We’re back with another edition of Talking Code! This time we have a lightboard walkthrough of the API endpoints that are available as part of VMware Cloud on AWS!
For more information, check out the VMware Code Developer Center microsite for VMware Cloud on AWS.
For more videos in the Talking Code series, see the Talking Code Archive
As always, let us know in the comments what other videos you’d like to see in the future!
On Friday, we deployed an update to Sample Exchange on VMware {code} that allows you to select any VMware product or SDK when contributing a sample. As a result, developers looking for samples for VMware products and services will have an easier time finding relevant content. Continue reading
VMware Code has a terrific set of Developer Center microsites already available for vRealize Automation, NSX, Workspace ONE, and Apteligent. Each of these Developer Centers give easy access to documentation, developer and automation tools, code samples, and more. As of today, we are happy to announce the brand-new microsite dedicated to VMware Cloud on AWS!
The VMware Code Developer Center microsite for VMware Cloud on AWS gives direct access to those resources developers and automation specialists desire most! There’s an overview featuring what’s available through the VMware Cloud on AWS service as well as some videos that dive right into the available APIs and tooling available. This is followed up by a more detailed overview of the available core capabilities. Then, the key use cases are outlined along with the ability to find out more information about each of them and what kind of development efforts are estimated.
The Developer Resources section has a ton of great information available. This section gives direct links to the SDKs and CLIs that support VMware Cloud on AWS. There is also a detailed list of documentation and blog posts to help better understand each aspect of the service as well as how to quickly and easily get started using each of those SDKs and CLIs. Lastly, this section features code that’s been contributed by both VMware and the community to the VMware Code Sample Exchange in a variety of formats. From PowerCLI to Python, CloudFormation to Terraform, there’s some great resources already available and we more than welcome additional contributions!
The last section is dedicated to Community! Community involvement is an important aspect of the automation and developer resources and this section includes links to get involved directly. Joining VMware Code allows for access to an active Slack group with over 5,000 members, receive regular newsletters with the latest VMware information, and access to the developer forums!
Check out the VMware Code Developer Center microsite for VMware Cloud on AWS today!
Let us know in the comments what you think and/or if there’s anything missing that you may be looking for.
VMware Cloud on AWS does a tremendous job at enabling our automation experts, developers, and DevOps teams. With a robust set of RESTful APIs, open-sourced SDKs, then capping it all off with the Developer Center located directly in the Cloud Console, access has never been easier. One of the key features of VMware Cloud on AWS is the more frequent update cadence. This allows us to release enhancements on a more regular basis, of which the Developer Center is also included.
With that said, I am happy to announce some of the latest updates to the Developer Center!
The API Explorer is one of the easiest ways to start learning, modeling, and even using the VMware Cloud on AWS RESTful APIs. It has received several extremely nice updates! After clicking on the “API Explorer” tab, you’ll notice immediately how the layout has been changed. The new side bar allows us to easily switch between the API namespaces as well as auto-populate parameter fields. These may seem like minor updates, but they really help to streamline its usage.
Let’s take an example: we need to list out the logical networks within a particular SDDC, in this case the “CPBU-TMM” SDDC.
If you’re consuming the REST calls directly through an SDK, REST API client, or a programming language, you will need to perform the following calls to retrieve that information:
If you’re using the API Explorer, thanks to the new side menu, we can consolidate that down to a single call!
From the above example, you can also see the other new addition in the form of a yellow warning bar. This is just a friendly reminder that the API Explorer is running against your live environment. If you make an API call in the API Explorer, that call will actually run. If you delete something, it really will get deleted! Just keep that in mind as you’re exploring these APIs.
The Code Samples section has also received some updates! This section has been updated to reference the VMware Code Sample Exchange. Therefore, as samples are added to the VMware Code Sample Exchange, those samples will start being populated within the Code Samples tab. We can see several examples which have been created in the example below.
The last of the updates is to the SDKs section. The layout has been updated to match the look and feel of the other tabs. It’s the same great information, just with a consistent look and feel!
The VMware Cloud on AWS Developer Center is a great resource which provides a central location to access all kinds of automation and developer based information. The Developer Center is also receiving updates on a regular basis to provide optimized access to all of those resources. The latest update adds a redesigned API Explorer, integrated Code Samples with the VMware Code Sample Exchange, and a consistent theme through all of the available sections.
