archive on Philippe Dellaert

The VMworld Hackathon I failed to attend... And how our team won - Part 3

Sun, 25 Nov 2018 21:37:14 +0000

While we had a great story and a good plan on how to make sure we achieved our goals during the hackathon, our team also met a problem where I was unable to attend the hackathon at the last minute because of a work situation.

This left our team with one fewer backend developer, making it harder for the rest.

So we shifted our plan slightly. The hackathon itself was during the evening of the first day of VMworld Europe. This left me with a day to develop a portion of the backend that would at least fulfill the requirement of Phase 1.

The VMworld Hackathon I failed to attend... And how our team won - Part 2

Sun, 18 Nov 2018 21:36:31 +0000

After finding a great team to be part of at the VMworld Europe Hackathon and defining our goals, it was time to come up with a plan on what we wanted to do.

As a recap, the main goals of our team were:

Implement Conway’s Game of Life as Kubernetes Pods
Use VMware VKE
Use Clarity to visualize the pod status
Monitor the platform using Wavefront
Have fun learning, working and meeting great people

We had a great set of goals that we wanted to achieve and so we started to work out a plan to get there. The hackathon in itself is pretty short, you get 4 hours to do all your work, present and demonstrate. That’s not a lot of time.

The VMworld Hackathon I failed to attend... And how our team won - Part 1

Sun, 11 Nov 2018 08:48:51 +0000

As usual, during VMworld Europe in Barcelona, VMware organized another Hackathon for enthusiasts to work in a small teams and develop something impressive in a couple of hours. And as usual, I desperately wanted to participate, so I enrolled and decided to become part of a team called “ContainerQuest!”.

I wanted it desperately, because as my job becomes more and more demanding, i find myself having less and less time to work on side projects and code just for fun of learning something new. And i really wanted to pick that back up at this Hackathon.

VMworld Europe Hackathon: Preparation

Sun, 10 Sep 2017 00:33:12 +0000

We are getting closer to VMworld Europe and the Hackathon that goes with it. For team Automation for All, this means we are getting prepared to have a lot of fun on Monday.

The goal of this post is to give an overview of the requirements of working with Ansible and how to properly setup your environment.

As a first tip, the best thing to do as preparation, is to look at all the available VMware focused standard modules in Ansible. A full list can be found here. The vsphere_ modules are being deprecated and should not be used.

VMworld Europe Hackathon: Introducing team Automation for All

Mon, 04 Sep 2017 19:08:53 +0000

In a week, VMworld Europe 2017 kicks off and as tradition dictates, VMware is organising a Hackathon on Monday night. As part of that, a bunch of us have started a team to do something cool with Ansible during that Hackathon (team 4 on the list).

The first and foremost goal of our team is to have fun and enjoy a good evening with like-minded people. If, during all of that fun, beer drinking, chocolate eating and overall banter, we also manage to build something interesting, all the better!

Govmomi and listening for vSphere events

Mon, 19 Dec 2016 01:42:13 +0000

For a while, i’ve wanted to get some experience in Go (or Golang, if you prefer), but never found the time. Recently I found the need for something that allows me to capture all the VM events on an ESXi host and handle according to them.

Next to pyVmomi, VMware also has a vSphere SDK for Go, called govmomi, and I thought that this was the perfect moment to dive into Go and get my hands dirty as i already know how to work with the pyVmomi library and the vSphere SDK/API.

Scripting with Nuage VSPK – Part 2 – Advanced concepts & examples

Fri, 04 Mar 2016 17:05:43 +0000

Last week we introduced the basic installation and usage of the Nuage VSPK using some script examples.

This week we will continue our dive into this subject by introducing some advanced concepts and again we will use some example scripts to explain these concepts in detail:

Creating ACLs policies and rules with Jobs
Gathering Statistics with Query Parameters
Asynchronous calls
Push notifications
Set Policy Groups on a VM depending on its name in vCenter by combining the Nuage VSPK with the vCenter SDK

Happy reading!

Scripting with Nuage VSPK - Part 1 - Introduction & basic examples

Fri, 26 Feb 2016 16:55:44 +0000

Today i want to talk about a Nuage VSP feature which allows you to create your own tools to interact with your Nuage VSP environment: The Nuage VSPK. The Nuage VSPK uses the Nuage VSD REST API to do all its actions, so if you are familiar with the REST API, you will quickly grasp the use of the Nuage VSPK.

The Nuage VSPK is available in two flavors: a Python flavor and a Go flavor. This last one was released last week, for now, we will cover the usage of the VSPK using the Python flavor.

pyVmomi 6.0.0, vSphere 6.0 and SSL

Wed, 02 Dec 2015 17:53:17 +0000

VMware released a new version of pyVmomito better integrate with vSphere 6.0. This release introduces a change on the creation of an SSL connection. After struggling with some issues on this change, I wanted to write something down for future reference.

