How-tos

Using Project “Onyx” to find the equivalent PowerCLI script to achieve tasks done in the vSphere Client

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A few days ago someone dropped a comment on one of my blog posts asking how they could Enter an ESXi host into maintenance without migrating VMs off of it automatically using PowerCLI. The -Evacuate switch for the cmdlet in question (Set-VMHost) didn’t see to be working when assigning the value of $false and hence they were unable to put hosts into maintenance mode without evacuating VMs first with PowerCLI.

Perhaps the cmdlet was being used incorrectly, or there is a better way of doing this, but that is not the point of this post. The point of this post is to show you the power and usefulness of Project “Onyx”. Project “Onyx” is an application released (quite some time ago!) by VMware that is essentially a “script recorder”. It connects to your vCenter instance, and in turn, you connect to it as a proxy using your vSphere client. Communications are not secured when doing this, so everything you do in your vSphere client is able to be recorded. You essentially end up with a “recording” of API calls that can be utilised in PowerCLI. Where this comes in handy is where you are not able to achieve something with PowerCLI’s already huge library of cmdlets. In this case the -evacuate switch of Set-VMHost was not working the way I expected it to work, and so to avoid wasting time trying to figure out what I needed to do, I just fired up Project Onyx, connected to it via the vSphere Client, then told an ESXi host to enter maintenance mode (unticking the migrate powered off / suspended VMs option of course) whilst the Project Onyx application was set to “record” mode.

The console then collected the necessary script, and I just modified it as necessary to create a small script that did the exact same task, but this time in PowerCLI.

 

To use Project “Onyx” simply download it from this page, then run the executable once you have extracted the .zip file. Tell Onyx to connect to your vCenter Server, then use your vSphere Client to connect to the machine that Onyx is running on (IP). Make sure you specify the correct listening port in the vSphere Client connection too – it will be the port listed in the Window Title bar of the actual Project “Onyx” application when it is running. Click the record button in the Application and then perform the required tasks using the vSphere Client.

 

Project Onyx application window with some recorded script. Note the port 1545 in the Window Title Bar.

 

Connecting to Onyx as a proxy

 

 

Finding Vendor specific VIBs on ESXi hosts with PowerCLI

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Example showing VIBs loaded on a host with a search of the vendor name "VMware"

 

The other day I was trying to find a list of Custom VIBs (VMware Installation Bundles) that were installed on an ESXi host. The reason was that I just wanted to verify that the VIB had actually installed correctly or not. I threw the query out on Twitter and of course @alanrenouf had a solution in next to no time.

So Alan’s solution is to use the Get-EsxCli cmdlet and specify the host name using the VMHost parameter. After that, he simply uses the code property “software” to gain access to the list of VIBs on the host. E.g.

$ESXCLI = Get-EsxCli -VMHost esxi-01.noobs.local
$ESXCLI.software.vib.list()

I have used esxcli on its own before but didn’t realise that PowerCLI had this cmdlet built in to interface with hosts in the same way that esxcli would. This is a great solution and means you can fetch so much more in this regard.

To filter things down a bit more and find the exact match for the Dell OMSA VIB I was looking out for, I used a where clause looking for a match for “dell” on the Vendor property:

$ESXCLI.software.vib.list() | Select AcceptanceLevel,ID,InstallDate,Name,ReleaseDate,Status,Vendor,Version | Where {$_.Vendor -match "dell"}

Thanks again to Alan Renouf for pointing out the use of Get-EsxCli and for providing an example!

 

How to use PoSH or PowerCLI to SSH into network devices – wodSSH [Part 2]

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In [part 1] of this series of posts, I explored SharpSSH, and how to use this to SSH into network devices via PowerShell or PowerCLI. I found this extremely useful, and managed to automate a process of retrieving some SHA1 SSL fingerprints from a few clusters of ESX hosts in the process. I did however find that loading the dll and functions necessary to get this bit of automation done was a little tedious. I had heard about wodSSH via the get-scripting podcast and decided I would need to take a look at this.

