I just had a co-worker ask for some help on automation with the Perl SDK around DistributedVirtualPortgroups.
What I quickly found out is that find_entity_view calls will not work. And for a very simple reason. TraversalSpecs for networkFolder and datastoreFolder were not added to the subroutine get_search_filter_spec in VICommon.pm. 
It seems like an oversight to have skipped TraversalSpecs for these folders. Without modifying VICommon.pm or calling RetrieveProperties directly, you'll need to do some klunky enumeration of Datacenter(s) and Network properties.
Is this something that others have run into or at least something that is slated to be fixed in a future release of the VI Perl SDK?
I updated the subroutine get_search_filter_spec in VICommon.pm to the following and it works quite simply. Similar specs would have to be added for the datastoreFolder
sub get_search_filter_spec {
my ($class, $mo_ref, $property_spec) = @_;
my $resourcePoolTraversalSpec =
TraversalSpec->new(name => 'resourcePoolTraversalSpec',
type => 'ResourcePool',
path => 'resourcePool',
skip => 0,
selectSet => [SelectionSpec->new(name => 'resourcePoolTraversalSpec'),
SelectionSpec->new(name => 'resourcePoolVmTraversalSpec')]);
my $resourcePoolVmTraversalSpec =
TraversalSpec->new(name => 'resourcePoolVmTraversalSpec',
type => 'ResourcePool',
path => 'vm',
skip => 0);
my $computeResourceRpTraversalSpec =
TraversalSpec->new(name => 'computeResourceRpTraversalSpec',
type => 'ComputeResource',
path => 'resourcePool',
skip => 0,
selectSet => [SelectionSpec->new(name => 'resourcePoolTraversalSpec'),
SelectionSpec->new(name => 'resourcePoolVmTraversalSpec')]);
my $computeResourceHostTraversalSpec =
TraversalSpec->new(name => 'computeResourceHostTraversalSpec',
type => 'ComputeResource',
path => 'host',
skip => 0);
my $datacenterHostTraversalSpec =
TraversalSpec->new(name => 'datacenterHostTraversalSpec',
type => 'Datacenter',
path => 'hostFolder',
skip => 0,
selectSet => );
my $datacenterVmTraversalSpec =
TraversalSpec->new(name => 'datacenterVmTraversalSpec',
type => 'Datacenter',
path => 'vmFolder',
skip => 0,
selectSet => );
my $hostVmTraversalSpec =
TraversalSpec->new(name => 'hostVmTraversalSpec',
type => 'HostSystem',
path => 'vm',
skip => 0,
selectSet => );
my $datacenterNetTraversalSpec =
TraversalSpec->new(name => 'datacenterNetTraversalSpec',
type => 'Datacenter',
path => 'networkFolder',
skip => 0,
selectSet => );
my $folderTraversalSpec =
TraversalSpec->new(name => 'folderTraversalSpec',
type => 'Folder',
path => 'childEntity',
skip => 0,
selectSet => [SelectionSpec->new(name => 'folderTraversalSpec'),
SelectionSpec->new(name => 'datacenterHostTraversalSpec'),
SelectionSpec->new(name => 'datacenterVmTraversalSpec',),
SelectionSpec->new(name => 'computeResourceRpTraversalSpec'),
SelectionSpec->new(name => 'computeResourceHostTraversalSpec'),
SelectionSpec->new(name => 'hostVmTraversalSpec'),
SelectionSpec->new(name => 'resourcePoolVmTraversalSpec'),
SelectionSpec->new(name => 'datacenterNetTraversalSpec'),
]);
my $obj_spec = ObjectSpec->new(obj => $mo_ref,
skip => 0,
selectSet => [$folderTraversalSpec,
$datacenterVmTraversalSpec,
$datacenterHostTraversalSpec,
$computeResourceHostTraversalSpec,
$computeResourceRpTraversalSpec,
$resourcePoolTraversalSpec,
$hostVmTraversalSpec,
$datacenterNetTraversalSpec,
$resourcePoolVmTraversalSpec]);
return PropertyFilterSpec->new(propSet => $property_spec,
objectSet => [$obj_spec]);
}
The following code is much simpler than having to do a few nested soap calls on network objects from each Datacenter in the inventory.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use VMware::VIRuntime;
Opts::parse();
Opts::validate();
Util::connect();
my $dvpgs = Vim::find_entity_views(view_type => "DistributedVirtualPortgroup",
properties => \['name']);
foreach (@{$dvpgs}) {
my $portgroup = $_->{'name'};
print "Distributed Virtual Portgroup: $portgroup\n";
}
Just a quick note in case someone else has run into this snag with the VI Perl SDK and needed a fix. Obviously this requires modifying the VICommon.pm module provided by the SDK. The other option would be to build PropertyFilterSpecs and call RetrieveProperties, skipping the utility function find_entity_view.
EDIT: Ugh, the forum code mangled the function, watch directly copying and pasting from this post! Look at datacenterNetTraversalSpec which I added to the subroutine to support the networkFolder with find_entity_view.
Great post Ruben!
Sounds more like a bug to me and something that VMware should fix
I had not dug into the VICommon.pm when I had to extrac vDS information and had to go through the ugly route of traversing datacenter/networks to get to the vDS and vDP
=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".
Very slick solution indeed, glad you shared with the community!
You really have to love Perl.
Agreed!
=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".
