Blog from October, 2020

We are pleased to announce we released the ITS Cloud API v3.13.1 with the following improvements and bug fixes:

Improvements

VM/SCSI support sharing mode (create, update) (#1431) 

Endpoints

• /v2/vm/<vm-id>/controller/scsi (POST)
• /v2/vm/<vm-id>/controller/scsi/<bus>/sharing (PUT)
• /v2/vss/vm-disk-scsi-controller-sharing (GET)

Description

SCSI controllers now support advanced settings such as sharing for both new controllers and existing controllers. SCSI controllers can be created using the following payloads:

["lsilogic", "paravirtual"]

[
 {"type": "lsilogic"},
 {"type": "paravirtual", "sharing": "virtualSharing"}
]

Supported sharing is available in the following resource.

{
	"_links": {
	"self": "https://vss-api-dev.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/vss/vm-disk-scsi-controller-sharing",
	"vss": "https://vss-api-dev.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/vss"
	},
	"data": [
		{
			"description": "The virtual SCSI bus is not shared.",
			"type": "nosharing"
		},
		{
			"description": "The virtual SCSI bus is shared between two or more virtual machines residing on different physical hosts.",
			"type": "physicalsharing"
		},
		{
			"description": "The virtual SCSI bus is shared between two or more virtual machines. In this case, no physical machine is involved.",
			"type": "virtualsharing"
	}
	],
	"meta": {
	"count": 3,
	"time": "0.00180s",
	"user": "jm"
	}
}

VM/Disk support backing_mode in disk payload (create and update disk) (#1432) 

VM/Disk support backing_sharing in disk payload (create and update disk) (#1433)

Endpoints

• /v2/vm/<vm-id>/disk (POST)
• /v2/vm/<vm-id>/spec (GET)
• /v2/vm (POST)

Description

Before this version, disks were created by providing an array or list of numbers which defined the new disk capacity, however in some cases there might be the need of creating a disk with a different backing mode such as independent_persistent or which are excluded from snapshots and make the revert or removal faster. 

From now on, disk definition support two payloads:

[40, 500]

[
  {"capacity_gb": 40},
  {"capacity_gb": 500, "backing_mode": "independent_persistent" }
]

With this improvement, a disk can be created with a given backing mode from the beginning instead of creating the disk and then updating the backing mode to a desired setup. If backing_mode is not included, defaults persistent.

Advanced configuration also supports backing_sharing modes in the disk specification as follows:

[
 {
	"backing_mode": "persistent",
	"backing_sharing": "sharingnone",
	"capacity_gb": 10
},
{
	"backing_mode": "independent_persistent",
	"backing_sharing": "sharingnone",
	"capacity_gb": 100
},
{
	"backing_mode": "persistent",
	"backing_sharing": "sharingnone",
	"capacity_gb": 200
}
]

Supported sharing is available in the following resource.

{
	"_links": {
	"self": "https://vss-api-dev.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/vss/vm-disk-mode",
	"vss": "https://vss-api-dev.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/vss"
	},
	"data": [
		{
		"description": "The virtual disk is shared between multiple virtual machines.",
		"type": "sharingmultiwriter"
	},
	{
		"description": "The virtual disk is not shared.",
		"type": "sharingnone"
	}
	],
	"meta": {
	"count": 2,
	"time": "0.00171s",
	"user": "josem"
	}
}

VM/Add last_powered_on, last_powered_off, last_shutdown_on and decommissioned_on attributes   (#1437)

Endpoints

• /v2/vm

Description

Virtual Machine summary provides last_powered_on, last_powered_off, last_shutdown which are updated based on VSS API tasks or vSphere events.