Let us know in the comments what your favorite feature of the Developer Center is and what functionality you’re most looking forward to us adding!
The latest update to VMware Cloud on AWS has some real gems in it for developers and automation engineers. As well as the introduction of the Developer Center (which is amazing). It’s such a terrific resource, I’m finding myself using it all the time! The other big news was the addition of an Open Sourced Github repository to showcase VMware Cloud on AWS integrations written by both VMware and the community at large.
The first of these integrations is the support for CloudFormation and Terraform integrations.
In this blog post we’re going to walk through how easy it is to create a software defined data center (SDDC) using the CloudFormation template available in the VMware Cloud on AWS Integration Examples repository. Please note, this will require an AWS account and may incur AWS charges.
First things first, we need to get access to the template. We can clone the repository locally with the following command:
|
1 |
git clone https://github.com/vmwaresamples/vmware-cloud-on-aws-integration-examples.git |
In order to deploy our SDDC with CloudFormation, we’ll need to start by logging into the AWS Console and checking to make sure we’re in the Oregon region. If you’re not in that region, there is a drop-down box towards the top right-hand side with a site name that’s located between your user account and the “Support” drop-down. Click on the drop-down and select “US West (Oregon)”.
We’ll now want to go to the CloudFormation service. We can find the service by clicking on the “Services” drop-down and locating it in the “Management Tools” section. Alternatively, just type “CloudFormation” in the AWS services search box on the main screen of the console.
Once in the CloudFormation service, we will want to create a new stack by clicking on the “Create New Stack” button. This stack will be used to deploy our SDDC that will be based on the template we’ll import on the next screen.
As part of the stack creation process, we’ll need to either create a new template or select an existing template. We can upload the template we retrieved from the GitHub repo by choosing “Upload a template to Amazon S3” then clicking on “Choose File”. Browse to the location the repo was cloned to, select the “vmc-aws-cloud-cf-template.txt”, and click “Next”.
On the next screen we will need to specify a stack name. In this case, I used “VMWonAWS-CF” as the stack name.
For the “Options” screen, there is nothing to update, so we can click “Next”. On the last screen, review the details and check the box that you “acknowledge that AWS CloudFormation might create IAM resources”. We’re now ready to create our stack by clicking the “Create” button!
After few moments, we should see a screen like the following indicating that the stack creation has been successfully completed.
We’ve now laid out the groundwork to deploy our new SDDC. One piece of which is the result of the stack creation, in the form of a new Lambda function. We’ll use this function to input our SDDC criteria and then ultimately deploy our new SDDC.
While we’re still in the CloudFormation service, we’ll want to click on our newly created stack to retrieve the details. Once on the “Stack Detail” page, expand the “Resources” section. There we see the IAM Role and Lambda function. Click on the physical ID of the Lambda function, which will take us to the function’s page.
Once on the newly created Lamda function page, scroll down to the “Environmental variables” section. This section is where we need to input the criteria for the SDDC variables:
With all of our variables now input, we’re ready to save and run our function. First, click “Save” then click “Test”. On the “Configure test event” pop out, give the test event a name and click “Create”.
Next to the “Test” button is a drop-down list of events. Make sure that list is set to our previously created test event and then click “Test” again. If everything was set properly, we should see a response like the following:
We can note from the above image that the response is a task. If we source out the ID, we can then follow along using the tasks API until the creation is complete. Alternatively, we can also watch the deployment process on the SDDCs tab of our Cloud Console.
The latest update to VMware Cloud on AWS introduced a couple great features for developers and automation specialists as well as a way for you to share your integrations. This blog covered the newly released integrations with CloudFormation. We showed how to access the CloudFormation template in the VMware Cloud on AWS Integration Examples repository. We then walked through how to easily get started deploying SDDCs in VMware Cloud on AWS using the CloudFormation template.
Get started with it today and let us know how you’re planning on integrating this into your existing workflows in the comments below!
The vSphere Automation SDK for Python has recently received some exciting updates. These updates add the ability to easily develop against and automate VMware Cloud on AWS! There are even samples to list organization information, manage SDDCs, and lots of networking functionality!
