Category: Repo

Introducing PowerVCF – A PowerShell Module for the VMware Cloud Foundation API

Its been a while since I’ve posted something so I thought it was about time! Since joining VMware a year ago I’ve been heads down drinking from the firehose, learning from a phenomenal team and generally keeping very busy. More recently I’ve been playing a lot with VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF). A recent release (3.8) introduced a public API and I started getting field questions on how to leverage it so I started digging. The API has been expanded in 3.9. It is based on the OpenAPI standard (formerly Swagger) and can be accessed through the developer center in the SDDC Manager UI or via code.vmware.com

Now I’m not a developer so I fell back on Postman to do some initial testing. I like Postman as it dumbs it down for us non-devs 🙂 but I wanted something a little easier to consume so i started a little side project called PowerVCF (hat-tip to the far superior PowerNSX, PowerVRA, PowerVRO)

Basically I wanted to provide a simple, efficient, PowerCLI style experience for consuming the VMware Cloud Foundation public API.

Solution?

I am delighted to unleash the first iteration of PowerVCF on the community! Creating this has been a great learning experience for me. In the process I’ve improved my PowerShell skills, learned Git, Markdown and have started looking into CI/CD workflows. It’s also my first submission to the PowerShell Gallery.

Setting up a VMware Appliance update repo

When upgrading VMware appliances using the vami configuration interface the update that is available from VMware does not always match the version you want. mounting an ISO to the VM is not always possible (vCloud Director hosted VMs are an example). Follow this procedure to create a temporary repo to make the correct upgrade bundles available during appliance upgrade
In this example the vRA appliance is used to host the repo. Any VMware appliance can be used for this purpose.
1. SCP the upgrade ISO to /tmp on the vRA appliance
2. SSH to the vRA appliance and navigate to the tmp directory

 cd /tmp

3. Create a new directory called repo

Mkdir repo

 4. Type the following to mount the upgrade ISO to the new repo directory
mount -o loop "iso name" repo

 5. Change directory into repo/update
 cd repo/update

 6. Start the python SimpleHTTPServer
 python -m SimpleHTTPServer

 7. Return to the VAMI configuration interface of the appliance that you are upgrading and browse to the Update tab
 8. Click Settings
 9. Change the Update Repository option to Use Specified Repository
 10. For Repository URL enter http://vRA-FQDN:8000
 Note: Enter the FQDN of the appliance you are using. This may not be the vRA appliance
 11. Click Save Settings
 12. Click Status and click Check Updates
 13. The correct version that you copied to the temporary repo should be available to install