In today’s article, we will be taking a deeper look into the features of the Ruby vSphere Console (RVC) by examining its command structure and syntax. With RVC being built in Ruby, and built upon the Ruby interface to the vSphere API (RbVmomi), it serves to offer considerable strengths that we can leverage to expedite operations in our vSphere infrastructures. RVC began its life in VMware Labs as a Fling as a Ruby based CLI for the vSphere infrastructure. VMware Lab “Flings” are really interesting Engineering side projects. As a Fling, RVC became such a considerable tool for VMware Engineering, Support, and others that it was decided to extend its functionality to include support for Virtual SAN environments. RVC has now become a robust CLI for managing vSphere and Virtual SAN infrastructures.
First though, if you need assistance with recommended practices for RVC deployment, or how to login and navigate your vSphere and Virtual SAN infrastructure, please take a look at our first two blog articles from this series.
Tab-completion Commands and paths can be tab completed as is typical in most command line interfaces. Whitespace characters will need to be escaped with a backslash.
Wildcards
Many commands such as “vm.on” can operate on multiple objects at once. RVC supports simple globbing (pattern matching based on wildcard characters) using “*” as well as advanced regular expression (regex) syntax. To use a regex, prefix the path element with “%”. For example: “vm.on myvms/%^(linux|windows)” will power on VMs whose names start with “linux” or “windows” in the “myvms” folder. Note that it is necessary to explicitly anchor the pattern with “^” and “$” if you wish to match the whole path element.
Command Examples Below are a few initial commands to help get you started with RVC. Remember, to obtain a listing of namespaces, simply type “help” at the RVC command line. To obtain a listing of commands within a particular namespace, type “help <namespace>” at the RVC command line.
Virtual SAN Namespace The RVC Virtual SAN (VSAN) namespace contains 29 commands to interact with a Virtual SAN infrastructure. There are also a number of other commands in other namespaces that are used. For instance, the SPBM namespace contains the spbm.profile_create command that can be used to create storage profiles.
Here are the commands from the RVC Virtual SAN (VSAN) namespace:
vsan.apply_license_to_cluster
vsan.check_limits
vsan.check_state
vsan.cluster_change_autoclaim
vsan.cluster_info
vsan.cluster_set_default_policy
vsan.cmmds_find
vsan.disable_vsan_on_cluster
vsan.disk_object_info
vsan.disks_info
vsan.disks_stats
vsan.enable_vsan_on_cluster
vsan.enter_maintenance_mode
vsan.fix_renamed_vms
vsan.host_consume_disks
vsan.host_info
vsan.host_wipe_vsan_disks
vsan.lldpnetmap
vsan.obj_status_report
vsan.object_info
vsan.object_reconfigure
vsan.observer
vsan.reapply_vsan_vmknic_config
vsan.recover_spbm
vsan.resync_dashboard
vsan.support_information
vsan.vm_object_info
vsan.vm_perf_stats
vsan.whatif_host_failures
SPBM Namespace The Storage Profile Based Managed (SPBM) namespace contains 8 commands to interface with the vSphere Storage Policy services.
spbm.check_compliance
spbm.device_add_disk
spbm.device_change_storage_profile
spbm.namespace_change_storage_profile
spbm.profile_apply
spbm.profile_create
spbm.profile_delete
spbm.vm_change_storage_profile
RVC Command Structure
All RVC commands exist as Ruby modules within the RVC software. If you are using the vCenter Server Appliance, these modules can be found in the directory path “/opt/vmware/rvc/lib/rvc/modules”. If you are handy with Ruby, or would like to learn, you can even make custom RVC commands with just a little bit of Ruby code. Simply create your module, upload it to the RVC modules directory, and then login to RVC to begin using your new, custom commands.
RVC commands are in the form of “<namespace>.<command>” where <command> is a function within the Ruby module named <namespace>. For instance, “vsan.rb” is a Ruby module within the RVC software and is located in “/opt/vmware/rvc/lib/rvc/modules”. The command “vsan.enable_vsan_on_cluster” refers to the “enable_vsan_on_cluster” function within the vsan.rb Ruby module. All 29 RVC namespaces, exist as separate Ruby modules wherein the 197 RVC commands are located as separate Ruby functions. Here is a list of all RVC v1.8.0 commands. See the Resource section at the bottom of this article for the help output for each command.
As you can see, there are a whole host of possibilities for RVC to expedite vSphere and Virtual SAN infrastructure deployment as well as daily operations.
Stay tuned next week as we demonstrate how to leverage RVC to deploy our Virtual SAN environment as well as beginning our exploration of troubleshooting and monitoring Virtual SAN environments via RVC!