On the GitHub documentation it says pyVmomi 6.0.0 supports python 2.7, but it would be more accurate to say pyVmomi 6.0.0 supports python 2.7.9+, as in python 2.7.9 the ssl.SSLContext object has been introduced. This object allows you to specify a verification mode and a SSL Protocol. This object is needed if you want to connect correctly to the vSphere API.

Upgrading vCenter Server Appliance 5.5 to 6.0 using CLI

Thu, 22 Oct 2015 22:33:36 +0000

In 6.0 the standard installation and upgrade of the vCenter Server Appliance has changed to an ISO which you can mount in Windows. This ISO provides a web interface. This interfaces asks you to install the Client Integration Plugin 6.0, after which you can use the web interface to install or upgrade your vCenter Server Appliance.

Of course, this gives us Unix users another hurdle to overcome with installing the vSphere environment. Also, the Client Integration Plugin has some issues working with the latest versions of Chrome and Firefox. Lastly, hardly anybody likes using a web interface for this kind of installations.

Nuage Networks releases its Virtual Service Platform SDK

Sat, 22 Aug 2015 02:06:09 +0000

About five months ago, I decided to make a big change in my professional career and join Nuage Networks (a wholly owned subsidiary of Alcatel-Lucent) as a New Product Introduction Engineer. In the past four months, I realised that this might have been one of the best decisions i made in my life. I’ve been working with extremely intelligent and hard working people who are all very friendly and understanding of the new guy. I learned a lot, and still have a whole lot more to learn!

multi-clone.py improvements & random-vmotion.py

Fri, 10 Jul 2015 21:50:00 +0000

For a project i needed a couple of tools, so i improved my multi-clone.py script and created a new script: random-vmotion.py

multi-clone.py: setting advanced configuration parameters

The multi-clone.py script is improved so you are able to set advanced configuration parameters of the created VMs, this can be used if you have other tools that need some metadata or configuration.

To accomplish this, you have to use the CSV feature. The fields in the CSV have been changed slightly in comparison with the previous version:

multi-clone.py: CSV import and MAC customization

Mon, 02 Mar 2015 02:13:14 +0000

After a very busy year, I finally came around to improving my multi-clone.py pyVmomi script. I have added a minor improvement, being able to disable SSL certificate warnings, and two major improvements: CSV import and MAC customization

CSV Import

There is a new command line flag, -C, which allows you to specify a CSV file. This CSV file provides multi-clone.py with the necessary information to clone the template into a VM for each line. The fields in the CSV should be:

multi-clone.py: Multi-threaded cloning of a template to multiple VMs

Mon, 03 Feb 2014 23:07:28 +0000

In december, VMware released pyVmomi, a Python SDK for the vSphere API. In the past I have created a script to clone virtual machines using pySphere. This script has helped me (and others, if the mails I received were any indication), but i haven’t updated or improved it in a while.

So I decided this was a good moment to revisit the script and recreate it completely using pyVmomi. And not just recreate it, but improve a lot on it as well. The result is an all new multi-clone.py script which allows for the following list of capabilities:

Ansible roles to deploy Shorewall, Shorewall6 and DHCP server

Sun, 22 Dec 2013 00:27:38 +0000

Lately I’ve been looking into Ansible, a configuration management tool like Puppet or Chef. There is no specific reason why I’m using Ansible instead of the other possibilities, except that it seemed to be easier. One of the big advantages is that you do not need to install software on each managed host if you don’t want to. The whole system is Push, altho a Pull system is available.

Ansible uses modules, roles and playbooks. Modules are written in python and are used as building blocks of roles. They represent actions which can be taken on a host, like installing a package, making sure a file is present, … There is a whole list of standard modules on the Ansible documentation. Of course you can write your own modules to do more complex stuff, I recently wrote a module which checks out a Wordpress application from a git repository and sets it up in a Plesk created vhost. I did this before I really got a feel for playbooks and roles in Ansible, because i’m sure that almost all steps in that module could be done using the default modules.

multi-clone.py minimal user permissions

Thu, 14 Nov 2013 00:51:47 +0000

Half a year ago, I posted about a Python script I created using PySphere, called multi-clone.py. I used this script to quickly deploy multiple vm’s from the same template and do some post-processing. This allowed me to easily setup a lab environment to test any sort of cluster tool, configuration management tool, …

This tool has been picked up by some other people. I’m happy to see my work is useful to others. This also meant that I got the occasional question about it.

vCenter 5.5 Server Appliance quirks

Fri, 04 Oct 2013 08:51:41 +0000

Last week I upgraded my whole vSphere 5.1 environment to 5.5 and migrated to the vCenter 5.5 Server Appliance (VSA). Overall, I’m happy with this migration as the appliance gives me everything i need and the new web client works amazingly well, both with Mac OS X and Windows.