Let’s take a look at how to easily get started with this SDK on a MacOS system. Before diving in though, there are a couple prerequisites we’ll need to download and install.
The first thing we’ll want to do before getting started with this SDK is to clone the repository to the local system. We can do that with the following command:
|
1 |
git clone https://github.com/vmware/vsphere-automation-sdk-python.git |
Next, we’ll need to install the package manager, Homebrew. Using Homebrew will allow us to easily download and update additional programs. It can be easily downloaded and installed with the following command:
|
1 |
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)" |
Now, we’ll install Python in the recommended version of 3.6. It’s worth noting that MacOS comes with a version of Python already installed. However, it is generally an older version (normally, Python 2.7) and is used for some system related tasks. Due to that, it is best not to modify that version or the defaults.
Utilizing our package manager, we’ll install Python 3.6 with the following command:
|
1 |
brew install python3 |
It’s also recommended to isolate your development environments from each other so, we’ll setup a virtual environment and jump into it. We can do that with the following commands:
|
1 2 |
python3 -m venv VMWonAWSDemo source VMWonAWSDemo/bin/activate |
Then, we’ll install the SDK requirements. They’re listed within the root of the SDK folder in the file labeled: requirements.txt. After checking out which requirements are necessary, we’ll install those requirements by way of the following command while in the root of the SDK folder:
|
1 |
pip install --upgrade --force-reinstall -r requirements.txt --extra-index-url file:///Users/kyleruddy/GitHub/vsphere-automation-sdk-python/lib/ |
Lastly, we need to update the PYTHONPATH variable. This allows Python to be able to use the SDK helper methods. We can do this with the following command:
|
1 |
export PYTHONPATH=${PWD}:$PYTHONPATH |
One other item worth mentioning is an IDE. This will make editing, running and debugging the code a lot easier to deal with. I generally use Visual Studio Code, which is available here.
Let’s get started using some of the samples that have been included with this SDK.
The VMware Cloud on AWS APIs use an OAuth refresh token for authentication. These have to be created through the Cloud Console. Once logged into the Cloud Console, click the drop-down on the top right-hand corner that’s by your name. From there, click on the ‘OAuth Refresh Token’ button. If you don’t already have a refresh token available, there will be a blue link to create a new token. Afterwards, you’ll have a refresh token and be ready to authenticate into the VMware Cloud on AWS APIs.
The most important thing you can do when getting started is making your Organization (Org) ID easily accessible. This ID is referenced in almost every API method VMware Cloud on AWS has. If we browse through the SDK folder structure, we’ll see there’s an example we can use to retrieve information about the Orgs. There is a Python package named ‘organization_operations.py’ in the ‘samples/vmc/orgs’ directory.
Example:
|
1 2 |
export refreshtoken='0073c5b2-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-606592f7f070' python3 ./samples/vmc/orgs/organization_operations.py -r $refreshtoken |
We can see in the results above this example performs a couple tasks. First, we receive a list of all the Orgs this refresh token is associated with. Second, we get some additional information about the first Org that was returned.
The next most important thing we can obtain is information about the SDDC/s this Org has. However, at the time of this blog release, that functionality wasn’t explicitly available. Let’s see how to do this in the REPL, or Python’s interactive interpreter:
|
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 |
import requests from vmware.vapi.vmc.client import create_vmc_client refreshtoken = '0073c5b2-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-606592f7f070' orgid = 'eb8f2d0a-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-a4d6282c5555' vmc_client = create_vmc_client(refreshtoken) sddcs = vmc_client.orgs.Sddcs.list(orgid) sddcs sddcs[0].name |
I think this ability is something that will be quite helpful as part of the example SDDC package. Adding it is as easy as adding the following to the ‘create_delete_sddc.py’ file:
|
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 |
def list_sddc(self): sddcs = self.vmc_client.orgs.Sddcs.list(self.org_id) if not sddcs: raise ValueError('The sample requires at least one SDDC associated' 'with the calling user') print("\n# Example: List SDDCs") table = [] for sddc in sddcs: table.append([sddc.id, sddc.name, sddc.resource_config.region]) print(tabulate(table, ['ID', 'Name', 'AWS Region'])) |
However, you won’t need to do that. This SDK is open-sourced and I was able to submit a pull request to get it added in already! As part of the PR, we updated the file name to be ‘sddc_crud.py’ and it is available in the ‘samples/vmc/sddc’ directory.
