tganchev's Posts

Hi, You should try posting the question in the Java Automation SDK forum​ as the people frequenting the current one are mostly experts in extending the vSphere UI. Having said that I think we can help with the general problem of how to set up SSL trust with some remote party. The Automation SDK samples will not demonstrate this as it makes the samples hard to follow. From your question I assume you don't want to / cannot rely on full certificate chain validation i.e. the root certificate of the vCenter is not trusted. If this is the case you need to give your client process some information based on which to confirm the identity of the STS - prioviding an SSL thumbprint is a popular way of doing that. What you have to do is implement a TrustManager that accepts the thumprint of the STS as a parameter -through a system property, command-line parameter, config file, etc. You need to past this TrustManager when configuring the SSL socket factory. I'd suggest not using the HttpsURLConnection.setDefaultSSLSocketFactory(sc.getSocketFactory()) API since it applies to all opened SSL sockets that don't use a different socket factory. Instead pass a custom SSL connection factory to your HTTP client library of choice. Both of my recommendations can be seen in the following article: How to Setup Custom SSLSocketFactory's TrustManager per Each URL Connection - DZone Java. Let me know if I can help further or need to provide more details. Best, Tony

Jesse, Unfortunately the root cause is not immediately visible in the log. We're working on addressing this in subsequent vSphere releases. In the mean time to figure out what's wrong you need to enable the DEBUG-level logging for the plugin deployer. To do that add the following to the logging configuration (/usr/lib/vmware-vsphere-ui/server/conf/serviceability.xml for the HTML client or /usr/lib/vmware-vsphere-client/server/conf/serviceability.xml for the Flash client)    <logger level="DEBUG" additivity="false" name="com.vmware.vise.vim.extension">       <appender-ref ref="LOG_FILE" />    </logger> - just before the trailing closing </configuration> tag. Then, clean the plugin cache folder and restart the UI service. You should see information about the correct root-cause of the exception coming from the com.vmware.vise.vim.extension.VcExtensionManager appender. Let me know what happens when you try that. Tony

Hi Eric, The /list API has not been secured as it will not yield any sensitive information as it does not touch the vCenter APIs. If you call the APIs tghat retrieve vCenter data you'd see that they will result in unauthenticated API calls in a new browser session or if you use curl from the command line. In general it is a good idea for us to illustrate hos to secure the sample plugin but the normal case is that each plugin has to talk to APIs that need authentication and these APIs guarantee the overall security of the solution. Moreover the plugin Java bit running inside the vSphere client should not be storing any information on the vCenter appliance therefore it does not need it's own authentication separate from the one that the backend APIs sanction. Best, Tony

Thank you for the details. I have a few more clarifying questions: - you mention version 6.7 - is it the GA, some patch or Update 1? - in addition to the authentication plugin you mentioned do you install additional plugins that show up in the vSphere Web Client - such as a backup solution or a management plugin coming from your server vendor? Also, let me know if you find any error in the vsphere_client_virgo.log. Thanks, Tony

Hi Sam1000, Thank you for sharing this issue. The error in itself points to the communication between the Flash player and vCenter breaking down. The $VMWARE_LOG_DIR/vsphere-client/logs/vsphere_client_virgo.log should point to some error with "endpoints-app" or "endpointsapp". Some questions to you to help me understand the root cause: - Which version of the vSphere do you have a problem with? - You mention you did log into the vSphere UI. Did you manage to see the vSphere inventory tree loaded or did you wait all of these minutes on the blue screen? - Do you have any plugins installed? Thanks, Tony

Hi Jesse, The work-in-progress view is not present in any version of the vSphere Client. The wizards today are behaving similar to how they did in the Desktop client. I don't know if there are plans to re-introduce the work-in-progress but I'd point out that one of the reasons for its existence - the slowness of loading a second tab with the whole vSphere Client in it - is no longer there since the HTML version is very fast. I'll pass your question to product management - they may come with asks for more feedback in this thread. Best, Tony

Hi, The community you posted your question to deals with the SDK for the vSphere client. From what I understand your problem is specifically related to Power CLI and not to any specific Client or vSphere API so I would recommend that you post your question to the VMware PowerCLI community. In the mean time I'll ping the PowerCLI team to respond if possible to this thread too. Thanks, Tony

Not to my knowledge You mention that the documentation did not help in your effort. May I suggest that you give some example of what things you are trying to build and links to the docs and we can figure out what is missing - and of course what is the right thing to do. Best, Tony

Hi, Can you share a little bit about the UI screens you want to build that require these additional screen real estate. The tabs following the Monitor and Configure tabs tend to show lists of related objects e.g. Hosts under a Cluster, VMs under a host, etc. Do you have as similar case where you are showing a list of object related to the inventory object with large number of columns? We're also looking into solving the problem of providing more real estate to the pages under Configure and Monitor as they are the natural go-to-place for vSphere users when they need to manipulate an object or troubleshoot it respectively. Best, Tony

Hi There is a Fling project you can use to talk to vSphere SOAP APIs - vSphere SDK for JavaScript. It also supports the newer automation APIs. You can also use the existing REST APIs for vCenter as demonstrated in the vCenter API Explorer. Tony

Hi Ashok, Given that applyaddressUpdate is a custom property implemented by your plugin, why don't you implement a second property called applyaddressUpdateText. The second one will hold the localized value - say "Yes" or "No". In the end - you'd use applyaddressUpdate for sorting (and potentially exporting) - and applyaddressUpdateTest for the text in the column. Tony

Hi, The extension-registration tool is prepared for development purposes. It's not very user-friendly for plugin users. Normally plugins come with their own registration tool/installer - and what it is exactly depends on the particular use-case. We ship the extension registration tool with its source code for you to integrate it into your installer - or for illustration purposes if your installer is not Java-based. Best, Tony

Both global-scoped and isolated plugins can be hot-redeployed in vCSA. With isolated plugins, you need to patch the PAR with the changed bundles so it takes one more step. Isolated scope is the preference for production deployments (we don't certify global-scoped plugins AFAIR) while global-scope is useful on your development box. PARs are the way to guarantee that the third-party libs you ship with do not clash with the third-party libs of another plugin.

It's not the SDK mismatch. I misread the version - 6.7.0.200 is a patch of 6.7 GA. Spring version mismatch can't be too. Just make sure you are not packaging spring packages with your plugin. How are you deploying your plugin to the vCSA if not using the ExtensionManager?