WilliamLam.com

Automating complete HCX deployment and configuration to first cloud migration using PowerCLI

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PowerCLI 11.2.0, was just released last week and for a "dot" release, it includes a number of new capabilities and enhancements. One of the most exciting features for me personally was the introduction of the VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) PowerCLI module which I also had the pleasure of working on and providing early feedback to the HCX Engineering team. The new HCX module enables customers to use PowerCLI to now easily automate the HCX Fleet deployment (Interconnect, WAN Optimization and Network Extension) as well as perform bulk live migrations of  workloads between two HCX-enabled environments, with on-premises vSphere to VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) being the most popular.

I have written a number articles on HCX Automation using both the HCX REST API and PowerCLI and with this latest PowerCLI module, I realized that we now have complete end-to-end automation with PowerCLI from the HCX OVA deployment to initial configuration and fleet deployment to your very first HCX vMotion! This is quite exciting as I know a number of folks have been asking about automating the fleet deployment, especially for enabling quick proof of concepts and quickly showing the value of HCX to our customers for moving large amount of workloads without any downtime.

Below, you will find a breakdown of the HCX setup which I have split into three sections, each section includes the respective PowerCLI sample code that can easily be adapted to your own environment. I look forward to seeing what customers do with the new HCX PowerCLI module and if you have any feedback, be sure to leave a comment or better yet, file a feature enhancement using the PowerCLI Feature Request Tool.

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How to retrieve the NSX-T Overview Info (SDDC Public IP, Appliance & Infra Subnet, etc.) in VMC?

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I recently a question from one of our VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) field folks who was looking to programmatically retrieve the SDDC Public IP Address which is shown under the NSX-T Networking & Security Overview page within the VMC Console as shown in the screenshot below. 


This actually had me stumped for a bit as I was not able to find anything mentioned in the NSX-T Policy API documentation. My last resort before pinging the NSX Engineers was to use one of my favorite browser tool, Chrome Developer Tools, which allows me to inspect all requests made to a specific web page and can also be helpful in figuring out which REST APIs the UI is using.

It turns out for this particular page, the information was not actually coming from the NSX-T Policy API but rather from another endpoint and specifically /cloud-service/api/v1/infra/sddc-user-config which I am guessing has to do with the fact that some of this information is really AWS specific information such as the Public IP Address for example. In any case, once I realized what the endpoint was and that I could still use the VMC NSX-T Reverse Proxy to retrieve the details, it was pretty straight forward.

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Common PowerCLI examples for VM Provisioning in VMware Cloud on AWS

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One of the huge benefits of VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) is not only the ability to extend your existing on-premises environment and tap into the potentially unlimited capacity of the Cloud, but customers can continue to use the existing tools and scripts that they are already familiar with. When it comes to Automation, PowerCLI is still by far the most popular tool that our customers uses on a regular basis. With VMC, this is no different as the SDDC is simply made up of vSphere, vSAN and NSX which PowerCLI fully supports.

One learning curve that I have seen for some customers when working with VMC is around general provisioning and the implication of the restrictive permission model in VMC. Unlike your on-premises vSphere environment, in VMC, you are no longer running as a vSphere Administrator but rather a Cloud Administrator. This simply means you no longer have to worry about managing the underlying infrastructure (patch, upgrade, monitor, etc) and you get to focus deploying and managing your workloads.

What this technically translates to is that you are restricted to a particular part of the vSphere Inventory where you have permissions to actually deploy workloads. This is to help isolate your workloads and ensure that you do not negatively impact the VMware Management VMs by accident and thus affecting your SDDC.

  • From the Hosts/Clusters view, you must use the Compute-ResourcePool
  • From the VM view, you must use the Workloads Folder
  • From the Datastore view, you must use the WorkloadDatastore


When using the vSphere UI to deploy new workloads, the UI does a really good job of guiding you towards the right inventory objects, but this may not always be apparent when using the CLI or API, especially for new folks or folks who never use the UI 😉

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