jonathanw Tracker

Specific package versions for DS 1.1 beta?

jonathanw — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 22:21:00 GMT

Is there a recommendation for specific Tanzu package versions to be used in the beta for DS 1.1 beta or do we just use the latest published version of each package (Postgres, MySQL, RabbitMQ)?

I know in the 1.0 beta for RabbitMQ the documentation stated using a specific package version (1.3.0) so keen to understand the guidance for 1.1 beta.

Re: Error starting cse.service from CSE 4.0 beta build 20547633

jonathanw — Sun, 13 Nov 2022 19:59:34 GMT

Hi Darcy,

The API configs from that document (including VCDKE Config Entity and VCDKE Config Entity Instance) have already been applied to this environment to run the (earlier) CSE 4 beta. This appears to be something new/broken with the updated CSE 4 beta available in the Data Solutions downloads.

Regards, Jon.

Error starting cse.service from CSE 4.0 beta build 20547633

jonathanw — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 02:37:17 GMT

Attempting to deploy CSE 4.0 beta with Data Solutions beta, the download of cse in the Data Solutions beta is updated from the build available in the CSE 4.0 beta topic.

When deploying the build from the Data Solutions downloads (build 20547633), the deployment works fine (it now asks for an API key for the CSE service account rather than the password, but that's fine). However, the cse service fails to start on the appliance:

panic: failed to read VCDKEConfig RDE with the provider credentials: [error retrieving the VCD-KE config from the RDE: [<nil>]]

Any ideas on the best way to troubleshoot this? I'm guessing that the API updates made to get the earlier 4.0 beta CSE working need updating for this later build?

Re: Import OVF with .ISO not working

jonathanw — Thu, 27 Dec 2018 03:44:33 GMT

Not tried it, but I suspect this is working as designed - not sure import/export of OVFs with ISO's attached to the VM is meant to be supported.

You can almost certainly get around it by:

- Take a backup copy of all the files in case something goes wrong...

- Edit the VDA01.ovf file with a text editor and remove the reference to the ISO file.

- Delete the VDA01.mf file (since the manifest will contain a reference to the ISO).

- Upload the VM OVF (without the ISO).

You should then be able to separately upload the ISO to a catalog and re-attach it to the VM.

Re: vcloud director appliance 9.5 setup question

jonathanw — Thu, 27 Dec 2018 03:39:04 GMT

When you deploy the vCD appliance you need to set the guest VM properties for the ip address (as well as gateway, netmask, dns servers etc.) I believe there is/was an issue setting the VM properties in the vSphere H5 client so you may need to use the legacy client for this.

vCD 9.5 appliance uses a single IP address by default for both the https interface and the VMRC consoleproxy service (for VM console access - by default this is on port 8443).

Re: vCloud Director metadata entry type?

jonathanw — Sun, 23 Dec 2018 09:51:48 GMT

This finally bugged me enough to do something about it - due to issues with the built-in functions for creating/updating metadata entries, I ended up writing my own set of Actions for getting, setting and deleting metadata against any vCD objects of any type. I ended up having to use the API directly as there are some definite issues in the plugin libraries for metadata manipulation.

I've attached the 3 .action files I ended up creating (set, get and delete metadata value) to this post - hopefully these will be useful to someone else out there.

Jon.

Re: Cant login to vCloud Director 9.5

jonathanw — Wed, 19 Dec 2018 18:16:46 GMT

Do you have Guest Customization set with options that reset the password? - Check in the VM properties (if the options are set like this it will show you the new password under the Guest Customization section) - been caught out a few times by this.

Re: vCloud Director metadata entry type?

jonathanw — Mon, 17 Dec 2018 02:08:33 GMT

Pretty sure something like what you've suggested would work (null is returned if you attempt to read the 'wrong' type) - but I don't really like the approach of submitting up to 4 calls and expecting to get a 'null' value from them until finding one that works. Seems like there should be a 'better' way by determining the metadataEntry type first.

The instanceof test I was trying was along the lines of:

if (medadataEntry.typedValue instanceof VclMetadataStringValue) { ...handle String value }

else if (metadataEntry.typedValue instanceof VclMetadataBooleanValue) { ...handle Boolean value }

else if (metadataEntry.typedValue instanceof VclMetadataDateTimeValue) { ...handle DateTime value }

else if (metadataEntry.typedValue instanceof VclMetadataNumberValue) { ...handle Number value }

But that doesn't work (all tests fail for all metadata types)

Re: vCloud Director metadata entry type?

jonathanw — Sun, 16 Dec 2018 18:37:34 GMT

Thanks for the response, that was my first thought, but unfortunately metadataEntry.type returns:

application/vnd.vmware.vcloud.metadata.value+xml

For any metadata type - which while being accurate is not that helpful.

Re: vCloud Director metadata entry type?

jonathanw — Sun, 16 Dec 2018 10:20:38 GMT

I know what types to expect, but how do I test an individual metadataEntry to see which of these it is?

Reading metadataEntry.typedValue gives:

DynamicWrapper (Instance) : [VclAbstractValueObject]-[class com.vmware.vmo.plugin.vcloud.model.VCloudAbstractObjectDecorator] -- VALUE : com.vmware.vmo.plugin.vcloud.model.VCloudAbstractObjectDecorator@4223fba9

I've also tried using instanceof to test for one of these object types but without success either. I'm not overly familiar with JavaScript so this is likely me not understanding object references.

vCloud Director metadata entry type?

jonathanw — Sun, 16 Dec 2018 03:23:19 GMT

I've been scratching my head over this one for a bit trying to get vRealize Orchestrator to properly get/set/update vCD metadata against a vApp/VM. How do I determine the type of metadata value? All of the examples I can see rely on the 'old' vCD API where the only valid metadata type was 'String'.