Bug Fixes

VM/Remove VSS option from vm causes ValueError: list.remove(x): x not in list (#1434)

Endpoints

• /vm/<vm-id>/vss/option/<option> (DELETE)

VM/Performance throws IndexError: list index out of range when performance manager not providing metrics (#1435)

Endpoints

• /vm/<vm-id>/performance (GET)

VM/Release IP issues when decommissioning a VM (#1435)

Endpoints

• /vm/<vm-id> (DELETE)

VSS-CLI v0.9.0 is available for download via PyPI or GitLab. Latest version includes the following improvements and bug fixes:

Improvements

core: pyvss v0.15.1 -> v0.16.0 (#358)

️compute vm set controller scsi up --sharing: update SCSI sharing mode (#359)

Commands:

• compute vm set controller scsi up

For example

vss-cli compute vm set vm-2177 controller scsi up --sharing nosharing 0

️compute vm set disk up --sharing: update Disk sharing mode (#360)

Commands:

• compute vm set disk up

For example

vss-cli compute vm set vm-2177 disk up --sharing sharingnone 1

compute vm set controller scsi mk: create SCSI controller with new spec <type>=<sharing>. (#361)

Commands:

• compute vm set controller scsi mk

For example

# backwards compatibility
# defaults:
# 		type to persistent
# 		sharing to nosharing
vss-cli compute vm set vm-2177 controller scsi mk --scsi paravirtual

# new scsi spec
vss-cli compute vm set vm-2177 controller scsi mk --scsi paravirtual=virtualsharing

compute vm set disk mk: create Disk with new spec <capacity>=<backing_mode>=<backing_sharing>. (#362)

Commands:

• compute vm set disk mk

For example

# backwards compatibility 
# defaults: 
#           backing_mode to persistent
#           backing_sharing to sharingnone
vss-cli compute vm set vm-2177 disk mk --disk 100

# new disk spec
vss-cli compute vm set vm-2177 disk mk --disk 100=independent_persistent=sharingnone

compute vm mk: create vm with Disks new spec <capacity>=<backing_mode>=<backing_sharing>. (#363)

Commands:

• compute vm mk shell
  compute vm mk from-clone
  compute vm mk from-file
  compute vm mk from-image
  compute vm mk from-template

For example

# backwards compatibility 
# defaults: 
#           backing_mode to persistent
#           backing_sharing to sharingnone
vss-cli compute vm set vm-2177 disk mk --disk 100

# new disk spec
vss-cli compute vm set vm-2177 disk mk --disk 100=independent_persistent=sharingnone

--wait/--no-wait: add option to the main cli instead of per sub-command that submits requests. (#364)

Description:

This change provides the ability to better handle the --wait/--no-wait option for the global cli context instead of per sub-command. The --wait/--no-wait option is also settable via VSS_WAIT_FOR_REQUESTS environment variable.

Commands:

• vss-cli

For example

vss-cli --wait compute vm set vm-2177 state on

# or
VSS_WAIT_FOR_REQUESTS=1
vss-cli compute vm set vm-21777 state on

config set: add wait_for_requests option in general settings in configuration file (config.yaml). (#364)

Description:

After running for the first time v0.9.0 of the VSS-CLI the wait_for_requests option in the configuration file will show up and can be set by either executing either one of the following commands:

Commands:

• configure set wait_for_requests 1
  configure edit

For example

vss-cli configure set wait_for_requests 1
Updating wait_for_requests from True -> True.
~/.vss-cli/config.yaml updated 💾

# or
vss-cli configure edit
general:
	check_for_updates: true
	check_for_messages: true
	default_endpoint_name: vss-api-dev
	debug: false
	output: auto
	table_format: simple
	timeout: 60
	verbose: false
	columns_width: -1
	wait_for_requests: true
...

compute: remove --wait/--no-wait option from the following commands (#364)

Description:

Since now the --wait/--no-wait option lives at the main cli level, it has been removed from the following subcommand contexts:

Commands:

• compute vm set
  compute vm mk
  compute vm rm
  compute template rm
  compute folder set
  compute folder mk
  compute folder rm
  compute inventory mk

For example

vss-cli --wait compute inventory mk

id : 25
status : SUBMITTED
task_id : 4b877caa-c64c-487d-b797-9e65459f23cc
message : Request has been accepted for processing

⏳ Waiting for request 25 to complete...
🎉 Request 25 completed successfully:

warnings : Inventory Report has been created 9d8a8f86-9f69-4428-b39a-1acf3870cd99.csv
errors :
Would you like to download? [y/N]: y

FILE : ./9d8a8f86-9f69-4428-b39a-1acf3870cd99.csv