Programatically Generate Remote Console URL

[cody_bunch]

How does one programiatically query virtual center to generate the remote console URL for guests?

~ Cody

[ssurana]

Hi Cody,

You cannot generate the remote console URL for the VMs using the VI SDK. You would need to use the web access to do so.

~ Sidharth

[cody_bunch]

Any guidance on doing it that way?

[jrackliffe]

Cody,

It looks like that the "hash" used is just a Base64 encoding. You can confirm this by generating a URL, grabbing the "view" paramete, removing the final underscore and doing a Base64 decode. And no I can't read Base64, but I can read javascript functions in the VMDirectSetup.do.

In .NET/C# that is Console.WriteLine(Encoding.ASCII.GetString(Convert.FromBase64String(b642text)));

So for the opposite you could just work backwords and generate a base64 string that covers you.

Console.WriteLine(Convert.ToBase64String(Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(text2b64)));

Looking at a couple examples I did to confirm this was the core of the wsUrl is "wsUrl=https://localhost/sdk?vmId=VirtualMachine|vm-9999&ui=36"

So you would just need to update the "vm-9999" w the moref id from VI SDK. The ui (I think) is the integer generated from the sum of the checkboxes you see in the ui. false/false = 0, true/false = 4 + 8, false/true = 1 + 32, true/true = 4 + 32 (36 is what I used)

So using the vm moref id and your "ui" selection you can genenratethe URL on demand. Build your string, encode to base64, append an underscore "_" to the end of the b64 string, take that whole chunk and append that to your VCs "https://<vc URL>/ui/vmDirect.do?view=" URL which will look like it was generated from the console UI.

Hope this helps and hope that it doesn't get swatted by the mods.

J

[WoanTin]

Hi jrackliffe,

What I have encoded is "wsUrl=http://localhost:8085&vmId=VirtualMachine|1040&ui=36". From VI SDK, the moref of vm is vm-78, but what I get is 1040. Do you have any idea how to get 1040? Thanks for your help.

WT

[rbmadison]

See my post below for what you want.

Thanks,

Rick

[orchestrationio]

We are thinking of having a VirtualCenter for each customer we support, and so the other day I made a Perl script to generate remote consoles for the VMs so the OS admins wouldn't have to keep track of what VM is on what VC. I've attached a stripped down version of the script. It just prints an HTML link to the VM. If this works for you, you should be able modify it. Hope it helps.

[vAjit]

bombpop: Thanks for uploading the script, however I am having trouble using the same, I get the below output when I execute the same, I was wondering if you could help me to figure out how to fix this..

C:\Documents and Settings\*******\Desktop\vmware>generate_remote_console.pl --server 10.31.78.147 --username administrator --password ********

<a href="https://10.31.78.147/ui/vmDirect.do?view=d3NVcmw9aHR0cDovL2xvY2FsaG9zdC9zZGsmdm1JZD1WaXJ0dWFsTWFjaGluZXx2bS0yMzcmdWk9MzM=_">marga-win2k3</a><br /><a hr

ef="https://10.31.78.147/ui/vmDirect.do?view=d3NVcmw9aHR0cDovL2xvY2FsaG9zdC9zZGsmdm1JZD1WaXJ0dWFsTWFjaGluZXx2bS0zNjQmdWk9MzM=_">marga-win2k3</a><br /><a href="h

ttps://10.31.78.147/ui/vmDirect.do?view=d3NVcmw9aHR0cDovL2xvY2FsaG9zdC9zZGsmdm1JZD1WaXJ0dWFsTWFjaGluZXx2bS00MTImdWk9MzM=_">vTest</a><br /><a href="https://10.31

.78.147/ui/vmDirect.do?view=d3NVcmw9aHR0cDovL2xvY2FsaG9zdC9zZGsmdm1JZD1WaXJ0dWFsTWFjaGluZXx2bS0xNTYmdWk9MzM=_">Win2k3-Test</a><br /><a href="https://10.31.78.14

7/ui/vmDirect.do?view=d3NVcmw9aHR0cDovL2xvY2FsaG9zdC9zZGsmdm1JZD1WaXJ0dWFsTWFjaGluZXx2bS0zNTQmdWk9MzM=_">vWindowsXP32Bit</a><br />

End Disconnect

C:\Documents and Settings\********\Desktop\vmware>

I presume I need to use for the VM named marga-win2k3, but it doesn't work.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[lamw]

Here is a Perl script that'll generate the proper remote console URL for a VM:

=========================================================================

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

VMware Developer Comuunity

Twitter: @lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

[vAjit]

fantastic, it works like charme, thanks a lot lamw.

[AS80]

How did you run this ? from a Windows or Linux computer.. Can you send me the exact syntax that use.. I am having trouble running this

Can you run it against a vcenter or you have to run it for a each individual VM