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Embedded Host Client Fling v3 released!

10.23.2015 by William Lam // 8 Comments

I just wanted to give everyone a quick heads up that version 3 of the awesome Embedded Host Client Fling has just been released! In addition to all the new features and bug fixes which you can find more details below, there is now also an offline bundle for ESXi 5.x as well as ESXi 6.x which can then be used to distribute to your vSphere environment using vSphere Update Manager. One of my favorite features in this new release is the ability to edit or delete existing disk partitions which is super handy when repurposing existing disk devices for use with VSAN. You can find the download on the Embedded Host Client Fling page here.

Screen Shot 2015-10-23 at 10.03.53 AM
If you have v1 or v2 installed, you can perform an "update" by simply running the following ESXCLI command:

[[email protected]:~] esxcli software vib update -v /esxui-signed.vib
Installation Result
Message: Operation finished successfully.
Reboot Required: false
VIBs Installed: VMware_bootbank_esx-ui_0.0.2-0.1.3172496
VIBs Removed: VMware_bootbank_esx-ui_0.0.2-0.1.3015331
VIBs Skipped:

What's new in v3 - 

  • VM
    • Answer question support
    • Upgrade virtual hardware to the latest supported by the host
    • Hot edit VM settings
    • VM table column configuration (show/hide columns), remembered across browser refresh
    • VM startup/shutdown priority (simple increase/decrease)
  • Host
    • Change host power management policy, advanced power configuration
    • Generate IP/FQDN certificate signing request and import new certificate
    • Join a host to an active directory domain controller
  • Storage
    • Disk device partition editor
    • Adapter rescan for new LUNs
    • Disk device rescan for new VMFS volumes
    • Clear a disk's partition table
    • Disk device partition diagram
    • Increase datastore size onto disk that already contains a partition table
  • Performance charts
    • Ability to change performance chart colors (two choices: default VMware colors and high contrast colors)
    • Added Network and Disk charts to Host performance UI
    • Improve VM performance UI, still missing some charts
    • Improved performance UI on tablets
      • Always hide the top legend in the chart
      • Hide the focus widget to increase vertical space
  • General
    • In-app update tool: provide a URL to a new version of the VIB, refresh the browser, et voila!
    • For tabbed UIs, the selected tab is remembered as you navigate around the UI to avoid un-necessary clicks
    • Better scrolling performance on tablets (tested on iPad)
    • Hide-able navigator allowing more space on tablets
    • Shortcut buttons to Host, Host Manage, Host Monitor, VMs, Storage, Networking when navigator is collapsed
    • Improved Actions menu behavior on tablets:
      • Menu navigation no longer hides the actions menu
      • Added an explicit close button on actions menus
      • A second press on the Actions button will close the menu
  • Bugfixes
    • VM table sizing with small number of VMs
    • In-browser consoles:
      • Will now attempt to reconnect when losing a connection to a powered on VM
      • Reverting to a powered-on snapshot while a console is open to that VM will reconnect the console

Categories // ESXi Tags // embedded host client, esxi, fling, HTML5, vum, web access

ESXi Embedded Host Client Fling updated to v2

08.26.2015 by William Lam // 13 Comments

The response and feedback from our customers on the recently released HTML5 Embedded Host Client for ESXi Fling has just been absolutely phenomenal. Having only been released for a little less than two weeks ago, it has also become the #1 Fling on the VMware Labs which is an amazing accomplishment in it itself as well as to the awesome work from both the Engineers: Etienne and George. 

Having said that, both Etienne and George have not stopped and have been quite busy in the last couple of weeks. They have been working adding new features based on feedback from our customers as well as any bug fixes that have been reported. Today, I am please to announce that they have just released version2 of the Embedded Host Client for ESXi which you can find here. If you have v1 installed, you can perform an "update" by running the following ESXCLI command:

[[email protected]:~] esxcli software vib update -v /esxui-3015331.vib
Installation Result
Message: Operation finished successfully.
Reboot Required: false
VIBs Installed: VMware_bootbank_esx-ui_0.0.2-0.1.3015331
VIBs Removed: VMware_bootbank_esx-ui_0.0.2-0.1.2976804
VIBs Skipped:

In addition to the new features listed below in v2, I would also like to mention we now have both an installable VIB as well as an offline bundle as some of you have been asking for which will allow you to use vSphere Update Manager (VUM) to automate the deployment of the Embedded Host Client across your ESXi hosts.

