Check VCF License Mode with PowerVCF

Since the introduction of subscription based licensing for VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF+) there are now 2 licensing modes in VCF (Perpetual or Subscription). To make it easier to identify the subscription status of the system and each workload domain we have added support for Get-VCFLicenseMode into the latest release of PowerVCF 2.3.0.1004.

First you need to request an API token using

Request-VCFToken -fqdn sfo-vcf01.sfo.rainpole.io -username administrator@vsphere.local -password VMw@re1!

Then run the new cmdlet to retrieve the license mode Get-VCFLicenseMode

Adding an NVMe Controller & Device to a VM with PowerCLI

Virtual NVMe isn’t a new concept. It’s been around since the 6.x days. As part of some lab work I needed to automate adding an NVMe controller and some devices to a VM. This can be accomplished using the PowerCLI cmdlets for the vSphere API.

# NVME Using PowerCLI
$vcenterFQDN = "sfo-m01-vc01.sfo.rainpole.io"
$vcenterUsername = "administrator@vsphere.local"
$vcenterPassword = "VMw@re1!"
$vms = @("sfo01-w01-esx01","sfo01-w01-esx02","sfo01-w01-esx03","sfo01-w01-esx04")

# Install the required module
Install-Module VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.Vm

# Connect to vCenter
connect-viserver -server $vcenterFQDN -user $vcenterUsername -password $vcenterPassword

# Add an NVMe controller to each VM
Foreach ($vmName in $vms)
{
$VmHardwareAdapterNvmeCreateSpec = Initialize-VmHardwareAdapterNvmeCreateSpec -Bus 0 -PciSlotNumber 0
Invoke-CreateVmHardwareAdapterNvme -vm (get-vm $vmName).ExtensionData.MoRef.Value -VmHardwareAdapterNvmeCreateSpec $VmHardwareAdapterNvmeCreateSpec
}

# Add an NVMe device
Foreach ($vmName in $vms)
{
$VmHardwareDiskVmdkCreateSpec = Initialize-VmHardwareDiskVmdkCreateSpec -Capacity 274877906944
$VmHardwareDiskCreateSpec = Initialize-VmHardwareDiskCreateSpec -Type "NVME" -NewVmdk $VmHardwareDiskVmdkCreateSpec
Invoke-CreateVmHardwareDisk -Vm (get-vm $vmName).ExtensionData.MoRef.Value -VmHardwareDiskCreateSpec $VmHardwareDiskCreateSpec
}

VMware Cloud Foundation & vRealize Suite Flexible Upgrades

Historically with VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), the vRealize Suite (or the following list of products) have been part of the VCF bill of materials (BOM) and their versions tightly linked to a specific VCF release:

  • vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager (vRSLCM)
  • Workspace ONE Access (WS1A)
  • vRealize Operations (vROPs)
  • vRealize Log Insight (vRLI)
  • vRealize Automation (vRA)

All of the above products were deployed by SDDC Manager using VCF install bundles that were downloaded via SDDC Manager. Their versions were static entries on the bill of materials (BOM) for each VCF release and you couldn’t upgrade to a higher version (to pick up a new feature etc) until the next major VCF release that included the version you were looking for. This clearly wasn’t working for our customer base who need to be more agile with how they manage their private & hybrid cloud infrastructure.

So to help with this we introduced Flexible vRealize Suite product upgrades. See the snippet from the VCF 4.4 release notes below

So what does this actually mean? Well for one, vRSLCM is now the only bundle that is distributed via SDDC Manager. All other products are downloaded natively in vRSLCM. vRSLCM product support packs (PSPAKs) then enable you to upgrade to newer versions of the vRealize Suite. vRSLCM manages the supported matrix to ensure you cant deploy an untested combination, however to determine what support pack is required to enable the various upgrade paths you need to review multiple sets of release notes. In an attempt to help drive clarity a new VMware KB article has been created KB88829, this can be used to work out the upgrade path for vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager that is needed to then be able to deploy a later release of vRealize Suite product on top of VMware Cloud Foundation.

Terraform Learnings: Deploy an OVA Using the vSphere Provider

Once i got my head around the basics of Terraform I wanted to play with the vSphere provider to see what its was capable of. A basic use case that everyone needs is to deploy a VM. So my first use case is to deploy a VM from an OVA. The vSphere provider documentation for deploying an OVA uses William Lam’s nested ESXi OVA as an example. This is a great example of how to use the provider but seeing as I plan to play with the NSX-T provider also, I decided to use NSX-T Manager OVA as my source to deploy.

