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
}

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

PowerVCF 2.1.1 Now Available with Support for VMware Cloud Foundation 4.1

PowerVCF 2.1.1 is now available on the PowerShell Gallery here or from GitHub here. This release includes support for VMware Cloud Foundation 4.1 with some new and updated cmdlets. Highlights below

Category	cmdlet Name	Description	Comment
Users and Groups	Get-VCFCredential	Retrieves a list of credentials.	UPDATE: Added support for the vRealize Suite credentials
Bundles	Start-VCFBundleUpload	Starts upload of bundle to SDDC Manager	UPDATE: Allows the import of a bundle based on offline download.
Federation	New-VCFFederationInvite	Invite new member to VCF Federation	UPDATE: Added support to specify if the new system is a MEMBER or CONTROLLER.
SDDC	Start-CloudBuilderSDDCValidation	Starts validation on VMware Cloud Builder	UPDATE: Added support for individual validation tasks.
Workspace ONE Access	Get-VCFWSA	Get details of the existing Workspace ONE Access	NEW
vRealize Automation	Get-VCFvRA	Get details of the the existing vRealize Automation	NEW
vRealize Operations	Get-VCFvROPs	Get details of the existing vRealize Operations Manager	NEW
vRealize Operations	Set-VCFvROPs	Connect or disconnect Workload Domains to vRealize Operations Manager	NEW
vRealize Log Insight	Get-VCFvRLI	Get details of the existing vRealize Log Insight	NEW
vRealize Log Insight	Set-VCFvRLI	Connect or disconnect Workload Domains to vRealize Log Insight	NEW
vRealize Suite Lifecycle	Get-VCFvRSLCM	Get details of the existing vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager	UPDATE: Fixed an issue with the API URI and addressed response output

PowerVCF 2.0 Authentication Changes

One of the many major enhancements in VMware Cloud Foundation 4.0 is a switch from basic authentication to token based authentication for the VCF API.

Basic authentication is a header field in the form of Authorization: Basic <credentials>, where credentials is the base64 encoding of a username and password. The credentials are not encrypted, therefore Basic Authentication is not the industry standard for API authentication.

VCF 4.0 has moved to using token based authentication (JWT Tokens to be exact) for securing the API. The token implementation is as follows:

An authorized user executes a POST API call to /v1/tokens
The response contains an access token and a refresh token
1. The access token is valid for 1 hour
  1. The access token is passed in every API call header in the form of Authorization: Bearer <access token>
2. The refresh token is valid for 24 hours
  1. The refresh token is used to request a new access token once it has expired

PowerVCF 2.0 abstracts all of this in the following way:

An authorized user connects to SDDC Manager to request the tokens by running:


Connect-VCFManager -fqdn sfo-vcf01.sfo.rainpole.io -username svc-vcf-api@rainpole.io -password VMw@re1!

The access & refresh tokens are stored in memory and used when running subsequent API calls. As each API call is executed PowerVCF checks the expiry of the access token. If the access token is about to expire, it uses the refresh token to request a new access token and proceeds with the API call. So the user does not need to worry about token management.

We have also introduced roles that can be assigned to users. Initially we have ADMIN & OPERATOR, with more roles planned for a future release.

ADMIN = Full Administrator Access to all APIs

OPERATOR = All Access except Password Management, User Management, Backup Management

To request an API token you must have a user account that is assigned either the ADMIN or OPERATOR role in SDDC Manager. The default administrator@vsphere.local user is assigned the ADMIN role during bringup but it is advisable to add additional users for performing day to day tasks.

Once you have a user added you can then authenticate with SDDC Manager to retrieve your access & refresh tokens.

Tip: You can connect using the administrator@vsphere.local user to add new users using PowerVCF. You can use the New-VCFUser PowerVCF cmdlet to create the user and assign a role like so:


Connect-VCFManager -fqdn sfo-vcf01.sfo.rainpole.io -username administrator@vsphere.LOCAL -password VMw@re1!

New-VCFUser -user vcf-admin@rainpole.io -role ADMIN

Once your user is configured PowerVCF will do the rest when it comes to managing the API access tokens.