What's new in v2:

  • Host
    •  Improved host performance monitoring UI
    • Composite CPU/memory figure
  • Virtual Machines
    • VM Snapshot support.
    • In-browser VM console full screen support.
    • In-browser VM console 'shrink’ support.
    • Create Wizard: Mac OS guest creation has been enabled.
  • Storage
    • Completed file browser (copy/move/delete/create directory/upload/download)
    • Right click on VMX file in browser to register VM
    • Mount/create NFS datastores
    • Create VMFS datastore (currently only on disks that don't have a partition table)
    • Extend VMFS datastore (currently only onto disks that don't have a partition table)
    • Mount/Unmount VMFS datastore
  • Networking
    • Firewall ruleset listing (currently read-only)
  • General Features
    • Double click title bar to enlarge dialogs and wizards
    • Alt + drag in a dialog or wizard to resize
    • Locale override (we still only support en-US at this stage)
    • Customizable session timeout.

I have already deployed the latest version in my lab and I have to say, the new features rock. One tiny little feature which I really like is a session timeout count down which appears on your browser tab of the Embedded Host Client when left idle.

Screen_Shot_2015-08-24_at_9.23.29_AM_stream
In my opinion, the attention to details both big and small is what really differentiates this UI from any other that I have used and really provides for a fantastic user experience. Keep up the great work guys!

If you have any feedback, please leave a comment either on my blog or on the Fling site and who knows, your request might just make it into the next release 🙂

Categories // ESXi Tags // embedded host client, esxi, fling, HTML5, vum, web access

Automate Update Manager Operations using vSphere SDK for Perl + VIX + PowerCLI + PowerCLI VUM

07.30.2010 by William Lam // Leave a Comment

I recently saw an interesting question on the VMTN developers forum asking about vSphere SDK for Perl and VUM API integrations. As it stands today, VMware has not publicly exposed or documented the VMware Update Manager APIs, though they have released a few PowerCLI VUM cmdlets for PowerCLI users. This is one feature, in my opinion, that PowerCLI has over the other vSphere SDKs. This is quite unfortunate, since automating VUM operations is something I have looked forward to and the process can be slow from clicking around in the GUI. I think VMware sometimes forget that the world does not run on Windows and that VMware != Windows.

I was hoping with the release of vSphere 4.1, the VUM APIs would finally be exposed as a standard web service like the vSphere API provided with proper SDKs for the various languages. My reply to the VMTN user was exactly this: this type of integration does not exist today. If you would like to automate VUM operations, you must use the PowerCLI VUM cmdlets. The follow-up comment was how one might integrate between vSphere SDK for Perl and PowerCLI VUM cmdlets. Initially, I did not recommend this but it could potentially work with some type of WMI call or hooks from some Perl modules. The solution might get a little messy and it would probably be faster to just set up the PowerCLI VUM cmdlets on a Windows host.

As I thought about the question later that evening, I realized that there is potentially another method if you wanted to use the vSphere SDK for Perl but utilize the PowerCLI VUM cmdlets. The following solution will demonstrate the use of vMA, vSphere SDK for Perl, VIX Perl API, PowerCLI and PowerCLI VUM cmdlets. VMware VIX is used for guest management for VMs running on a VMware hypervisor, whether it be Workstation, Fusion or ESX(i). There is a Perl SDK for the VIX API which I use to generate a PowerCLI script that is transferred directly into a Windows VM running both PowerCLI and PowerCLI VUM. This dynamic PowerCLI script will contain the host information and VUM baseline provided from the vSphere SDK for Perl script. The script will remediate the host and then it will be deleted by VIX. This configuration is not ideal, but if you wanted to automate some of the available VUM operations but continue to use your vSphere SDK for Perl scripts, then you can.

The dynamic PowerCLI script that is generated is the following:

Connect-VIServer -Server [vc-server] -Protocol https -User [vc-user] -Password [vc-password]
$vmhost = Get-VMHost [vi-host]
$baseline = Get-Baseline [host-baseline]
$baseline | Attach-Baseline -Entity $vmhost -Confirm:$false
$vmhost | Scan-Inventory
$baseline | Remediate-Inventory -Entity $vmhost -Confirm:$false

Note: This is just one example, you can easily customize the script to generate other VUM operations or more complex PowerCLI script. Once the operation is completed on the ESX(i) host, the script is deleted via VIX.

Before we get started, you will need to have a Windows VM that has both PowerCLI and PowerCLI VUM installed which resides in the same infrastructure as your VUM Server. You will also need to have VMware vMA available and installed with VMware VIX which will be documented down below.

1. Download VMware VIX 1.10

2. Transfer VMware-VIX-1.10.1-266898.x86_64.bundle installer to vMA

3. Install VIX:

VMware-VIX-1.10.1-266898.x86_64.bundle

================================================================

[[email protected] ~]$ sudo sh VMware-VIX-1.10.1-266898.x86_64.bundle
Password:
Extracting VMware Installer...done.
You must accept the VMware VIX API End User License Agreement to
continue. Press Enter to proceed.
.....
The product is ready to be installed. Press Enter to begin
installation or Ctrl-C to cancel.
Installing VMware VIX API 1.10.1
Configuring...
[######################################################################] 100%
Installation was successful.