Last example, let’s run through some tasks for logical network administration. There’s a sample for this as well. The ‘logical_network_crud.py’ package will create a new logical network, list all of the logical networks, list only the newly created logical network, and then delete the newly created logical network. This file is available in the ‘samples/vmc/networks/’ directory.
Example:
|
1 2 3 |
export orgid='eb8f2d0a-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-a4d6282c5555' export sddcid='584e8cc8-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-733871f9f0a6' python3 ./samples/vmc/networks/logical_network_crud.py -r $refreshtoken -o $orgid -s $sddcid --network-name 'Python-SDK-LogicalNetwork' -c |
This post shows you how to easily get started with the vSphere Automation SDK for Python with VMware Cloud on AWS. It takes you through the setup of your local development environment, as well as running some of the individual samples. You can then take whichever is most relevant to you and apply to your environment or, pull parts of this code out and use it to automate or integrate as needed.
With our SDKs now being open sourced, we are intent on making sure these samples are of a high quality. If you notice areas of improvement, or come up with some new samples, please feel free to raise issues or pull requests on our GitHub repository.
If you’ve missed any of the prior posts, here are the others in this ‘Getting Started’ series with our open-sourced SDKs:
We are going to keep the ‘Getting Started’ series going on using the vSphere Automation SDKs. This time, we will be taking a look at the SDK for Perl.
If you’ve missed any of the prior posts, here are the others in the series:
Let’s take a look at how to easily get started with this SDK on a Windows 10 system. Before diving in though, there are a couple prerequisites we’ll need to download and install.
The first thing we’ll want to do before getting started with this SDK is to clone the repository to the local system. We can do that with the following command:
|
1 |
git clone https://github.com/vmware/vsphere-automation-sdk-perl.git |
We also want to make sure Perl is available on the local system. The supported versions are Active Perl 5.14+ or Stawberry Perl 5.24.1.1+. For these examples, I’ll be using Active Perl which can be downloaded directly from their site: Active Perl
We will then need to make sure a couple Perl packages are installed and available. These can be installed with the following commands:
|
1 2 3 4 5 6 |
ppm install XML::LibXML ppm install UUID::Random ppm install Crypt::OpenSSL::RSA ppm install Exception::Class ppm install Crypt::X509 ppm install Data::Compare |
Next, this SDK also depends on some capabilities from the vSphere Perl SDK. We will need to login to the My VMware portal, download the executable, then install it from the following link: vSphere Perl SDK
We have one more step concerning the vSphere Perl SDK install. We also need to make sure the ‘python27.dll’ file is available in the vSphere Perl SDK’s folder as follows: ..\Perl\lib\VMware
The following code can be used to easily copy that file to the proper location:
|
1 |
cp 'C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\bin\python27.dll' 'C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\Perl\lib\VMware\' |
Last part of the prerequisites is to configure the environmental variable PERL5LIB to look for modules in the newly cloned SDK directory. The following directories need to be specified:
The following code was used to configure the PERL5LIB environmental variable for my lab:
|
1 |
set PERL5LIB=%PERL5LIB%;C:\Users\Kyle Ruddy\Documents\GitHub\vsphere-automation-sdk-perl\lib\runtime;C:\Users\Kyle Ruddy\Documents\GitHub\vsphere-automation-sdk-perl\lib\sdk;C:\Users\Kyle Ruddy\Documents\GitHub\vsphere-automation-sdk-perl\samples |
We are now all setup to start using the vSphere Automation SDK for Perl!
There are a handful of samples that are already included with this SDK. The samples are separated by the API namespaces into different directories and then presented as scripts. We’ll be looking at running some of the samples from the vCenter directory.
The first example we’ll run is the List VMs sample. This sample can be found in the ‘..\samples\Vcenter\Vm’ directory. There are a couple sample scripts here, which also include deleting a VM and performing some power actions.
If we run the ‘list_vms.pl’ sample as is, we will receive back the appropriate parameters to successfully complete the call. Those parameters would be username, password, and server name.
