Using PowerCLI with Flexclone rapidclone to Re-deploy several servers Daily

[ScottS2012]

Hi,

We are Currently using vSphere4.1 with NetApp SAN and have installed Flexclone Rapidclone. We have deployed several servers successfully from a Flexclone template using rapidclone.

The servers in question are Windows 2008 RDS servers, which we would like to destroy and recreate on a daily basis.

We would like to make use of the Flexclone "Re-deploy" feature, which  will power off the servers and redploy the image to them, however we want to do this on an automated nightly schedule.

There is not a lot of examples on the web on how to do this and with what application.

I guess the obvious choice would be PowerCLI, but have no idea how to write the script.

Can anyone provide any information on how to go about starting this script or whether there is a recording tool that will convert mouse movements in vSphere into PowerCLI commands. I have tried to use Onyx 2.0 but for some reason it does not produce any output when cloning  using "NetApp - Provisioning & Cloning" from the context menu in vShpere.

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Regards,

Scots.

[LucD · Accepted solution]

I think that this rapidclone doesn't use public vSphere API methods.

That probably explains why you don't see anything in Onyx.

Does this rapidclone come with API and/or cmdlets ?

[ScottS2012]

Thanks for the prompt reply. I thought it may be something like that. Do you have any other ideas on how I can capture this information, or a sample code that I could modify to re-deploy these servers using PowerCLI?

Thanks,

Scott.

[LucD]

Did you already check the NetApp PowerShell module, it provides a huge number of cmdlets for NetApp environments.

[ScottS2012]

With reference to the APIs I found this on NetApp website: -  https://communities.netapp.com/docs/DOC-11407

VSC Provisioning and Cloning PowerShell Cmdlets

created by costea on 14-Jun-2011 06:33, last modified by costea on 14-Jun-2011 09:21

Version 2

The Virtual Storage Console (VSC)  Provisioning and Cloning Application Programming Interface (API) was  initially released with (Rapid Cloning Utility) RCU version 2.1.  The  API is exposed using Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP).  This API can  be thought of as a 'higher level' API which makes use of the NetApp  Controller API (know as the Manage ONTAP SDK) and the VMware Virtual Center API (known as the VMware vSphere Web Services SDK).  Neither additional API is required for an application or script to consume the RCU API.

The RCU API is designed to be leveraged with the VMware vSphere Web Services SDK to offload the intricacies of storage object cloning while cloning virtual machines. To this end, the managed object  reference returned by the VMware vSphere Web Services SDK is used to  identify components in the vCenter Inventory. You can view this  information using the Managed Object Browser on the vCenter server.

The documentation for the Provisioning and Cloning API is found in Appendix B of the NetApp Virtual Storage Console 2.1 for VMware vSphere Provisioning and Cloning Administration Guide.   A set of PowerShell cmdlets have been written that wrap calls into the  API.  Attached below are two zip files containing the PowerShell cmdlets  and some sample scripts of how to use it.

These cmdlets can be used in conjunction with the NetApp Data OnTap PowerShell Toolkit and the VMware vSphere PowerCLI to easily manage your Virtual Infrastructure.

Does this help at all?

Scott.

[LucD]

I would first check if the OnTap PowerShell module supports this rapidclone.

Why don't you raise the question in the OnTap forum ?

I'm afraid I don't know the rsapidclone process nor the OnTap module very well.

[ScottS2012]

OK I'll try there. Thanks for your help, at least I can rule out using Onyx for this task.