If you want to read information about a virtual machine from the guest OS running on it, the vSphere Guest API is for you. It’s a C library coming with VMware Tools. Unlike the vSphere API which can be used anywhere, the vSphere Guest API is only available in the guest OS.
High Level Characteristics Read more... (376 words, estimated 1:30 mins reading time)
- It’s read only. You can use it to retrieve state and performance of a virtual machine running on ESX, but you can NOT
Chargeback is an important feature for computing infrastructures. Even inside an enterprise where IT users are not charged with real money, it’s still nice to see the usage patterns and sometimes avoid wasting resources. As I mentioned in IBM RC2, applying chargeback reduced unnecessary usage overnight.
VMware vCenter Chargeback is a component for this purpose. It can run standalone with Web GUI, and surface to vSphere Client as a plug-in. Although its name includes vCenter, it can also work with vCloud Director (see Using vCenter Chargeback with VMware Cloud Director).
I just spent some time over the weekend reading the API documentation, including vCenter Chargeback API Programming Guide, API Reference. The version 1.5 of the API Read more... (550 words, estimated 2:12 mins reading time)
Last week an issue was reported with using vSphere SDK 4.1 to connect vSphere 4.0. The problem is related to the HTTP header called “SOAPAction” introduced in vSphere SDK 4.0. A recent KB article introduced this header, but with a minor error. I will talk about it in the end.
With vSphere SDK 4.1, the SOAPAction header has a value of “urn:vim25/4.1” while 4.0 has “urn:vim25/4.0”. For an older version of vSphere server, either vCenter or ESX/ESXi, it has no idea of the new value of SOAPAction, therefore refuse to serve. But the other way around works just fine because the newer version of vSphere knows about the older value but also support the older version of SDK directly. As a result, any application using older version of SDK works with newer version of vSphere. I am not saying your application can leverage new features. In fact, you cannot and must upgrade to do so.
From the SDK part, I found it’s a little disturbing when your newer SDK cannot work with older vSphere. We all expert newer SDK are better and back compatible. That is why Read more... (555 words, estimated 2:13 mins reading time)
VMware vSphere provides comprehensive performance metrics for your needs on performance monitoring and diagnosis. These stats are available through not only vSphere Client but also vSphere APIs. To understand the overall performance management concepts, you want to read this article: Fundamentals of vSphere Performance Management.
Once having the basics, you may wonder what types of stats are exposed. The following table summaries all the 315 performance counters available in vSphere 4.1. As you might have guessed, the information is generated using open source Sphere Java API and then imported into WordPress using WP-Table Reloaded. You can easily sort and search the table.
Update: Carter Shanklin and Luc Dekens have articles on performance counters as well: Read more... (3359 words, estimated 13:26 mins reading time)
If you manage a vSphere infrastructure, you may want to collect logs for troubleshooting, debugging, etc. You can get these logs from vSphere Client manually. You can also use vSphere API to collect them automatically.
The related managed object type in vSphere API is the DiagnosticManager. It helps to access logs from either a vCenter server or ESX server. It has no property but three methods:
1. queryDescriptions() provides a list of diagnostic files for a given system. It takes in an optional parameter host for specifying the HostSystem to extract information from. When you connect to the ESX server directly, the parameter isn’t needed. In vSphere Java API, you just pass in a null. When you connect to the vCenter server and the parameter isn’t specified, the method assumes you’re looking for vCenter logs. The return of this method is an array of DiagnosticManagerLogDescriptor data objects. The data object includes six properties: creator, fileName, format, info, key, and mimeType. Read more... (637 words, estimated 2:33 mins reading time)
Technology can be a lot like fashion, with quickly shifting trends. Once we embraced big iron but after the mainframe age the industry went into the client/server age where we soon found too many servers to manage. So we consolidated them, not back to mainframe age, but onto hypervisors. With one physical server, you can run multiple virtual machines.
Server consolidation solved a big problem and resulted in big cost savings. From management’s point of view, however, it does not actually reduce the number of servers to manage in your enterprise. To some extent, it worsens the problem! In some circumstances it’s so easy and inexpensive to create a new virtual machine that you end up with many more servers than you really want or can effectively manage. This problem not only exists in private clouds, but also in the public cloud.
According to VMware CEO Paul Maritz in his keynote at VMworld 2010, the number of virtual machines exceeded physical machines in 2009, and will reach 10 million by the end of this year. This is definitely great news for the virtualization software industry but also a challenge moving forward.
So how should you try to solve the problem of virtual machine sprawl or even better, prevent it from happening? I discuss some solutions one by one here. Read more... (826 words, estimated 3:18 mins reading time)
My colleagues and I had a discussion regarding the vApp template. After virtual machine template for virtual machine, you would expect vApp template for vApp and manage it in a similar way from the vSphere Client. But you cannot.
Most of us know that from vSphere Client, you have context menu item allowing you to convert a virtual machine to a template easily with a click. However you cannot find a similar menu item with a vApp. You can choose to convert a virtual machine inside a vApp, but then the converted template will jump out of the vApp container.
Can we have vApp template? The answer is we can, but in a different way. Read more... (434 words, 2 images, estimated 1:44 mins reading time)
VMware SpringSource released Hyperic 4.4 last week. According to Charles Lee, co-founder of Hyperic, one key feature is “enhanced management of VMware virtualized environments through integration with VMware vCenter.” I am glad vSphere(VI) Java API (a.k.a. vijava) has contributed to the success of the product.
Here is part of Charles’s blog Hyperic Broadens vSphere Support through vCenter APIs in Version 4.4 explaining the rationale behind the choice: Read more... (341 words, estimated 1:22 mins reading time)
I have finished vSphere(VI) Java API 2.1 beta last week. The major feature is to support next version of vSphere. The company legal also approved the contribution to the open source project after product release.
Because VMware hasn’t released the next version of product yet, I cannot release the code to general public for the moment. API and product are much like the view and model in MVC: from the new APIs you can guess what new features are in the coming product. Read more... (138 words, estimated 33 secs reading time)
Most of us are familiar with MOB, the Web based managed object browser.I’ve discussed the little known secret of it, and built a tiny yet powerful API on top of it.
There is yet another useful tool in vSphere you can leverage: Web based datastore browser. This tool allows you to use a standard Web browser to browse the datastores. You can access it using the following URL: Read more... (169 words, estimated 41 secs reading time)
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