[vCenter] - How to connect to vCenter via Rest API

Issue

Recently I had to create a script that grab some information from vCenter Server via Rest API calls. To do so, I had to create a few lines of code to authenticate on the vCenter, obtain a sessions and the c. Let's see bellow how does it works ....

Solution

The script must run on an Ubuntu machine, so I decided to make a bash script and use cURL. Information regarding api call, can be found at the following link https://developer.vmware.com/apis
More specific information regarding, for example, how to list the VMs already present on the inventory, can be found here.

First of all we have to create a session with the API. This is the equivalent of login. This operation exchanges user credentials supplied in the security context for a session token that is to be used for authenticating subsequent calls. To authenticate subsequent calls clients are expected to include the session token. For REST API calls the HTTP vmware-api-session-id header field should be used for this.

The call looks like this:

curl -sk -u username:password -X POST https://{vCenter}/api/session

The authentication, can be also be passed in a Base64 encoded value of username:password as header parameter, like this:

echo -n 'username:password' | base64

in a single line of code:

curl -ks -H "Authorization: Basic `echo -n 'username:password' | base64`" -X POST https://{vCenter}/api/session

For the rest API calls we can use the returned vmware-api-session-id.

Assembly the script all together it looks like the following :

#!/bin/bash

VC=192.168.1.90
ADMIN=administrator@vsphere.local
PASSWORD=VMware1!

Session_ID=`curl -sk -u ${ADMIN}:${PASSWORD} -X POST https://${VC}/api/session`

# Request sent through session ID
curl -ks -H "vmware-api-session-id: ${Session_ID:1:-1}" https://${VC}/api/vcenter/vm

Outcomes bellow

That's it.

[MS Windows] - How to extend trial version

Issue

Working within a LAB and/or in a nested environment often requires the deployment a Windows Server Machines (for instance, for a local services such as Active Directory, DNS, NTP and so on).
It may happen that the tests have not been completed, but the Windows trial period has expired.
Below I'm reporting few steps to extend the Windows Trial Period for other 180 days.

Solution

It is possible to "rearm" MS Windows (in my case Server 2022), extending the Trial Period of 180 days for 6 times each time. Let's see how to do that ...

Taking a look at the desktop, we can see the countdown in the corner down right. In my case, the period is expired.

Let's "run as administrator" a powershell, and run ....

slmgr -dlv

.. as we can see above, we still have 6 shots (Remaining Windows rearm count).

.. then, we rearm Windows .. running the command below and verifying that the command complete successfully ..

slmgr -rearm

.. we must restart the server, performing in powershell "Restart-Computer" or ..

shutdown /f /t 0 /r

When the Server will be newly up and running let's check that everything worked fine, performing the following commands...

slmgr -dli

slmgr -ato

slmgr -dlv

That's it.

[Nested ESXi] - How to properly configure it

Issue

Working within a LAB and/or in a nested environment often requires the deployment of new ESXi hosts. The fastest way to have new ESXi hosts deployed quickly is to clone them from a master VM.
Below few steps to follow to properly create a working VM clone in a nested environment.

Solution

• First of all, we do a normal installation in a neste environment of our ESXi master VM, giving to it minimal resources, as:
  - 2 vCPU
  - 8 GB of RAM
  - 20GB of Disk (Thin Provision)
  - 4 vNIC
  
  
  
  
  
• When started, we get into ssh and we change the VMkernel MAC address by running the following command:
  
  esxcli system settings advanced set -o /Net/FollowHardwareMac -i 1
  
  
• To have the unique UUID on each host, we need to delete the "/system/uuid" record stored in /etc/vmware/esx.conf. To do this we can edit the file and delete the corresponding line, or launch the command below, which replaces the corresponding line with an empty line.
  
  sed -i 's/^\(\/system\/uuid\).*//' /etc/vmware/esx.conf
  
  
  
  
  
  
• It is possible to shutdown the ESXi master VM and convert it to a template, or leave it as is to be cloned later when needed.
  
  
  
• When needed, we can clone the master VM to deploy our ESXi nodes. On starting up of the VM, a new UUID will be generated.
  Once the ESXi VM clones is pawered on, we can change network settings on them (IP addresses, hostnames, etc.).
  
  
• Let's generate a new certificate, typing the following command:
  
  /sbin/generate-certificates
  
  
• Let's restart the following services, in order to make the host ready for our LAB.
  
  /etc/init.d/hostd restart && /etc/init.d/vpxa restart
  
  
  

That's it.