 

If you are planning on using wodSSH, you should start by downloading it here. Note that you should definitely buy a license if you are going to be using this for your job or day to day automation – the license is not to expensive if you consider the kinds of automation you could achieve with this! For this blog post I am just using the trial version in my lab environment at home to try out – the trial pops up a “nag screen” every now and then to indicate you are unlicensed. Once downloaded, install wodSSH and the libraries will now be available for use on your machine.

 

Download the script below, or take a look at it in the Syntax Highlighted area below – this is an example of how I was able to SSH into a cluster of ESXi hosts and run a remote command via SSH through PowerCLI. In this example, a table is returned with Host names, along with their SHA1 fingerprint information. It is possible to retrieve this info (as of ESXi 5 I believe) in PowerCLI, but for this example I just wanted to demonstrate the use of SSH and PowerShell / PowerCLI.

 

[download id=”14″]

 

$login = "root"
$password = "yourrootpassword" 

$Report = @()
$VMHosts = Get-VMHost | Where {$_.ConnectionState -eq "Connected"} | Sort Name

foreach ($vmhost in $VMHosts) {
	$hostname = $vmhost
	$ssh = New-Object -ComObject "weOnlyDo.wodSSHCom.1"
	$ssh.Hostname = $hostname
	$ssh.Login = $login
	$ssh.Password = $password
	$ssh.Blocking = 1
	$ssh.Protocol = 4
	$ssh.Timeout = 25
	$ssh.Connect($hostname)
	$ssh.WaitFor("regex:[$%#>] $")
	$cmdresult = $ssh.Execute("openssl x509 -sha1 -in /etc/vmware/ssl/rui.crt -noout -fingerprint`r`n","regex:[~#]")
	$ssh.Disconnect()
	$temp = $cmdresult | select-string -pattern "SHA1 Fingerprint="
	Write-Host $cmdresult -ForegroundColor Green
	$row = New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property @{
		SHA1 = $cmdresult
		HostName = $vmhost
	}
	$Report += $row
}
$Report

 

You will notice that on line 09, we load the wodSSH library using the New-Object cmdlet. After this we continue to setup some properties for our $ssh connection object. A regex check is used to determine when are connected to a host and have an SSH shell prompt ($ssh.WaitFor(“regex:[$%>;] $”).  We then use $cmdresult to capture the result of running an SSH command via our connection to our current ESXi host. To finish capturing the output of the command on our remote host, we use a regex check again (“regex:[~#]”). You’ll notice that the actual command is also on this line, i.e. line 18 (openssl). After the result is captured, we disconnect our SSH session, then proceed to build our small report array. At the end of the script, we output the $Report array to the screen.

 

Results of the above script in PowerCLI

 

As far as I can see, the wodSSH library can open up a whole new world of automation for you in the data centre. Think of the possibilities – you could automate just about everything, from switches, routers, Linux/Unix hosts / ESXi Hosts to iLO / DRAC and other management cards. Essentially, anything that accepts commands via SSH! If you have any automation stories using wodSSH, or just PowerShell or PowerCLI in general, I would love to hear about them – so feel free to drop a comment or two on this post.

 

 

Generating Graphical Charts with VMware PowerCLI & PowerShell

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Charts are awesome – they can help make sense of endless reams of text and data and they generally look pretty. So my question to myself was: “How do I get useful data I generate using PowerCLI into a nice, neat little chart?” I had a quick google and found a couple of different solutions. The one that stood out as being the easiest to start off with for me was to use the “Microsoft Chart Controls for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5”

I read a few blog posts around detailing how to create these custom .NET charts in PowerShell, but this tends to be quite a tedious process – akin to creating a Windows Forms GUI in PowerShell manually – basically a complete pain. The blog posts I read definitely helped me understand how to create charts and soon I was able to generate some pretty cool charts based off data from PowerCLI (or PowerShell) data. I wanted to ultimately automate the creation of Charts for my PowerCLI and PowerShell scripts, so I decided to create myself a Function that could be used anywhere to generate a Bar or Pie Chart on the fly.

