Govmomi and listening for vSphere events
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.
Coming from a (basic) Python background and not being a real developer, moving to Go was quite an adjustment and after only one or two days of playing around with it, i still have to learn a lot.
However, i can compare govmomi vs pyVmomi and one thing is immediately clear about Go and govmomi: It is fast… Really fast. What normally would take a couple of seconds in pyVmomi, takes less than a second in govmomi.
To get started with Go, you can visit the Go Tour, it helps a lot to explain the basics of Go and the important aspects. However, as all developers know, the best way to get to know a programming language, is by using it. So let’s dive deeper in how govmomi works.
Scripting with Nuage VSPK – Part 2 – Advanced concepts & examples
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
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.
I will cover this aspect in multiple parts. This post will cover the installation of the VSPK and its structure, before leading up to the write-up of three scripts that:
- Show the structure of a particular domain
- Get an overview of all used Floating IPs
- Gather the events/logs for a particular enterprise
At the end there will also be some pointers on where to find a full API reference and where to find more examples.
In the next posts you can expect some more complex examples that show you how to listen to VSD events or how to combine the VSPK with VMware vCenter API to implement a dynamic policy group mapping.
This post is a copy of a blog post of mine on the Nuage Community.
Happy reading !
pyVmomi 6.0.0, vSphere 6.0 and SSL
VMware released a new version of pyVmomi to 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.
You can check your python version with python --version
Workaround for python versions below 2.7.9
To get everything working in python versions below 2.7.9, the easiest way is to downgrade pyvmomi to 5.5.0.2014.1.1. To achieve this, do the following:
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pip install pyvmomi==5.5.0.2014.1.1 |
This will downgrade your pyvmomi to a workable version. This version also doesn’t force SSL certificate verification, so your code can be very simple:
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import requests from pyVim.connect import SmartConnect, Disconnect from pyVmomi import vim, vmodl # Disabling urllib3 ssl warnings requests.packages.urllib3.disable_warnings() vc = None vcenter_host = "10.0.0.10" vcenter_port = 443 vcenter_username = "root" vcenter_password = "vmware" # Connecting to vCenter try: vc = SmartConnect(host=vcenter_host, user=vcenter_username, pwd=vcenter_password, port=vcenter_port) except IOError as e: print "I/O error({0}): {1}".format(e.errno, e.strerror) # Do stuff |
Working with untrusted SSL connections with pyVmomi 6.0.0 and python 2.7.9+
If you want to connect to a vSphere 6.0 API without certificate verification using pyVmomi 6.0.0 and python 2.7.9+, you will have to create a new SSLContext which disables the certificate verification. Using pyVmomi’s SmartConnect() , there is now a new attribute you can pass, called sslContext . Below is an example on how to achieve this.
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import ssl import requests from pyVim.connect import SmartConnect, Disconnect from pyVmomi import vim, vmodl # Disabling urllib3 ssl warnings requests.packages.urllib3.disable_warnings() # Disabling SSL certificate verification context = ssl.SSLContext(ssl.PROTOCOL_TLSv1) context.verify_mode = ssl.CERT_NONE vc = None vcenter_host = "10.0.0.10" vcenter_port = 443 vcenter_username = "root" vcenter_password = "vmware" # Connecting to vCenter try: vc = SmartConnect(host=vcenter_host, user=vcenter_username, pwd=vcenter_password, port=vcenter_port, sslContext=context) except IOError as e: print "I/O error({0}): {1}".format(e.errno, e.strerror) # Do stuff |
Support for both versions
If you write scripts which can run on different python and pyVmomi versions and you want to keep supporting both, you could do so by looking at the following example:
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import ssl from pyVim.connect import SmartConnect, Disconnect from pyVmomi import vim, vmodl context = None # Disabling urllib3 ssl warnings requests.packages.urllib3.disable_warnings() # Disabling SSL certificate verification if hasattr(ssl, 'SSLContext'): context = ssl.SSLContext(ssl.PROTOCOL_TLSv1) context.verify_mode = ssl.CERT_NONE vc = None vcenter_host = "10.0.0.10" vcenter_port = 443 vcenter_username = "root" vcenter_password = "vmware" # Connecting to vCenter try: if context: vc = SmartConnect(host=vcenter_host, user=vcenter_username, pwd=vcenter_password, port=vcenter_port, sslContext=context) else: vc = SmartConnect(host=vcenter_host, user=vcenter_username, pwd=vcenter_password, port=vcenter_port) except IOError as e: print "I/O error({0}): {1}".format(e.errno, e.strerror) # Do stuff |
I have updated all my pyVmomi scripts on my GitHub repository to start working with both version with the above fix.
Upgrading vCenter Server Appliance 5.5 to 6.0 using CLI
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.