Announcing PowerVCF 2.0

I’m happy to announce the availability of PowerVCF 2.0. This version of PowerVCF is compatible with VMware Cloud Foundation 4.0 and above. Due to some API security enhancements in VCF 4.0 around the use of API tokens for authentication the module has been refactored to leverage access & refresh tokens (more on that here). For that reason if you would like to use PowerVCF for VCF 3.9.x you should continue to use PowerVCF 1.2 .

PowerVCF 2.0 is published to the PowerShell Gallery here https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/PowerVCF/2.0.0

Whats new in PowerVCF 2.0

Along with a number of new or modified cmdlets the following enhancements have been made:

Grouped cmdlets based on order of API documentation
Code hygiene

The following table provides a detailed breakdown of all the changes for this release. Thanks to my colleague @GaryJBlake for doing most of the work on this release and for pulling this list together!

Category	cmdlet Name	Description	Comment
Backup and Restore	Start-VCFRestore	Starts the restore process of SDDC Manager	NEW
Backup and Restore	Get-VCFRestoreTasks	Gets the status of the restore process	NEW
Connectivity	Connect-VCFManager	Create authentication header for SDDC Manager appliance	UPDATED – Support the new token / bearer authentication model and basicAuth switch for restore process
Connectivity	Connect-CloudBuilder	Create authentication header for Cloud Builder appliance	NEW
Certificates	Get-VCFCertificateAuthority	Get Certificate Authority information	UPDATED – Added support for getting the details by id
Certificates	Remove-VCFCertificateAuthority	Deletes Certificate Authority configuration	NEW
Certificates	Get-VCFCertificate	View certificate of all the resources in a domain	UPDATED – Added support for get certificate details by resource
Credentials	Get-VCFCredential	Get the credentials	UPDATED- Added support for getting the details by id
Credentials	Stop-VCFCredentialTask	Cancels a failed update or rotate passwords task	RENAMED – From Cancel-VCFCredentialTask
Credentials	Restart-VCFCredentialTask	Retry a failed rotate/update passwords task	RENAMED – From Retry-VCFCredentialTask
Hosts	Commission-VCFHost	Commissions a list of hosts	UPDATED – Added support for validating the input spec for host operations (-validate switch)
NSX-T Edge Clusters	Get-VCFEdgeCluster	Get an Edge Cluster	NEW
NSX-T Edge Clusters	New-VCFEdgeCluster	creates an NSX-T edge cluster	NEW
Personalities	Get-VCFPersonality	Get the vSphere Lifecycle Manager Personalities	NEW
SDDC (Cloud Builder)	Get-CloudBuilderSDDC	Retrieve all SDDCs	NEW
SDDC (Cloud Builder)	Start-CloudBuilderSDDC	Create SDDC	NEW
SDDC (Cloud Builder)	Restart-CloudBuilderSDDC	Retry failed SDDC creation	NEW
SDDC (Cloud Builder)	Get-CloudBuilderSDDCValidation	Get all SDDC specification validations	NEW
SDDC (Cloud Builder)	Start-CloudBuilderSDDCValidation	Validate SDDC specification before creation	NEW
SDDC (Cloud Builder)	Stop-CloudBuilderSDDCValidation	Cancel SDDC specification validation	NEW
SDDC (Cloud Builder)	Restart-CloudBuilderSDDCValidation	Retry SDDC validation	NEW
System Prechecks	Start-VCFSystemPrecheck	Perform System Precheck	RENAMED – From Start-PreCheckVCFSystem
System Prechecks	Get-VCFSystemPrecheckTask	Get System Precheck Task	RENAMED – From Get-PreCheckVCFSystemTask
Tasks	Restart-VCFTask	Retry a previously failed task	RENAMED – From Retry-VCFTask
Users	Get-VCFRole	Get all roles	NEW
Users	Get-VCFUser	Get all Users	NEW
Users	New-VCFUser	Adds a new user	NEW
Users	New-VCFServiceUser	Adds a new service user	NEW
Users	Delete-User	Deletes a user	NEW
vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager	Reset-VCFvRSLCM	Redeploy vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager	NEW
vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager	New-VCFvRSLCM	Validate the input specification for vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager deployment	UPDATED – Added support for validating the json spec (-validate switch).