So first thing to do is setup your provider. Every provider in the Terraform registry has a Use Provider button on the provider page that pops up a How to use this provider box. This shows you what you need to put in your required_providers & provider block. In my case I will use a providers.tf file and it will look like the below example. Note you can only have one required_providers block in your configuration, but you can have multiple providers. So all required providers go in the same required_providers block and each provider has its own provider block.

# providers.tf

terraform {
  required_providers {
    vsphere = {
      source  = "hashicorp/vsphere"
      version = "~> 2.1.1"
    }
  }
}
provider "vsphere" {
  user                 = var.vsphere_user
  password             = var.vsphere_password
  vsphere_server       = var.vsphere_server
  allow_unverified_ssl = true
}

To authenticate to our chosen provider (in this case vSphere) we need to provide credentials. If you read my initial post on Terraform you would have seen me mention a terraform.tfvars file which can be used for sensitive variables. We will declare these as variables later in the variables.tf file but this is where we assign the values. So my terraform.tfvars file looks like this

# terraform.tfvars

# vSphere Provider Credentials
vsphere_user     = "administrator@vsphere.local"
vsphere_password = "VMw@re1!"

Next we need variables to enable us to deploy our NSX-T Manager appliance. So we create a variables.tf file and populate it with our variables. Note – variables that have a default value are considered optional and the default value will be used if no value is passed.

# variables.tf

# vSphere Infrastructure Details
variable "data_center" { default = "sfo-m01-dc01" }
variable "cluster" { default = "sfo-m01-cl01" }
variable "vds" { default = "sfo-m01-vds01" }
variable "workload_datastore" { default = "vsanDatastore" }
variable "compute_pool" { default = "sfo-m01-cl01" }
variable "compute_host" {default = "sfo01-m01-esx01.sfo.rainpole.io"}
variable "vsphere_server" {default = "sfo-m01-vc01.sfo.rainpole.io"}

# vCenter Credential Variables
variable "vsphere_user" {}
variable "vsphere_password" {}

# NSX-T Manager Deployment
variable "mgmt_pg" { default = "sfo-m01-vds01-pg-mgmt" }
variable "vm_name" { default = "sfo-m01-nsx01a" }
variable "local_ovf_path" { default = "F:\\OVAs\\nsx-unified-appliance-3.1.3.5.0.19068437.ova" }
variable "deployment_option" { default = "extra_small" } # valid deployments are: extra_small, small, medium, large
variable "nsx_role" { default = "NSX Manager" }          # valid roles are NSX Manager, NSX Global Manager
variable "nsx_ip_0" { default = "172.16.225.66" }
variable "nsx_netmask_0" { default = "255.255.255.0" }
variable "nsx_gateway_0" { default = "172.16.225.1" }
variable "nsx_dns1_0" { default = "172.16.225.4" }
variable "nsx_domain_0" { default = "sfo.rainpole.io" }
variable "nsx_ntp_0" { default = "ntp.sfo.rainpole.io" }
variable "nsx_isSSHEnabled" { default = "True" }
variable "nsx_allowSSHRootLogin" { default = "True" }
variable "nsx_passwd_0" { default = "VMw@re1!VMw@re1!" }
variable "nsx_cli_passwd_0" { default = "VMw@re1!VMw@re1!" }
variable "nsx_cli_audit_passwd_0" { default = "VMw@re1!VMw@re1!" }
variable "nsx_hostname" { default = "sfo-m01-nsx01a.sfo.rainpole.io" }

Now that we have our provider & variables in place we need a plan file to deploy the NSX-T Manager OVA, including the data sources we need to pull information from and the resource we are going to create.

# main.tf

# Data source for vCenter Datacenter
data "vsphere_datacenter" "datacenter" {
  name = var.data_center
}

# Data source for vCenter Cluster
data "vsphere_compute_cluster" "cluster" {
  name          = var.cluster
  datacenter_id = data.vsphere_datacenter.datacenter.id
}

# Data source for vCenter Datastore
data "vsphere_datastore" "datastore" {
  name          = var.workload_datastore
  datacenter_id = data.vsphere_datacenter.datacenter.id
}

# Data source for vCenter Portgroup
data "vsphere_network" "mgmt" {
  name          = var.mgmt_pg
  datacenter_id = data.vsphere_datacenter.datacenter.id
}

