere 6.0, there are a list of recommended topologies which can viewed in VMware KB 2108548. In the event that you need to locate all available vCenter Servers in your environment, you have a couple of options depending on type of access you have and the state of your environment (e.g. vSphere Web Client is down). For locating all deployed Platform Service Controllers (PSC), please take a look at my previous article here. Before taking a look at the solutions, here is a diagram of my vSphere 6.0 lab environment and its configuration: 2 PSCs configured for replication with 2 VCs joined to PSC1 and another VC joined to PSC2.

Option 1:

The first option to find this information is using the new System Configuration UI which is available in the vSphere 6.0 Web Client. You can quickly view all Nodes and their type as seen in the screenshot below. This would be the quickest and most efficient method if access to the vSphere Web Client is available.

Option 2:

We can also connect to a new service in vSphere 6.0 known as the Component Manager via its MOB (Managed Object Browser) interface. You will need to open a browser and connect to the following URL and substituting it with the Hostname/IP Address of one of your PSC:

https://psc-01.primp-industries.com/cm/mob/?moid=ServiceManager&method=Search

If you do not know the Hostname/IP Address of your PSC Server, you can always find it by going to the vCenter Server Advanced Settings and searching for pattern "sso.admin" and you will see the address of your PSC Server as seen in the screenshot below.

Once you have authenticated in, you will need to add the following snippet into the text box:

<searchCriteria>
<serviceType>
<productId>com.vmware.cis</productId>
<typeId>vcenterserver</typeId>
</serviceType>
</searchCriteria>

Note: For programmatic access, please refer to Option 3 for more details.

Next, click on Invoke Method to execute the query and if everything was successful, you should see entries under "serviceAttributes" for all your vCenter Servers as seen in the screenshot below.

Option 3:

The final option is to of course retrieve this information programmatically using the new vCloud Suite SDK which is part of the vSphere 6.0 release. There are 6 new SDKs: .Net, Java, Perl, REST, Python & Ruby and you can find more information here. In this example, I will be using the vCloud Suite SDK for Python and using the sample located under the "lookupservice" directory called print_services.py You will need to download and extract the contents of the SDK onto a system that has a Python interpreter installed and below are the instructions for running this particular sample script.

First, you will need to edit a configuration file and provide some details to one of your PSC's

VMware-vCloud-Suite-SDK-Python-6.0.0/client/samples/src/sample.cfg

Here is an example of what the file should look like for my environment:

[connection]
lswsdlurl=file:///root/VMware-vCloud-Suite-SDK-Python-6.0.0/client/wsdl/lookupservice.wsdl
lssoapurl=https://psc-01.primp-industries.com/lookupservice/sdk
ssousername=*protected email*
ssopassword=VMware1!

Next, change into the following directory:

cd VMware-vCloud-Suite-SDK-Python-6.0.0/client/bin/

Finally, to run the sample script you will need to ensure run_sample.sh (wrapper script) is set to executable and then run the following:

./run_sample.sh ../samples/src/com/vmware/vcloud/suite/sample/lookupservice/print_services.py

If everything was configured successfully, you should see similar output as shown in the screenshot below: