API

Following on from me recent post deploying Kubernetes with the NSX-T CNP, I wanted to extend my environment to make use of the vSphere Cloud Provider to enable Persistent Volumes backed by vSphere storage. This allows me to use Storage Policy to create Persistent Volumes based on policy. For example, I’m going to create two classes of storage, Fast and Slow - Fast will be vSAN based and Slow will be NFS based.

I’ve done a fair amount of work learning VMware PKS and NSX-T, but I wanted to drop down a level and get more familiar with the inner workings for Kubernetes, as well as explore some of the newer features that are exposed by the NSX Container Plugin that are not yet in the PKS integrations. The NSX-T docs are…not great, I certainly don’t think you can work out the steps required from the official NCP installation guide without a healthy dollop of background knowledge and familiarity with Kubernetes and CNI.

I ran into this UI bug the other day when I was trying to enable route redistribution on an Edge in a Secondary site of a cross-vCenter NSX deployment. The Edge itself was deployed correctly, and configured to peer with a physical northbound router, however when I attempted to configure the route redistribution I was unable to do so. Fortunately, the solution was simple - use the API.

Just a quick post today, as I was working with a customer recently and we were trying to retrieve the Custom Properties assigned to a vRealize Automation 7.3 deployed Virtual Machine, similar to the one in the image below. It’s not as intuitive as you’d like it to be because of the split between IaaS APIs and Cafe APIs. Below you can see I’ve deployed a simple CentOS blueprint with a custom property at the Blueprint level (called “BlueprintLevel” with a value of “CustomProperty”) and a custom property at the VM level (called “CustomProperty” and a value of “Test123”).

Last Tuesday I had the privilege of presenting an introduction to the NSX APIs on vBrownBag EMEA - you can view the recording below or on vBrownBag’s youtube channel. During the presentation I showed a mind map of the API, which I’ve made available on GitHub in PDF format I’ve also published the Postman collection and environment I used during the demonstration, which covers some basic configuration and deploy tasks:

Time to publish the recording for the 10th episode of vROps Webinar Series. This time around we spoke about vRealize Operations Manager Resful API and how to use it. Post 20 minutes of slide-ware, I jumped into the lab and thanks to the demo god, we demonstrated a number of use cases and browsed through the documentation to make it easier for you to consume and use the same. Big thanks to @sunny_dua for doing the session while I was MIA you are a legend buddy!

The month has been extremely busy but we still want to continue with the momentum of webinar series getting to the business end of the year. This time around we will talk about vRealize Operations Manager API. API is your friend if you are trying to automate things which you would normally do on GUI. While GUI is a favourite of most, the geeks prefer the API since that helps them to programatically initiate tasks and go out for a coffee.