# Data source for vCenter Resource Pool. In our case we will use the root resource pool
data "vsphere_resource_pool" "pool" {
  name          = format("%s%s", data.vsphere_compute_cluster.cluster.name, "/Resources")
  datacenter_id = data.vsphere_datacenter.datacenter.id
}

# Data source for ESXi host to deploy to
data "vsphere_host" "host" {
  name          = var.compute_host
  datacenter_id = data.vsphere_datacenter.datacenter.id
}

# Data source for the OVF to read the required OVF Properties
data "vsphere_ovf_vm_template" "ovfLocal" {
  name             = var.vm_name
  resource_pool_id = data.vsphere_resource_pool.pool.id
  datastore_id     = data.vsphere_datastore.datastore.id
  host_system_id   = data.vsphere_host.host.id
  local_ovf_path   = var.local_ovf_path
  ovf_network_map = {
    "Network 1" = data.vsphere_network.mgmt.id
  }
}

# Deployment of VM from Local OVA
resource "vsphere_virtual_machine" "nsxt01" {
  name                 = var.vm_name
  datacenter_id        = data.vsphere_datacenter.datacenter.id
  datastore_id         = data.vsphere_ovf_vm_template.ovfLocal.datastore_id
  host_system_id       = data.vsphere_ovf_vm_template.ovfLocal.host_system_id
  resource_pool_id     = data.vsphere_ovf_vm_template.ovfLocal.resource_pool_id
  num_cpus             = data.vsphere_ovf_vm_template.ovfLocal.num_cpus
  num_cores_per_socket = data.vsphere_ovf_vm_template.ovfLocal.num_cores_per_socket
  memory               = data.vsphere_ovf_vm_template.ovfLocal.memory
  guest_id             = data.vsphere_ovf_vm_template.ovfLocal.guest_id
  scsi_type            = data.vsphere_ovf_vm_template.ovfLocal.scsi_type
  dynamic "network_interface" {
    for_each = data.vsphere_ovf_vm_template.ovfLocal.ovf_network_map
    content {
      network_id = network_interface.value
    }
  }

  wait_for_guest_net_timeout = 5

  ovf_deploy {
    allow_unverified_ssl_cert = true
    local_ovf_path            = var.local_ovf_path
    disk_provisioning         = "thin"
    deployment_option         = var.deployment_option

  }
  vapp {
    properties = {
      "nsx_role"               = var.nsx_role,
      "nsx_ip_0"               = var.nsx_ip_0,
      "nsx_netmask_0"          = var.nsx_netmask_0,
      "nsx_gateway_0"          = var.nsx_gateway_0,
      "nsx_dns1_0"             = var.nsx_dns1_0,
      "nsx_domain_0"           = var.nsx_domain_0,
      "nsx_ntp_0"              = var.nsx_ntp_0,
      "nsx_isSSHEnabled"       = var.nsx_isSSHEnabled,
      "nsx_allowSSHRootLogin"  = var.nsx_allowSSHRootLogin,
      "nsx_passwd_0"           = var.nsx_passwd_0,
      "nsx_cli_passwd_0"       = var.nsx_cli_passwd_0,
      "nsx_cli_audit_passwd_0" = var.nsx_cli_audit_passwd_0,
      "nsx_hostname"           = var.nsx_hostname
    }
  }
  lifecycle {
    ignore_changes = [
      #vapp # Enable this to ignore all vapp properties if the plan is re-run
      vapp[0].properties["nsx_role"], # Avoid unwanted changes to specific vApp properties.
      vapp[0].properties["nsx_passwd_0"],
      vapp[0].properties["nsx_cli_passwd_0"],
      vapp[0].properties["nsx_cli_audit_passwd_0"],
      host_system_id # Avoids moving the VM back to the host it was deployed to if DRS has relocated it
    ]
  }
}

Once we have all of the above we can run the following to validate our plan

terraform plan -out=nsxt01

If your plan is successful you should see an output similar to below

Once your plan is successful run the command below to apply the plan

terraform apply nsxt01

If the stars align your NSX-T Manager appliance should deploy successfully. Once its deployed, if you were to re-run the plan you should see a message similar to below

One of the key pieces to this is the lifecycle block in the plan. The lifecycle block enables you to callout things that Terraform should ignore when it is re-applying a plan. Things like tags or other items that may get updated by other systems etc. In our case we want Terraform to ignore the vApp properties as it will try to apply password properties every time, which would entail powering down the VM, making the change, and powering the VM back on.