Performing the List VMs sample in my environment, with all of the required parameters, looks like the following:
|
1 |
perl list_vms.pl --username kruddy@corp.local --password VMware1! --server vcsa01.corp.local |
There’s another example in the VM folder which allows us to modify the power state for a given VM. However, this sample will take a given VM through all of the available power states. Again, running the sample without any parameters will give us the required parameters. We can see that we’ll need to also add parameters for the VM name and cleanup. The cleanup parameter is used to return the VM to the last state it was in.
Performing the List VMs sample in my environment, with all of the required parameters, looks like the following:
|
1 |
perl power_life_cycle.pl --username kruddy@corp.local --password VMware1! --server vcsa01.corp.local --vmname svc02 --cleanup false |
The last example we’ll take a look at is the creation of a new VM. We’ll take advantage of one of this new API’s features and create a new VM using defaults. This means the API fills in any parameters we do not specify with values based on what Guest OS has been specified. It’s also import to note that the Guest OS has been hardcoded in the sample to be ‘Windows_9_64’. This can be found on line 71 of the ‘default_vm.pl’ script. Additional Guest OS types can be found in the API documentation: Guest_OS Types
We’ll start by moving to the following directory: ..\samples\Vcenter\Vm\Create\DefaultVM Running the ‘default_vm.pl’ script will show us a number of parameters we’ll need to specify. These parameters include names for the following: VM, Datacenter, Cluster, VM folder, datastore. There’s also the authentication and cleanup parameters. In this case, giving the cleanup parameter a ‘True’ value will remove the newly created VM.
Performing the Create New Default VM sample in my environment, with all of the required parameters, looks like the following:
|
1 |
perl default_vm.pl --username kruddy@corp.local --password VMware1! --server vcsa01.corp.local --vmname demovm01 --datacenter DemoDC --clustername Demo --vmfolder Dev --datastore vsanDatastore --cleanup False |
This post shows you how to easily get started with the vSphere Automation SDK for Perl. It takes you through the setup of your local development environment, as well as running some of the individual samples. You can then take whichever is most relevant to you and apply to your environment or, pull parts of this code out and use it to automate or integrate as needed.
With our SDKs now being open sourced, we are intent on making sure these samples are of a high quality. If you notice areas of improvement, or come up with some new samples, please feel free to raise issues or pull requests on our GitHub repository.
We are going to keep the ‘Getting Started’ series going on using the vSphere Automation SDKs. This time, we will be taking a look at this SDK for .NET.
If you’ve missed any of the prior posts, here are the others in the series:
Let’s take a look at how to easily get started with this SDK on a Windows 10 system. Before diving in though, there are a couple prerequisites we’ll need to download and install.
The first thing we’ll want to do before getting started with this SDK is to clone the repository to the local system. We can do that with the following command:
|
1 |
git clone https://github.com/vmware/vsphere-automation-sdk-.net.git |
The other things we’ll need is .NET Framework 4.5 and Visual Studio 2015 or newer. I’ll be using Visual Studio 2017. On Windows 10, .NET Framework 4.5 should already be available. If it’s not, you can download it directly from Microsoft at the following link: Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5. If you don’t already have Visual Studio, it can be downloaded through the following link: Visual Studio
The next thing we need to do is build out the samples in Visual Studio. We start this process by opening Visual Studio. Now we can click on “File”, “Open”, then click “Project/Solution”. From the new Explorer window, browse to the root directory of where the SDK repo was cloned, then select and open the ‘vSphere-Samples.sln’ file.
Note: This process may take some time and if there are any missing dependencies found in the Visual Studio install, it will prompt to install those items.
We will be ready to finish building out the samples once the vSphere-Samples solution has been presented in the Solution Explorer. We’ll then right click on “Solution ‘vSphere-Samples’ (17 projects)” and select “Build Solution”. After a few moments there should be a message on the bottom information bar indicating “Build succeeded”.
We are now all setup to start using the vSphere Automation SDK for .NET!
There are a handful of samples already included with this SDK. The samples are separated by the API namespace into different directories and presented as projects. We’ll be looking at running some of the samples from the vCenter directory.
The first example we’ll take a look at is the ‘ListVMs’ sample. We start in the Solution Explorer, expanding ‘vcenter’, ‘vm’, and finally the ‘list’ directory. We can now see a ‘ListVMs’ project. We will want to right click the project and click ‘Set as StartUp Project’.
