Automating VCF – Commission Hosts

calendar May 16, 2020 · 3 min read · API PowerShell VCF  ·
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This is the third of six blogs in a series that discusses automating VMware Cloud Foundation using the Public APIs and PowerVCF. The series illustrates deploying the Management Domain, creating a Network Pool, commissioning ESXi host, deploying a Workload Domain including NSX-T Edge Cluster and vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager.

In this post, we take a look at how to commission hosts in SDDC Manager, and consume the new network pool to support a workload domain deployment.

VMware Cloud Foundation APIs Used

  • POST /v1/hosts
  • GET /v1/network-pools
  • GET /v1/tasks/{id}

PowerVCF Cmdlets

  • Commission-VCFHost
  • Get-VCFNetworkPool
  • Get-VCFTask

PowerShell Scripts

Procedure

  1. Download and populate the Planning and Preparation Workbook for your target platform.

  2. To generate the JSON spec using inputs from the Planning and Preparation Workbook run the following command:

1.\createCommissionHostSpec.ps1 -Workbook "E:\MyLab\pnpWorkbook.xlsx" -Json "E:\MyLab\sfo\sfo-workloadCommissionHosts.json"

The createCommissionHostSpec.ps1 script will open the supplied Planning and Preparation Workbook, read the Workload Domain tab into a variable and then proceed to generate the JSON spec required by the Public API.

  1. Authenticate to the SDDC Manager appliance by running the following command:
1Request-VCFManager -fqdn "sfo-vcf01.sfo.rainpole.io" -username "[email protected]" -password "VMw@re1!"
  1. Obtain the details of the network pool by running the following command:
1$networkPool = Get-VCFNetworkPool | Where {$_.name -eq $networkPoolName}

Using the Get-VCFNetworkPool cmdlet we want to retrieve the details of the new network pool from SDDC Manager and store them in a variable which is used in the next step. Here we are using the $networkPoolName variable which is created during the execution of the createCommissionHostSpec.ps1 script to identify the name of the network pool as defined in the Planning and Preparation Workbook.

  1. Update the POOL-ID value in the JSON spec with the unique ID of the network pool by running the following command:
1(Get-Content "E:\MyLab\sfo\sfo-workloadCommissionHosts.json") | Foreach-Object {$_ -replace 'POOL-ID', $($networkPool.id)} | Set-Content "E:\MyLab\sfo\sfo-workloadCommissionHosts.json"

In this procedure we are performing a search and replace in the sfo-workloadCommissionHosts.json where we replace POOL-ID with the unique id of the network pool contained in the $networkPool.id element of the variable from step 5.

  1. Start the commissioning host workflow by running the following command:
1$commissionHosts = Commission-VCFHost -json :E:\MyLab\sfo\sfo-workloadCommissionHosts.json"

Using the Commission-VCFHosts cmdlet, we trigger the commissioning hosts workflow, here I'm capturing the output of the command into a variable to be used in the next step.

  1. Poll the status of the commission host workflow, by running the following command:
1Do { $status = Get-VCFTask -id $commissionHosts.id} While ($status.status -eq "In Progress")

Here we are polling the status of the workflow, using the unique ID from the Commission-VCFHost cmdlet which we retrieve from the variable $commissionHosts.id and pass this time to the Get-VCFTask cmdlet. We perform a Do / While loop where we are looking for status of "In Progress", once the state changes from "In Progress" we break from the loop.

That completes the process of generating a commission hosts JSON spec used by the public API and running the commission hosts workflow in SDDC Manager.

Posts in this Series