lifecycle { ignore_changes = [ 
#vapp # Enable this to ignore all vapp properties if the plan is re-run 
vapp[0].properties["nsx_role"], # Avoid unwanted changes to specific vApp properties. 
vapp[0].properties["nsx_passwd_0"], 
vapp[0].properties["nsx_cli_passwd_0"], 
vapp[0].properties["nsx_cli_audit_passwd_0"], 
host_system_id # Avoids moving the VM back to the host it was deployed to if DRS has relocated it 
] 
}

Hopefully this was useful. I’m sure there are more efficient ways of doing this. I will update the post if i find them. Keep a look out for the next instalment

Terraform Learnings: Getting Started

Playing with Terraform has been on my To-Do list for a while now (it’s a long list 🙂 ). Over the past couple of weeks i’ve been spending time in my homelab getting familiar with it and figured i’d create a blog series that may help others.

So where do you start? There are lots of resources on the web to get started. From blogs to Pluralsight courses. The Terraform documentation & provider documentation in the Terraform Registry is also very good and usually has what you need.

For my setup i use Visual Studio Code. I flip between my mac & a windows jump vm in my homelab, and VSC works seamlessly on both. I’ve installed the following VSC extension:

Installing Terraform is straightforward. Follow the steps for your OS to download and then install Terraform.

Terraform Basic Constructs

Terraform uses the following basic constructs (there are plenty more advanced constructs but baby steps!)

  • Providers
    • Plugins to interact with target endpoints
  • Variables
    • User input to create objects
    • There are multiple (6 i believe) ways to provide variables to Terraform
  • Data Sources
    • Sources of information outside of Terraform that provide infrastructure details to interact with resources
  • Resources
    • Infrastructure objects you interact with
  • Configuration files
    • .tf file extension
    • Read alphabetically and actioned when you plan/apply/destroy your config (more on that later)
    • A single main.tf file can contain everything your infrastructure plan requires:
      • Provider
      • Variables
      • Data Sources
      • Resources
    • Recommended to split these out for larger environments
      • providers.tf
        • You must declare required_providers and then a provider block for each provider.
        • You can use alias = “alias_name” if you want to have multiple instances of a provider.
        • In the screenshot below the credentials are coming from variables defined in my terraform.tfvars file
  • variables.tf
    • List of variables to be used in the configuration
    • Written in Hashicorp Configuration Language (HCL) (or JSON)
  • Sensitive variables such as credentials or access keys should be stored in Terraform variable definition files .tfvars or stored as environment variables.
    • Use a Terraform.gitignore file to ensure your .tfvars with sensitive information are not committed to your git repo.
  • Data Sources & Resources can be in a single file or split out into logical infrastructure files
    • network.tf
    • deploy_vm.tf
    • etc

Terraform Commands

Once you have your configuration defined you first want to validate that it will run

terraform plan -out=plan-name
# This will evaluate your configuration to ensure it is valid and store the result in a file called "plan-name"
terraform apply plan-name
# This will apply your configuration based on the output of the above plan. You will be asked to confirm this action. you can add -auto-approve to skip the confirmation (use with caution)
terraform destroy
# This will destroy the configuration. You will be asked to confirm this action. you can add -auto-approve to skip the confirmation (use with caution)

Hopefully this was helpful. This is just scratching the surface to get started with Terraform. I recommend getting hands on and reading the documentation as you go. I will continue this with a post on using the vSphere provider to deploy an OVA. Stay tuned!

Cleanup Failed Tasks in SDDC Manager

I was chatting with my colleague Paudie O’Riordan yesterday about PowerVCF as he was doing some testing internally and he mentioned that a great addition would be to have the ability to find, and cleanup failed tasks in SDDC Manager. Some use cases for this would be, cleaning up an environment before handing it off to a customer, or before recording a demo etc.

Currently there isnt a supported public API to delete a failed task so you have to run a curl command on SDDC Manager with the task ID. So getting a list of failed tasks and then running a command to delete each one can take time. See Martin Gustafson’s post on how to do it manually here.

I took a look at our existing code for retrieving tasks (and discovered a bug in the logic that is now fixed in PowerVCF 2.1.5!) and we have the ability to specify -status. So requesting a list of tasks with -status “failed” returns a list. So i put the script below together to retrieve a list of failed tasks, loop through them and delete them. The script requires the following inputs

  • SDDC Manager FQDN. This is the target that is queried for failed tasks
  • SDDC Manager API User. This is the user that is used to query for failed tasks. Must have the SDDC Manager ADMIN role
  • Password for the above user
  • Password for the SDDC Manager appliance vcf user. This is used to run the task deletion. This is not tracked in the credentials DB so we need to pass it.