Prior to running the sample, we need to populate the sample with some properties such as which vCenter Server to connect to and with what credentials. We can find what the available properties are by clicking on the ‘Debug’ menu and then selecting ‘Start Without Debugging’.
We should receive a command prompt window that gives us the available properties.
In order to pass those parameters, we’ll need to open up the properties of the project. Once open, select the ‘Debug’ tab and look for the ‘Start options’ section. The ‘Command line arguments’ text box is where we’ll be specifying the parameter values. The parameters for my environment end up looking like the following:
With the parameters now laid out, we’re ready to actually run the sample!
Example results after hitting the ‘Start’ button:
Alternatively, we can also run the built executable for the ListVMs sample. It is located in the following directory: ..\vmware\samples\vcenter\vm\list\ListVMs\bin\Debug
Example code:
|
1 |
.\vmware\samples\vcenter\vm\list\ListVMs\bin\Debug\ListVMs.exe --server vcsa01.corp.local --username kruddy@corp.local --password 'VMware1!' --skip-server-verification |
We can also make modifications to an existing VM’s configuration. One example would be to update a VM’s CPU configuration, so let’s take a look at the CpuConfiguration sample. This project is under ‘vm’ then ‘hardware’. This sample is already configured to increase the CPU count to 2 and to enable CPU Hot Add. These options can be modified in the source code (CpuConfiguration.cs) at line 71 and 81, respectively.
This time we’ll run the sample directly from the executable. The first time we run it, without adding any parameters, we can see that we need our standard authentication parameters but we also need to specify the VM name. Running this sample in my environment looks like the following:
|
1 |
.\vmware\samples\vcenter\vm\hardware\CpuConfiguration\bin\Debug\CpuConfiguration.exe --server vcsa01.corp.local --username kruddy@corp.local --password 'VMware1!' --vmname svc02 --skip-server-verification |
The last example we’ll take a look at is the creation of a new VM. We’ll take advantage of one of this new API’s features and create a new VM using defaults by using the CreateDefaultVM project. This means the API fills in any parameters we do not specify with values based on what Guest OS has been specified. It’s also import to note that the Guest OS has been hardcoded in the sample to be ‘Windows_9_64’ on line 38 of the source code (CreateDefaultVm.cs). Additional Guest OS types can be found in the API documentation: Guest_OS Types
The project for this sample is located under ‘vm’ then ‘create’. However, we will again be running this sample directly from the executable. Running the executable without any parameters shows that we will need some additional parameters specified. These parameters include names for the following items: datacenter, cluster, vmfolder, and datastore.
Performing the Create Default VM sample in my environment, with all of the required parameters, looks like the following:
|
1 |
.\vmware\samples\vcenter\vm\create\CreateDefaultVm\bin\Debug\CreateDefaultVm.exe --server vcsa01.corp.local --username kruddy@corp.local --password 'VMware1!' --datacenter DemoDC --cluster Demo --vmfolder Dev --datastore vsanDatastore --skip-server-verification |
This post shows you how to easily get started with the vSphere Automation SDK for .NET. It takes you through the setup of your local development environment, as well as running some of the individual samples. You can then take whichever is most relevant to you and apply to your environment or, pull parts of this code out and use it to automate or integrate as needed.
With our SDKs now being open sourced, we are intent on making sure these samples are of a high quality. If you notice areas of improvement, or come up with some new samples, please feel free to raise issues or pull requests on our GitHub repository.
There has been another exciting open-sourced release in the vSphere Automation SDK lineup. This time, it is the vSphere Automation SDK for Java!
That means it’s time for another blog post in our series on ‘Getting Started with the vSphere Automation SDKs’. The posts available in the series so far are as follows:
We’ll be taking a look at how to easily get started with this SDK on a Mac. Before diving in, there are a couple prerequisites we’ll need to download and install.