httpv://youtube.com/watch?v=EvQ2znWr0lk

Enter Create-Chart. This is the Function I have made that accepts a bunch of Parameters to create a custom Chart and outputs this to a .PNG file. The data needs to be fed in to the function via a Hash Table (this could be changed) so I also created a “helper” Function called Create-HashTable which also does the work of generating a hash table for use with the Create-Chart Function. You could of course also just feed the Create-Chart function with a manually created HashTable too – this is useful to know because my Create-HashTable function is fairly basic and is not too flexible. Here are a couple of examples of Charts I created using these Functions:

Pie Chart of VMs and their configured Memory Resource settings
The same data but now in a Bar chart
Host Chart created with a manually created Hash Table (Name and MemoryUsageMB Properties)

Download the two functions below to give them a try! Please do suggest any improvements – my parameter handling on the Create-Chart script needs work – they are not specified as mandatory, although all parameters are mandatory – I couldn’t get the Function to work correctly when I did make them mandatory. The Create-HashTable function could also be improved in that at the moment you can only specify Cmdlets for the “Cmdlet” parameter that do not have any double quotation marks inside the cmdlet or any $_ variables. This is because of the way I am using the Invoke-Expression cmdlet inside the function. A simple cmdlet parameter such as “Get-VM | Select Name, MemoryMB” would work just fine for example. Remember that the Create-Chart function needs to be fed with a Hash Table. This could be generated yourself, or by using the Create-HashTable function below. Here are the downloads:

Don’t forget the Microsoft Chart Controls – a requirement to run these functions
Download the functions here:

https://www.shogan.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Create-Chart.zip

https://www.shogan.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Create-HashTable.zip

Once you have the Functions loaded, here are some examples to show you how to use them:

Pie Chart of VMs and their MemoryMB setting:

Create-Chart -ChartType Pie -ChartTitle "Sean's Awesome VM Chart" -FileName seanchart3 -XAxisName "VMs" -YAxisName "MemoryMB" -ChartWidth 750 -ChartHeight 650 -DataHashTable (Create-HashTable -Cmdlet "Get-VM" -NameProperty Name -ValueProperty MemoryMB)

Bar Chart of ESXi Hosts and their Memory Usage (MB) values:

Create-Chart -ChartType Bar -ChartTitle "Sean's Awesome Host Chart" -FileName seanchart4 -XAxisName "VM Hosts" -YAxisName "Memory Usage (MB)" -ChartWidth 750 -ChartHeight 650 -DataHashTable (Create-HashTable -Cmdlet "Get-VMHost" -NameProperty Name -ValueProperty MemoryUsageMB)

Use your own Hash Table to input the data:

Create-Chart -ChartType Bar -ChartTitle "Custom Chart" -FileName seanchart5 -XAxisName "My Objects" -YAxisName "My Object Values" -ChartWidth 750 -ChartHeight 650 -DataHashTable $HashTable

So there you have it – a fairly easy way to Chart the data you can get from your PowerCLI or PowerShell cmdlets! I wrote these Functions as part of a larger report that I am working on for another soon to come blog post! As I mentioned above, there is plenty of room for improvement – so if you do make any improvements or changes, please be sure to post them in the comments section.

Checking that a VM has the VMware Balloon driver running with esxtop

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To check that your VMs have loaded and are running the VMware Memory Balloon driver in the guest OS, you can use esxtop.

 

  • Connect to your ESXi host using vMA, the DCUI or PuTTy (needs SSH service running) and run esxtop.
  • Switch to the Memory page (press M)
  • Press F to add a field
  • Press J to add the field “MCTL = MEM Ctl (MB)”
  • Press space to return to the main memory view page of esxtop.
  • In the new MCTL? column, look at the list of VMs – a “Y”  means that the driver is loaded and running whereas a “N” means that the balloon driver is not present.

 

This can be useful to double check things if you run into a problem troubleshooting memory ballooning issues as I have seen cases where VMware Tools reports as “OK” for the VM but the balloon driver is not running when viewed in esxtop.