Once the above variables are populated the script does the following:

  • Checks for PowerVCF (minimum version 2.1.5) and installs if not present
  • Requests an API token from SDDC Manager
  • Queries SDDC Manager for the management domain vCenter Server details
  • Uses the management domain vCenter Server details to retrieve the SDDC Manager VM name
  • Queries SDDC Manager for a list of tasks in a failed state
  • Loops through the list of failed tasks and deletes them from SDDC Manager
  • Verifies the task is no longer present

Here is the script. It is also published here if you would like to enhance it

# Script to cleanup failed tasks in SDDC Manager
# Written by Brian O'Connell - Staff Solutions Architect @ VMware

#User Variables
# SDDC Manager FQDN. This is the target that is queried for failed tasks
$sddcManagerFQDN = "lax-vcf01.lax.rainpole.io"
# SDDC Manager API User. This is the user that is used to query for failed tasks. Must have the SDDC Manager ADMIN role
$sddcManagerAPIUser = "administrator@vsphere.local"
$sddcManagerAPIPassword = "VMw@re1!"
# Password for the SDDC Manager appliance vcf user. This is used to run the task deletion
$sddcManagerVCFPassword = "VMw@re1!"



# DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING BELOW THIS LINE
#########################################

# Set TLS to 1.2 to avoid certificate mismatch errors
[Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [Net.SecurityProtocolType]::Tls12

# Install PowerVCF if not already installed
if (!(Get-InstalledModule -name PowerVCF -MinimumVersion 2.1.5 -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue)) {
    Install-Module -Name PowerVCF -MinimumVersion 2.1.5 -Force
}

# Request a VCF Token using PowerVCF
Request-VCFToken -fqdn $sddcManagerFQDN -username $sddcManagerAPIUser -password $sddcManagerAPIPassword

# Disconnect all connected vCenters to ensure only the desired vCenter is available
if ($defaultviservers) {
    $server = $defaultviservers.Name
    foreach ($server in $defaultviservers) {            
        Disconnect-VIServer -Server $server -Confirm:$False
    }
}

# Retrieve the Management Domain vCenter Server FQDN
$vcenterFQDN = ((Get-VCFWorkloadDomain | where-object {$_.type -eq "MANAGEMENT"}).vcenters.fqdn)
$vcenterUser = (Get-VCFCredential -resourceType "PSC").username
$vcenterPassword = (Get-VCFCredential -resourceType "PSC").password

# Retrieve SDDC Manager VM Name
if ($vcenterFQDN) {
    Write-Output "Getting SDDC Manager Manager VM Name"
    Connect-VIServer -server $vcenterFQDN -user $vcenterUser -password $vcenterPassword | Out-Null
    $sddcmVMName = ((Get-VM * | Where-Object {$_.Guest.Hostname -eq $sddcManagerFQDN}).Name)              
}

# Retrieve a list of failed tasks
$failedTaskIDs = @()
$ids = (Get-VCFTask -status "Failed").id
Foreach ($id in $ids) {
    $failedTaskIDs += ,$id
}
# Cleanup the failed tasks
Foreach ($taskID in $failedTaskIDs) {
    $scriptCommand = "curl -X DELETE 127.0.0.1/tasks/registrations/$taskID"
    Write-Output "Deleting Failed Task ID $taskID"
    $output = Invoke-VMScript -ScriptText $scriptCommand -vm $sddcmVMName -GuestUser "vcf" -GuestPassword $sddcManagerVCFPassword

# Verify the task was deleted    
    Try {
    $verifyTaskDeleted = (Get-VCFTask -id $taskID)
    if ($verifyTaskDeleted -eq "Task ID Not Found") {
        Write-Output "Task ID $taskID Deleted Successfully"
    }
}
    catch {
        Write-Error "Something went wrong. Please check your SDDC Manager state"
    }
}
Disconnect-VIServer -server $vcenterFQDN -Confirm:$False

As always, comments/feedback welcome!

Site Protection & Disaster Recovery for VMware Cloud Foundation Validated Solution

Along with the release of VMware Cloud Foundation 4.3.1, we are excited to announce the general availability of the Site Protection & Disaster Recovery for VMware Cloud Foundation Validated Solution. The solution documentation, intro and other associated collateral can be found on the Cloud Platform Tech Zone here.

The move from VMware Validated Designs to VMware Validated Solutions has been covered by my team mate Gary Blake in detail here so I wont go into that detail here. Instead I will concentrate on the work Ken Gould and I (along with a supporting team) have been working to deliver for the past few months.