The first thing we’ll want to do before getting started with this SDK is to clone the repository to the local system. We can do that with the following command:
|
1 |
git clone https://github.com/vmware/vsphere-automation-sdk-java.git |
Next, we’ll want to make sure we have the appropriate Java Development Kit (JDK) installed and available. The vSphere Automation SDK for Java has been developed to work with JDK 1.8. We can verify which version of Java is available by the following command:
|
1 |
java -version |
In this situation, my system doesn’t have Java installed at all. I’ll need to head out to the JDK8 download page to download and install the appropriate version. Once complete, repeat the last command to ensure JDK 1.8 is installed. Verifying and/or updating the JAVA_HOME and PATH variables is the last step to the install process. We’ll start by finding the current value for the JAVA_HOME variable, then updating it, if necessary, to the Home directory of the newly installed JDK. We’ll then repeat that process for the PATH variable as well. This can be done with the following commands:
|
1 2 3 4 |
echo $JAVA_HOME export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_152.jdk/Contents/Home echo $PATH export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH |
We will also need to ensure Maven, a build automation tool, is installed. We will use Maven to build out the SDK and the samples from source so we can start using it. My system doesn’t have Maven installed yet, so we’ll go to the download page and install it according to the instructions on Maven’s site. Alternatively, we can do it with the following commands:
|
1 2 3 4 5 |
curl -o apache-maven-3.5.2-bin.tar.gz -k http://apache.mirror.globo.tech/maven/maven-3/3.5.2/binaries/apache-maven-3.5.2-bin.tar.gz tar -xzf apache-maven-3.5.2-bin.tar.gz sudo mv apache-maven-3.5.2 /opt/ rm apache-maven-3.5.2-bin.tar.gz export PATH=/opt/apache-maven-3.5.2/bin:$PATH |
The last prerequisite, before starting to user the SDK, is instructing Maven to build out all the samples with Maven. We’ll first use the initialize command, within the cloned repository directory, to pre-stage any dependencies that are not available publicly. We’ll then follow that with install command. This can be done with the following commands:
|
1 2 |
mvn initialize mvn clean install |
We are now all setup to start using the vSphere Automation SDK for Java!
There are quite a few samples which are included with the SDK. Each sample can be run by using its fully qualified class name.
The first example we’ll take a look at is the ListVMs sample. In terminal, from the root of the SDK directory, we’ll call java, enabling assertions with the ‘ea’ parameter, using the ‘cp’ parameter to call the class path of ‘target/vsphere-samples-6.5.0.jar’, then the fully qualified class name. An example of this command is as follows:
|
1 |
java -ea -cp target/vsphere-samples-6.6.1.jar vmware.samples.vcenter.vm.list.ListVMs |
Based on the output, we see quite a few parameters that still need to be referenced in order to authenticate and run the sample. The required parameters are server, username, and password. However, there are also some considerations needed around the handling of the vCenter’s certificate. I’m using a lab environment that still has the vCenter’s self-signed certificate in use, so I’ll be using the ‘skip-server-verification’ parameter. Lastly, there are the optional paramaters, most of which are straight forward, but the config-file parameter is a convenient one. For now, we’ll keep it simple and call each parameter as part of the command. I’ll discuss using a configuration file later in this post.
Performing the ListVMs sample in my environment, with all of the required parameters, looks like the following:
|
1 |
java -ea -cp target/vsphere-samples-6.6.1.jar vmware.samples.vcenter.vm.list.ListVMs --server vcsa01.corp.local --username administrator@vsphere.local --password VMware1! --skip-server-verification |
There’s another sample which takes a VM through the lifecycle of power states. This sample can be discovered in the ‘../vmware/samples/vcenter/vm/power’ directory. The public class we’ll be using is ‘PowerLifeCyle’. If we run that without any parameters, we can see that we’ll need to add the ‘vmname’ parameter and call a specific VM by name. Running this sample can be done with the following command:
|
1 |
java -ea -cp target/vsphere-samples-6.6.1.jar vmware.samples.vcenter.vm.power.PowerLifeCycle --server vcsa01.corp.local --username administrator@vsphere.local --password VMware1! --skip-server-verification --vmname web01 |
The last example we’ll look at is the modifying the memory configured for a VM. This sample can be found in the ‘../vmware/samples/vcenter/vm/hardware/memory’ directory. The public class we’ll be using is ‘MemoryConfiguration’. If we run that without any parameters, we can see that we will again need to add the ‘vmname’ parameter and call a specific VM by name.