With 'testVm' set to a VM object correctly I can use the following to see all the 'String' metadata keys and values:

var metadata = testVm.getMetadata();

var metadataEntries = metadata.getTypedEntries().enumerate();

for each (var metadataEntry in metadataEntries) {

var value = metadataEntry.typedValue.getValue(new VclMetadataStringValue).value;

System.log("Metadata key: " + metadataEntry.key + " value: " + value);

}

This code works fine for metadata where the data type is 'String' (since using VclMetadataStringValue), but doesn't retrieve any keys/values from metadata fields using the other 3 data types (boolean, date/time or number). What expression can I use to determine the type of the metadataEntry so I can handle it appropriately?

Thanks in advance, Jon.

Re: Cannot connect to vCloud Director Web Console after changing IP

jonathanw — Mon, 03 Dec 2018 00:29:00 GMT

Did you re-run the vCloud Director configure script after changing the IP address?

/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/configure is the default location for this script - it will (re)confirm the IP addresses for the web portal and the consoleproxy service and alllow you to change these to reflect the new values.

Re: vROPS Tenant vApp - VM names in billing?

jonathanw — Fri, 23 Nov 2018 07:22:48 GMT

We have the same situation - it's not as bad for vApps/VMs created in 9.5 as they get the 'new' format name (VM with 4 character suffix after a '-'), but for VMs created in previous releases using the old GUID naming it's a bit of a pain.

I actually think that vCD should display the 4-character suffix and offer a way to migrate the old (GUID) names to this pattern. I like that tenants can create 20 servers called 'test1' (for example) and have these not conflict with each other, but if you do this, in the vCD interface there's no way to distinguish which server is which. (And yes, we have some tenants that like to do things like this...)

Re: vcloud director 9.5 setup question

jonathanw — Fri, 23 Nov 2018 07:14:58 GMT

In 9.5 VMware are starting a move to a single interface & IP address for vCD - you can quite happily run both the web and consoleproxy services on a single IP address (although these use different ports - 443 for web and 8443 for consoleproxy). If you use the 9.5 vCD appliance you don't get the choice the appliance is configured during deployment with a single IP.

What you do still need to be careful about is the certificates.ks file which still needs 2 aliases (http and consoleproxy) with the 2 SSL certificates (one for each service - although you can use the same certificate for both if the DNS for both services is the same). You also need to be careful to set the correct public URIs in the vCD system configuration once deployed to avoid the 'white screen of nothingness'.

Re: Integrate Bare-Metal in vCD

jonathanw — Tue, 20 Nov 2018 22:49:53 GMT

It depends what you mean by 'bare metal'...

If you are talking about having dedicated physical hardware which is assigned to a single tenant in vCD - this can be done reasonably easily.

If you are talking about having a dedicated server running an OS directly (e.g. Linux or Windows) and managed by vCD and appearing in the vCD portal - this isn't possible currently, and won't become possible with NSX-V at all since there is no way to span the network. It *may* become possible in vCD once NSX-T is fully integrated and everything is switched over, but would also most likely rely on vCD being able to talk directly to the hardware management plane (e.g. Cisco UCS Manager, Dell OpenManage, HPe Synergy, etc.) to orchestrate the hardware deployment and configuration.

Re: Deleted VDC-Error

jonathanw — Tue, 20 Nov 2018 22:44:59 GMT

Only solution to this as far as I know is a database edit by VMware support. I'd log a call and get them to fix this for you - you really don't want to be making changes to the vCD database outside of a support call.

Re: vCloud Director 9.5 tenant UI Custom Theme

jonathanw — Tue, 20 Nov 2018 02:02:12 GMT

I've been playing around with some custom themes and ended up writing a small powershell module to assist in configuring theme settings and uploading changes to vCD - might be helpful to you too: https://kiwicloud.ninja/2018/11/vcloud-director-9-html5-portal-customization/

Re: Publish workflow to org using the API

jonathanw — Tue, 20 Nov 2018 01:58:56 GMT

It looks like this functionality is exposed in the new cloudapi in vCD 9.5 (not sure if this will also apply to 9.1 - some /cloudapi/ functions exist in 9.1 too.

The API paths for these are all <your vCD host/IP>/cloudapi/ and then the appropriate link from below.

If you have access to a 9.5 environment you can browse the swagger definitions at <vCD host/IP>/api-explorer/ but I don't think this works in 9.1 (unfortunately - even though some of the actual API calls like the /cloudapi/branding do for example).

Re: vCD 9.1 + Postman and estabilish a session / Could not get any response / SSL ?

jonathanw — Tue, 14 Aug 2018 11:56:14 GMT

Easiest way around this if you don't have a trusted certificate is just disable the Postman certificate verification in the UI (File / Settings):

Re: How to check if vCloud Director 9 API is working...

jonathanw — Thu, 09 Aug 2018 03:42:17 GMT

Reading your original question - be careful with the case of your request as these are case-sensitive:

<vCD FQDN>/API/versions - is not valid.

<vCD FQDN>/api/versions - is valid