The Site Protection & Disaster Recovery for VMware Cloud Foundation Validated Solution includes the following to deliver an end-to-end validated way to protect your mission critical applications. You get a set of documentation that is tailored to the solution that includes: design objectives, a detailed design including not just design decisions, but the justifications & implications of those decisions, detailed implementation steps with PowerShell alternatives for some steps to speed up time to deploy, operational guidance on how to use the solution once its deployed, solution interoperability between it and other Validated Solutions, an appendix containing all the solution design decisions in one easy place for review, and finally, a set of frequently asked questions that will be updated for each release.

Disaster recovery is a huge topic for everyone lately. Everything from power outages to natural disasters to ransomware and beyond can be classed as a disaster, and regardless of the type of disaster you must be prepared. To adequately plan for business continuity in the event of a disaster you must protect your mission critical applications so that they may be recovered. In a VMware Cloud Foundation environment, cloud operations and automation services are delivered by vRealize Lifecycle Manager, vRealize Operations Manager & vRealize Automation, with authentication services delivered by Workspace ONE Access.

To provide DR for our mission critical apps we leverage 2 VCF instances with NSX-T federation between them. The primary VCF instance runs the active NSX-T global manager and the recovery VCF instance runs the standby NSX-T global manager. All load balancing services are served from the protected instance, with a standby load balancer (disconnected from the recovery site NSX Tier-1 until required, to avoid IP conflicts) in the recovery instance. Using our included PowerShell cmdlets you can quickly create and configure the standby load balancer to mimic your active load balancer, saving you a ton of manual UI clicks.

In the (hopefully never) event of the need to failover the cloud management applications, you can easily bring the standby load balancer online to enable networking services for the failed over applications.

Using Site recovery Manager (SRM) you can run planned migrations or disaster recovery migrations. With a single set of SRM recovery plans, regardless of the scenario, you will be guided through the recovery process. In this post I will cover what happens in the event of a disaster.

When a disaster occurs on the protected site (once the panic subsides) there are a series of tasks you need to perform to bring those mission critical apps back online.

First? Fix the network! Log into the passive NSX Global Manager (GM) on the recovery site and promote the GM to Active. (Note: This can take about 10-15 mins)

To cover the case of an accidental “Force Active” click..we’ve built in the “Are you absolutely sure this is what you want to do?” prompt!

Once the promotion operation completes our standby NSX GM is now active, and can be used to manage the surviving site NSX Local Manager (LM)

Once the recovery site GM is active we need to ensure that the cross-instance NSX Tier-1 is now directing the egress traffic via the recovery site. To do this we must update the locations on the Tier-1. Navigate to GM> Tier-1 gateways > Cross Instance Tier-1. Under Locations, make the recovery location Primary.

The next step is to ensure we have an active load balancer running in the recovery site to ensure our protected applications come up correctly. To do this log into what is now our active GM, select the recovery site NSX Local Manager (LM), and navigate to Networking > Load Balancing. Edit the load balancer and attach it to the recovery site standalone Tier-1.

At this point we are ready to run our SRM recovery plans. The recommended order for running the recovery plans (assuming you have all of the protected components listed below) is as follows. This ensures lifecycle & authentication services (vRSLCM & WSA) are up before the applications that depend on them (vROPS & vRA)

  • vRSLCM – WSA – RP
  • Intelligent Operations Management RP
  • Private Cloud Automation RP

I’m not going to go through each recovery plan in detail here. They are documented in the Site Protection and Disaster Recovery Validated Solution. In some you will be prompted to verify this or that along the way to ensure successful failover.

The main thing in a DR situation is, DO NOT PANIC. And what is the best way to getting to a place where you DO NOT PANIC? Test your DR plans…so when you see this…

Your reaction is this…

Trust the plan…test the plan…relax…you have a plan!

Hopefully this post was useful..if you want to learn more please reach out in the comments…if you’re attending VMworld and would like to learn more or ask some questions, please drop into our Meet The Experts session on Thursday.

Take a look at Ken’s post on the Planning & Preparation Workbook for this validated solution for more details.