This sample will set the RAM to 8GB then enables hot-add. We can go execute this sample with the following command:
|
1 |
java -ea -cp target/vsphere-samples-6.6.1.jar vmware.samples.vcenter.vm.hardware.memory.MemoryConfiguration --server vcsa01.corp.local --username administrator@vsphere.local --password VMware1! --skip-server-verification --vmname svc01 |
One last thing before wrapping this up, let’s walk through using the configuration file. The configuration file can be any text-based file which contains lines that begin with the parameter names. In the following example, we create a new file and modify the file to include the following lines:
|
1 2 3 |
server=vcsa01.corp.local username=administrator@vsphere.local password=VMware1! |
We can now reference this config file in any of the examples to authenticate against a vCenter server. Reusing the ‘ListVMs’ sample, the command to run that again but instead using a configuration file will look like the following:
|
1 |
java -ea -cp target/vsphere-samples-6.6.1.jar vmware.samples.vcenter.vm.list.ListVMs --config-file config.file --skip-server-verification |
This post shows you how to easily get started with the vSphere Automation SDK for Java. It takes you through the setup of your local development environment, as well as running some of the individual samples. You can then take whichever is most relevant to you and apply to your environment or, pull parts of this code out and use it to automate or integrate as needed.
With our SDKs now being open sourced, we are intent on making sure these samples are of a high quality. If you notice areas of improvement, or come up with some new samples, please feel free to raise issues or pull requests on our GitHub repository.
The vSphere Automation SDKs have recently received an exciting update! These open-sourced SDKs can now also interact with the VMware Cloud on AWS service. The first two SDK languages updated to include this feature set is Python and Java. The remaining SDK languages will follow soon.
The VMware Cloud on AWS service offers a couple different RESTful APIs to interact with. The updated SDKs will focus on the VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) API, as well as provide the authentication method through the Cloud Services Platform (CSP) API. To find out more about the APIs available as part of the VMware Cloud on AWS service, see this blog post: An Overview of VMware Cloud on AWS APIs
On this initial release, both the Python and Java SDKs include a handful of sample frameworks. These include the following functions:
Let’s take a look at a couple of these in action.
One of the vSphere Automation SDK for Python samples has the functionality to perform two methods. The first will list all of the organizations the user’s refresh token is associated with. These orgs will be displayed by ID and display name. The second will list more detailed information for the first organization, such as ID, display name, name, create and updated dates, and SLA. This sample can be executed with the following command:
|
1 |
Python ./samples/vmc/orgs/organization_operations.py refresh-token-id |
This SDK also has a new way to interact with the API and that is through the interactive interpreter! This can be done by creating the service object using the ‘create_vmc_client’ function while passing our refresh token. At this point, we can start accessing the available collections. The collections can by discovered in two main ways. First, by referring to the documentation that’s located in the ‘vmc.zip’ file that’s located in the ‘doc’ folder. Second, by using tab-complete. Some example code to obtain similar output to our prior example while in the interactive shell:
|
1 2 3 4 5 6 |
from vmware.vapi.vmc.client import create_vmc_client client = create_vmc_client('refresh-token-id') client.Orgs.get('org-id') tmmOrg2 = client.Orgs.get('org-id') print(tmmOrg2.display_name) print(tmmOrg2.created) |
The vSphere Automation SDK for Java offers a similar sample to the first Python example from above. However, this particular sample operates a little differently. The output from this sample will be the complete details of each org the user is associated with. This sample can be executed with the following command:
|
1 |
java -ea -cp target/vsphere-samples-6.6.2.jar vmware.samples.vmc.orgs.OrganizationOperations -refreshtoken refresh-token-id |
The open-sourced vSphere Automation SDKs have recently received an update. This update allows these SDKs to work with the RESTful API service of VMware Cloud on AWS. There are also a number of samples available within each SDK to list information about organizations, add and/or remove SDDCs, and manage the host count within an SDDC. These samples are easy to have operational within a few minutes of updating your local repo and are quite simple to integrate into your existing code!
Stay tuned for a more detailed look at getting started with each of these SDKs with the VMware Cloud on AWS service in the future.
For more information about the VMware Cloud on AWS service, see the following blog post: VMware Cloud on AWS Technical Overview
For more information about the VMware Cloud on AWS APIs, see the following blog post: An Overview of VMware Cloud on AWS APIs