VMware Cloud on AWS is making a switch to the service’s underlying networking and security platform. This move is being done in order to provide access to services such as distributed firewall, security groups, route-based VPN connections, and more. In order to accomplish this move, SDDCs will be transitioned from NSX-V to NSX-T.
More information about this update is available in the following blog post: VMware Cloud on AWS: Advanced Networking and Security with NSX-T SDDC
However, the big question which continued to come up during VMworld was: What NSX platform is my SDDC currently using?
Let’s take a look at how we can easily determine this using the VMware Cloud on AWS API!
NSXT Property
There’s a specific property we are looking for, and that’s named ‘nsxt’. This property can be found when retrieving information about an SDDC and is located in the ‘resource_config’ sub-section. The property is of a Boolean type, so it will either contain a value of true or false. A response of true indicates that the SDDC is using NSX-T. A response of false indicates that the SDDC is using NSX-V.
Now, let’s take a look at some of the methods we can use to retrieve this property’s status.
Developer Center – API Explorer
I’m normally logged into the VMware Cloud on AWS Cloud Console, so let’s start by reviewing how to obtain which version of NSX our SDDC is using with the API Explorer that’s built into the Developer Center.
The call we’ll want to use is: GET /orgs/{org}/sddcs/{sddc}
After selecting the desired SDDC, we can hit the ‘Execute’ button. We’ll want to expand the SDDC response, followed by expanding the resource_config section. Scrolling down to the properties starting with ‘N’, we’ll be greeted by the ‘nsxt’ property. Here we can see a value of ‘true’ which means we are indeed looking at an SDDC using NSX-T.
The output should look a bit like the following:
PowerCLI
PowerCLI can make the process of accessing that property quite easy. The process is just a bit different though, since the API Explorer can add the Org and SDDC IDs automatically.
To start, we just need our Refresh Token. If you’re not sure what this is, it is available in the Cloud Console under “My Account”, then the “API Tokens” sub-menu.
We can use the following code to list out our SDDC names and the ‘nsxt’ property:
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# Connect to VMware Cloud on AWS Connect-Vmc -RefreshToken ‘xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxx’ # Obtain Org information $orgSvc = Get-VmcService -Name com.vmware.vmc.orgs $org = $orgSvc.List() # Obtain SDDC information $sddcSvc = Get-VmcService com.vmware.vmc.orgs.sddcs $sddc = $sddcSvc.list($org.id) # List SDDC Name and NSX Version Status $sddc | select Name,@{Name='NSX';Expression={$_.resource_config.nsxt}} |
The output should look a bit like the following:
Datacenter CLI
Another option to retrieve this information would be through Datacenter CLI. I would recommend performing this task in what’s known as ‘scripting mode’, instead of the ‘interactive mode’, so we can make use of some additional tools to handle the formatting. Following suite with our 1 host deployment script, we’ll make use of JQ.
We can use the following code to list out our SDDC names and the ‘nsxt’ property:
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# Obtain Org information and store the ID in a variable ORG_JSON=$(dcli +vmc com vmware vmc orgs list +formatter json) ORGID=$(echo $ORG_JSON | $JQ -r '.[0].id') # Obtain SDDC information and output only the Name and NSXT properties SDDC_JSON=$(dcli +vmc com vmware vmc orgs sddcs list --org $ORGID +formatter json) echo $SDDC_JSON | jq -r '.[] | { Name: .name, NSXT: .resource_config.nsxt}' |
The output should look a bit like the following:
vSphere Automation SDK for Python
Lastly, let’s check this out in one of the vSphere Automation SDKs. In this case, we’ll build off of the last SDK blog post: Getting Started Using the vSphere Automation SDK for Python with VMware Cloud on AWS
In that blog post we made use of the tabulate module to display a table of SDDC information. We’ll be using the same process there, instead modifying it to show the SDDC name and NSXT property value.
We can do this in the Python interactive shell with the following code:
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import requests from tabulate import tabulate from vmware.vapi.vmc.client import create_vmc_client # Establish our refresh token variable refreshtoken = ‘xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxx’ # Connect to the VMC API vmc_client = create_vmc_client(refreshtoken) # Obtain Org information and store the ID in a variable org = vmc_client.Orgs.list() orgid = org[0].id # Obtain SDDC information and store in a variable sddcs =vmc_client.orgs.Sddcs.list(orgid) # Create our table and loop through the SDDC list, adding the name and nsxt properties to the table table = [] for sddc in sddcs: table.append([sddc.name, sddc.resource_config.nsxt]) # Print the formatted output print(tabulate(table, ['Name', 'NSXT'])) |
The output should look a bit like the following:
Summary
VMware Cloud on AWS is a service which is continuously evolving and updating in order to provide those consumers with the latest and greatest features. One of the latest examples of which is the transition from NSX-V to NSX-T. This move is being done in order to provide access to services such as distributed firewall, security groups, route-based VPN connections, and more. This blog post covered how we can use the numerous methods available to poll the VMware Cloud on AWS API in order to obtain whether an SDDC is using NSX-V or NSX-T. These methods including the Developer Center based API Explorer, PowerCLI, Datacenter CLI, and the vSphere Automation SDKs.
More information about this transition is available in the following blog post: VMware Cloud on AWS: Advanced Networking and Security with NSX-T SDDC