Part 2: Working With the SRM VAMI API : Replacing the Appliance Certificate

In Part 1 of this series we saw how to retrieve a sessionId from the Site Recovery Manager VAMI interface using Postman & Powershell. In this post we will use that sessionId to replace the appliance SSL certificate using the API. To start we again use the VAMI UI to inspect the endpoint URL being used for certificate replacement by doing a manual replacement. In this case the URL is:

https://sfo-m01-srm01.sfo.rainpole.io:5480/configure/requestHandlers/installPkcs12Certificate

Site Recovery Manager expects the certificate in P12 format so I used CertGen to create the cert format needed. When using the UI you browse to the cert file and it uploads in the browser along with the certificate passphrase. Behind the scenes it is then base64 encoded, so you need to do this before using the API.

# Base64 encoded the p12 file

$certFile = ".\sfo-m01-srm01.4.p12"

$base64string = [Convert]::ToBase64String([IO.File]::ReadAllBytes($certFile))


$body = '{
"certificateContent": "'+$base64string+'",
"certificatePassword": "'+$certPassword+'"
}'

#Create the required headers using the sessionId

$headers = @{"Content-Type" = "application/json"}
$headers.Add("dr.config.service.sessionid", "$sessionId")


$uri = "https://sfo-m01-srm01.sfo.rainpole.io:5480/configure/requestHandlers/installPkcs12Certificate"


Invoke-RestMethod -Method POST -Uri $uri -Headers $headers -body $body

And there you have it..your appliance cert replaced via the API.

Part 1: Working With the SRM VAMI API : Retrieving a Session ID

I’ve recently been doing a lot of work with VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) and vSphere Replication (vSR) with VMware Cloud Foundation. Earlier this year we (Ken Gould & I) published an early access design for Site Protection & Recovery for VMware Cloud Foundation 4.2. We have been working to refresh & enhance this design for a new release. Part of this effort includes trying to add some automation to assist with the manual steps to speed up time to deploy. SRM & vSR do not have publicly documented VAMI APIs so we set about trying to automate the configuration with a little bit of reverse engineering.

As with most APIs, whether public or private, you must authenticate before you can run an API workflow, so the first task is figuring out how the authentication to perform a workflow works. Typically, if you hit F12 in your browser you will get a developer console that exposes what goes on behind the scenes in a browser session. So to inspect the process, use the browser to perform a manual login, and review the header & response tabs in the developer view. This exposes the Request URL to use, the method (POST) and the required headers (accept: application/json)

The Response tab shows a sessionId which can be used for further configuration API calls in the headers as dr.config.service.sessionid

So with the above information you can use an API client like Postman to retrieve a sessionId with the URL & headers like this

And your VAMI admin user and password in JSON format in the body payload

You can also use the information to retrieve a sessionId using PowerShell

$headers = @{"Content-Type" = "application/json"}
$uri = "https://sfo-m01-srm01.sfo.rainpole.io:5480/configure/requestHandlers/login"
$body = '{"username": "admin","password": "mypassword"}'

$request = Invoke-RestMethod -Method POST -Uri $uri -Headers $headers -body $body

$sessionID = $request.data.sessionId

$sessionId

Keep an eye out for additional posts where we will use the sessionId to perform API based tasks

Checking Password Expiry For VMware Cloud Foundation Management Components

Within a VMware Cloud Foundation instance, SDDC Manager is used to manage the lifecycle of passwords (or credentials). While we provide the ability to rotate (either scheduled or manually) currently there is no easy way to check when a particular password is due to expire, which can lead to appliance root passwords expiring, which will cause all sorts of issues. The ability to monitor expiry is something that is being worked on, but as a stop gap I put together the script below which leverages PowerVCF and also a currently undocumented API for validating credentials.

The script has a function called Get-VCFPasswordExpiry that accepts the following parameters

  • -fqdn (FQDN of the SDDC Manager)
  • -username (SDDC Manager Username – Must have the ADMIN role)
  • -password (SDDC Manager password)
  • -resourceType (Optional parameter to specify a resourceType. If not passed, all resources will be checked. If passed (e.g. VCENTER) then only that resourceType will be checked. Supported resource types are

PowerVCF is a requirement. If you dont already have it run the following

Install-Module -Name PowerVCF

The code takes a while to run as it needs to do the following to check password expiry

  • Connect to SDDC Manager to retrieve an API token
  • Retrieve a list of all credentials
  • Using the resourceID of each credential
    • Perform a credential validation
    • Wait for the validation to complete
    • Parse the results for the expiry details
    • Add all the results to an array and present in a table (Kudos to Ken Gould for assistance with the presentation of this piece!)