Luckily, VMware has been kind enough to provide us with a CLI installer as well! I’ve seen a couple of blog posts about using the CLI installer to install a new VCSA, but not as much about upgrading an existing VCSA. So i decided to do a little write-up providing some examples.
Overview of the upgrade
The tool will use a json template file containing all the information to perform the upgrade. It uses the information to first deploy a new VCSA VM on a target host. This new VCSA VM is provisioned with a temporary network. It will then migrate all the data from the existing VCSA to the new one. Once this is done, it will shut down the existing VCSA and reconfigure the network on the new VCSA to take all the settings from the old VCSA.
JSON template
Below is an example of a JSON template file that can be used to upgrade a 5.5 VCSA to a 6.0 VCSA. There are more templates inside the ISO (folder vcsa-cli-installer/templates) which you can use, but i’ve noticed some issues with these templates missing important sections.
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{ "__version": "1.0", "__comments": "Sample template to upgrade a vCenter Server with an embedded Platform Services Controller from 5.5 to 6.0.", "source.vc": { "esx": { "hostname": "<IP of ESXi with current vCenter on>", "username": "root", "password": "vmware" }, "vc.vcsa": { "hostname": "<IP of current vCenter", "username": "administrator@vsphere.local", "password": "vmware", "root.password": "vmware" } }, "target.vcsa": { "appliance": { "deployment.network": "<Name of your Management network Port group on your target ESXi>", "deployment.option": "<tiny|small|medium|large>", "name": "<VM name, this has to be different from the current vCenter VM>", "thin.disk.mode": true }, "os": { "ssh.enable": true }, "sso": { "site-name": "First-Default-Site" }, "temporary.network": { "hostname": "<Temporary hostname, does not have to be DNS resolvable>", "dns.servers": [ "<First DNS server IP>", "<Second DNS server IP>" ], "gateway": "<Gateway IP>", "ip": "<Temporary IP for migration>", "ip.family": "ipv4", "mode": "static", "prefix": "<network prefix, for instance: 24>" }, "esx": { "hostname": "<IP of ESXi to which the new VCSA should be placed on>", "username": "root", "password": "vmware", "datastore": "<The datastore name inside the target ESXi where to store the VCSA VM>" } } } |
Of course I kept some values to the default, but i’m sure you can figure out what to change where. There are a couple of important mentions I would like to mention:
- username and password in your source.vc > vc.vcsa section have to be the SSO administrator user and password (default user = administrator@vsphere.local, default pass = vmware)
- target.vcsa > appliance > name value is the name the VM will get, this has to be unique in your environment, so it can not be the same as your current VCSA, it has no impact on the hostname
- target.vcsa > sso > site-name value is just for your SSO, it has to be filled in, but just do something simple (‘First-Default-Site’ should be fine)
- target.vcsa > temporary.network: This is just temporary for during the upgrade/migration. After the migration, all the network sections are taken from the old VCSA.
- target.vcsa > esx : This is the info of the ESXi where you want to place the new VCSA VM, can be the same as the source, can be a different one. Just make sure the info is correct (if confused with the POD43 file: my local datastores have been named the same as the ESXi IP, to easily differentiate.)
Running the CLI installer
I will run this installer directly from the ISO mounted on /mnt/vcsa on a Linux machine.
I would first suggest to do a dry run, you can do so with the following command:
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/mnt/vcsa/vcsa-cli-installer/lin64/vcsa-deploy upgrade --verify-only --accept-eula --no-esx-ssl-verify vcsa-upgrade-template.json |
This command will verify the configuration and all the connectivity. It will return a list of warnings and errors. Some of the more common warnings and errors you might encounter:
- Warnings about Postgresql password that will be the same as the root password of the new VCSA, this can be safely ignored.
- Warnings about port 22, this can also be safely ignored, just make sure the old and new VCSA’s can communicate through SSH
- Errors about SSO and certificates: This will prevent any upgrade, so this is something you will have to look at. Most of the time it’s an indication that your certificates were generated with a different hostname or IP than currently used. You can rectify this by going to the 5.5 VCSA’s administration web interface check that the hostname, IP and DNS settings are all correct and regenerate the certificates if needed (this requires a reboot).
After you fixed any errors, you can run the command without the --verify-only option:
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/mnt/vcsa/vcsa-cli-installer/lin64/vcsa-deploy upgrade --accept-eula --no-esx-ssl-verify vcsa-upgrade-template.json |
This will start the upgrade and migration, just follow along with what is happening, you get some good info on the progress. It can take a while to finish (half an hour to an hour, easily. If you have a slow connection between the machine you are running the command and the appliances & esxi’s, it might take longer for the data transfers)