To complete the next section, you will need GCC to be installed which is not part of the default vMA installation. If you are using vMA 4.1, it is running CentOS and you can setup CentOS YUM repository. This will require that your vMA host can proxy out to internet or to specific site. I will document the changes that need to be made to talk to CentOS repository for package installs.

4. Create repository file:

[[email protected] ~]$ sudo vi /etc/yum.repos.d/centos-base.repo

Add the following to the repo file:

5. Install GCC using yum:

[[email protected] ~]$ sudo yum -y --nogpgcheck install gcc.x86_64

6. CD to vmware-vix directory and extract VIX Perl

[[email protected] ~]$ cd /usr/lib/vmware-vix/

[[email protected] vmware-vix]$ sudo tar -zxvf vix-perl.tar.gz
vix-perl/
vix-perl/vix.h
vix-perl/includeCheck.h
vix-perl/vm_basic_types.h
vix-perl/VixBinding.xs
vix-perl/VixBinding.pm
vix-perl/ModuleList
vix-perl/lib/
vix-perl/lib/API/
vix-perl/lib/API/API.pm
vix-perl/lib/API/Host.pm
vix-perl/lib/API/Job.pm
vix-perl/lib/API/VM.pm
vix-perl/lib/API/Snapshot.pm
vix-perl/lib/API/PropertyList.pm
vix-perl/lib/API/Constants.pm
vix-perl/lib/Simple.pm
vix-perl/Makefile.PL
vix-perl/typemap
vix-perl/ppport.h
vix-perl/README
vix-perl/samples/
vix-perl/samples/findhosttest.pl
vix-perl/samples/powertest.pl
vix-perl/samples/vmrun.pl
vix-perl/libvixAllProducts.so

7. Install VIX Perl

[[email protected] vmware-vix]$ cd vix-perl

[[email protected] vix-perl]$ sudo perl Makefile.PL
Writing Makefile for VMware::VixBinding

[[email protected] vix-perl]$ sudo make

[[email protected] vix-perl]$ sudo make install

If you did not want to go through all these manual steps after installing VIX, I actually wrote a quick shell script that will automate the configuration of the CentOS repository, GCC installation and extraction and installation of VIX Perl.

Download installVIXPerl.sh

Executing installVIXPerl.sh:

[[email protected] ~]$ chmod +x installVIXPerl.sh

[[email protected] ~]$ sudo ./installVIXPerl.sh

9. Download patch-host.pl script and transfer it to vMA

10. You will need to edit 4 variables defined within the script:

$psvm_username = Is the username to your Windows system running PowerCLI
$psvm_password = Is the password to your Windows system running PowerCLI
$powercli_bin = Is the full path to your powershell binary, if it is a default installation, you can leave this unchanged
$powercli_options = Is the path to vSphere PowerCLI psc file, you can also leave this as the default

Note: If you do decide to change either $powercli_bin or $powercli_options, make sure you add an extra "forward slash" which needs to be escaped in the Perl script.

The script requires you to connect to your vCenter server and provide the following parameters:

--vihost = Name of ESX(i) host to be patched

--baseline = Name of the VUM basline to attach

--psvm = Name of the Windows VM running both PowerCLI and PowerCLI VUM

Here is an example patching an ESXi host that is running on 4.0u2 and using the script to apply vSphere 4.1 baseline:

[[email protected]]$ ./patch-host.pl --config --server reflex.primp-industries.com --username primp --vihost esxi4-3.primp-industries.com --psvm powerclivm --baseline vSphere4.1-Upgrade

Entering maintenance mode for esxi4-3.primp-industries.com
Successfully entered maintenance mode for esxi4-3.primp-industries.com
Guest login successfully!
Copy patch-host-esxi4-3.primp-industries.com-22174.ps1 to guest successfully!
PowerCLI/VUM script executed successfully!
Script removed successfully!
Successfully patched esxi4-3.primp-industries.com using VUM baseline: vSphere4.1-Upgrade

One thing I did notice, after the script is transferred to the Windows VM, it takes about 15-20 seconds before the script executes. I am not exactly sure why this occurs, as this does not happen when running the PowerCLI script logged into the VM. This may be due to the way VIX is executing the script within the guest.

The following resources were used in creating this script:

  • Referenced growdisk.pl vSphere SDK for Perl/VIX script written by Matt Lamantia
  • Referenced Alan's video on Getting Started with Update Managed cmdlets

Categories // PowerCLI, Uncategorized Tags // PowerCLI, vix, vsphere sdk for perl, vum

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Author

William Lam is a Senior Staff Solution Architect working in the VMware Cloud team within the Cloud Infrastructure Business Group (CIBG) at VMware. He focuses on Cloud Native technologies, Automation, Integration and Operation for the VMware Cloud based Software Defined Datacenters (SDDC)

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