In this example script I am returning all non SERVICE user accounts regardless of expiry (SERVICE account passwords are system managed). You could get more granular by adding something like this to only display accounts with passwords due to expire in less than 14 days

if ($validationTaskResponse.validationChecks.passwordDetails.numberOfDaysToExpiry -lt 14) {
               Write-Output "Password for username $($validationTaskResponse.validationChecks.username) expires in $($validationTaskResponse.validationChecks.passwordDetails.numberOfDaysToExpiry) days"
           }

Here is the script content. As always feedback is welcome. Also posted in Github here if anyone wants to fork and improve https://github.com/LifeOfBrianOC/Get-VCFPasswordExpiry

# Script to check the password expiry of VMware Cloud Foundation Credentials
# Written by Brian O'Connell - VMware

#User Variables
$sddcManagerFQDN = "sfo-vcf01.sfo.rainpole.io"
$sddcManagerAdminUser = "administrator@vsphere.local"
$sddcManagerAdminPassword = "VMw@re1!"

# Requires PowerVCF Module
#Requires -Module PowerVCF

Function Get-VCFPasswordExpiry
{

    Param (
        [Parameter (Mandatory = $true)] [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()] [String]$fqdn,
        [Parameter (Mandatory = $true)] [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()] [String]$username,
        [Parameter (Mandatory = $true)] [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()] [String]$password,
        [Parameter (Mandatory = $false)] [ValidateSet("VCENTER", "PSC", "ESXI", "BACKUP", "NSXT_MANAGER", "NSXT_EDGE", "VRSLCM", "WSA", "VROPS", "VRLI", "VRA", "VXRAIL_MANAGER")] [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()] [String]$resourceType
    )
# Request an SDDC manager Token
Request-VCFToken -fqdn $fqdn -username $username -password $password
# Build the required headers
$credentialheaders = @{"Content-Type" = "application/json"}
$credentialheaders.Add("Authorization", "Bearer $accessToken")
# Get all credential objects that are not type SERVICE
if (!$PsBoundParameters.ContainsKey("resourceType")) {
$credentials = Get-VCFCredential | where-object {$_.accountType -ne "SERVICE"}
}
else {
    $credentials = Get-VCFCredential -resourceType $resourceType | where-object {$_.accountType -ne "SERVICE"}
}
$validationArray = @()
Foreach ($credential in $credentials) {
    $resourceType = $credential.resource.resourceType
    $resourceID = $credential.resource.resourceId
    $username = $credential.username
    $credentialType = $credential.credentialType
    $body = '[
    {
        "resourceType": "'+$resourceType+'",
        "resourceId": "'+$resourceID+'",
        "credentials": [
            {
                "username": "'+$username+'",
                "credentialType": "'+$credentialType+'"
            }
        ]
    }
]'
    $uri = "https://$sddcManagerFQDN/v1/credentials/validations"
    # Submit a credential validation request
            $response = Invoke-RestMethod -Method POST -URI $uri -headers $credentialheaders -body $body
            $validationTaskId = $response.id

            Do {
                # Keep checking until executionStatus is not IN_PROGRESS
                $validationTaskuri = "https://$sddcManagerFQDN/v1/credentials/validations/$validationTaskId"
                $validationTaskResponse = Invoke-RestMethod -Method GET -URI $validationTaskuri -headers $credentialheaders
            }
            While ($validationTaskResponse.executionStatus -eq "IN_PROGRESS")
            # Build the output
            $validationObject = New-Object -TypeName psobject
            $validationObject | Add-Member -notepropertyname 'Resource Name' -notepropertyvalue $validationTaskResponse.validationChecks.resourceName
            $validationObject | Add-Member -notepropertyname 'Username' -notepropertyvalue $validationTaskResponse.validationChecks.username
            $validationObject | Add-Member -notepropertyname 'Number Of Days To Expiry' -notepropertyvalue $validationTaskResponse.validationChecks.passwordDetails.numberOfDaysToExpiry
            
            Write-Output "Checking Password Expiry for username $($validationTaskResponse.validationChecks.username) from resource $($validationTaskResponse.validationChecks.resourceName)"
            # Add each credential result to the array
            $validationArray += $validationObject
           #break
}
# Print the array
$validationArray
}

# Run the function
Get-VCFPasswordExpiry -fqdn $sddcManagerFQDN -username $sddcManagerAdminUser -password $sddcManagerAdminPassword

# Run the function with resourceType VCENTER
# Get-VCFPasswordExpiry -fqdn $sddcManagerFQDN -username $sddcManagerAdminUser -password $sddcManagerAdminPassword -resourceType VCENTER

Here is a screenshot of the result