But there are a few quirks and small issues with it. Nothing to serious, and as i understand it, the VMware engineers are looking into it, but for those who are experiencing these issues, I wanted to provide a bit of explanation on how to fix them.

Migrate vCenter 5.1 Standard to vCenter 5.5 Server Appliance with Distributed vSwitch and Update Manager

Sat, 28 Sep 2013 02:28:38 +0000

At VMworld San Fransisco, VMware announced vSphere 5.5 and they officially released it a couple of days ago. With this new version of vSphere, the vCenter Server Appliance has been updated as well.

With this new version, the maximums have been increased. The vCenter Server Appliance was only usable in small environments with a maximum of 5 hosts and a 50 VM’s with the internal database. If you had more hosts and/or VMs, you had to connect your vCenter to an Oracle database. (Thanks Bert for noting this)

PySphere script to clone a template into multiple VMs with post processing

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 00:54:21 +0000

*There is a better/newer version of this script, for more details, check this post: https://dellaert.org/2014/02/03/multi-clone-py-multi-threaded-cloning-of-a-template-to-multiple-vms/ - Or via github: https://github.com/pdellaert/vSphere-Python *

For an internal test setup i needed to be able to deploy multiple VMs from a template without to much hassle. So i started thinking that the best way to approach this, would be using a script. At first i thought i had to do this using PowerCLI as this is the preferred VMware way of scripting.

How to setup an IPv6-only network with NAT64, DNS64 and Shorewall

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 18:18:38 +0000

Goal

The goal of this article is to help people to set up a network that is IPv6 Only (except for the gateway) and does allow the users to access IPv4 servers beyond the gateway.

Overview

If you follow the news surrounding the IPv4 exhaustion, you will now that IPv4 is running out of space rapidly (currently Ripe is allocating the last /8 address space). So, it’s time to start thinking about moving to IPv6.

Upgrading Redmine from 0.9.x to 1.3.x

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 23:05:00 +0000

Today i was asked by a client to upgrade his Redmine setup from version 0.9.3 to the latest stable version. As his server is running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and he installed Redmine using the Ubuntu repositories, this wasn’t the easiest or smoothest task i’ve ever done.

I suspected that upgrading from 0.9.3 directly to 1.3-stable would be a nightmare, so i was planning on upgrading to 1.0-stable, then to 1.1-stable, then 1.2-stable and finally 1.3-stable.

Ubuntu 11.10 boot problem

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 17:43:14 +0000

Today i had a network issue on my system, so i tried rebooting my Ubuntu 11.10 server which acts like a router, firewall, DHCP and DNS server for my network. Turns out there was a rather big problem with Ubuntu 11.10 if you upgraded from a previous version.

It seems that in Ubuntu 11.10 the directory containing running processes information and lock files has changed, or well, it has for certain programs. This results in a system where certain daemons/programs expect to find sockets in /var/run, while they are present in /run, or vice versa.

Moving my VMware vCenter 4.1 and VMware Update Manager database

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:58:35 +0000

I have already explained that i have a local vSphere setup running as a test environment. Of course i use vCenter for that, not much use to have a cluster running and not using vCenter ;).

As this setup is a small environment, i chose to use the MSSQL Server 2005 Express which is bundled with the vCenter 4.1 U1 installer. But with the release of vSphere 5, vCenter no longer supports MSSQL Server 2005 Express.

PHP 5.3.2 DateTime diff() issue

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 13:52:39 +0000

It seems that PHP 5.3.2 ( 5.3.2-1ubuntu4.10 ) has a small issue when using the DateTime diff() method.

Got this code:

< ?php
$mode = 'D';
$back = 1;
$start = new \DateTime();
$start->setTime(0, 0);
$start->sub(new \DateInterval('P'.$back.$mode));
$end = new \DateTime();
$end->setTime(0, 0);
if( $back > 0 ) {
	$end->sub(new \DateInterval('P'.($back-1).$mode));
} else {
	$end->add(new \DateInterval('P1'.$mode));
}

echo $start->format('Y-m-d H:i:s') . "\n";
echo $end->format('Y-m-d H:i:s') . "\n";
$dt = $start->diff($end);
echo $start->format('Y-m-d H:i:s') . "\n";
echo $end->format('Y-m-d H:i:s') . "\n";
$differenceDays = $dt->format('%a');
echo $differenceDays."\n";
?>

This code results in:

Setting up a new VPS

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 15:43:12 +0000

Today i decided to get a new VPS from Shift to the cloud, a new project from Stone Internet Services (@stoneis). Stone IS has been a choice for webhosting and domain registration for me and my clients for years, and i have always been happy with their service.

In the past i have always counted on ULYSSIS for my personal hosting, as i have been vice-president of this organisation and have a free account because of that. But lately, i realized that, although their service is incredible for an organization of volunteers, it is not as open and free as having an own server at your disposal.