VSS Command Line Interface (vss-cli) v0.7.0 🎉

VSS-CLI v0.7.0 is available for download via PyPI or GitLab. Latest version includes the following improvements and bug fixes:

Managed Object Reference Identifier for Virtual Machines

UUIDs have been always too hard to manage. They are long and sometimes meaningless but originally the ideal way to identify and efficiently look up a virtual machine in vCenter. However, earlier this year we have added support to the VSS API to lookup and identify virtual machine objects with its Managed Object Reference Identifier (moref). Every object within a vSphere environment is internally tracked, and referred to, by a unique identifier called moref. If you are familiar with other virtual infrastructure objects such as clusters, networks, folders and so on, they have a moref. In the search for a better user experience, we have decided to prioritize the vSphere identifier (moref) over the UUID which brings an additional level of interoperability between the ITS Private Cloud components (VSS CLI, PyVSS and VSS API) with the vCenter REST API and ease of use to the vss-cli.

Version 0.7.0 adds support to handle virtual machine commands with VM morefs in addition to UUID and Name. UUIDs will be marked as deprecated and will be removed in a future version of the vss-cli but for now, backwards compatibility is provided. This means the vss-cli supports both MoRef and UUID as virtual machine identifiers. Again, the VSS API, VSS CLI and PyVSS will still be working with UUIDs but we are planning to stick with morefs.

Improvements

List VM command adds moref to default attributes (#278)

Commands:

```
compute vm ls
```

For example

vss-cli compute vm ls -f name=Front

moref    name             folder.path                  cpu_count    memory_gb  power_state    ip_address
-------  ---------------  -------------------------  -----------  -----------  -------------  ------------
vm-2183  2004T-Frontend2  VSS > Development > Dev02            2            2  poweredOff
vm-2185  2004T-Frontend3  VSS > Development > Dev03            1            1  poweredOn

Get VM info command adds support to use moref in addition to name and uuid (#279)

Get VM info command adds `moref` attribute (#283)

Commands:

```
compute vm get
```

The following command demonstrates how to get basic Virtual Machine summary with its moref.

vss-cli compute vm get vm-2183

moref               : vm-2183
uuid                : 50309a8a-88ca-5291-2ad3-63f2522c3f8e
name                : 2004T-Frontend2
folder.path         : VSS > Development > Dev02
guest_id            : centos8_64Guest
version             : vmx-15
overall_status      : green
power_state         : poweredOff
alarms              : False
cpu                 : 2
memory_gb           : 2.0
provisioned_gb      : 82.18
snapshot            : True
disks               : 1, 2
nics                : 1
floppies            : 1

Update VM command adds support to use moref in addition to name and uuid (#280)

Commands:

```
compute vm set
```

Updating any vm attribute works with managed object reference id:

vss-cli compute vm set --wait vm-2183 cpu count 2

id                  : 186
status              : IN_PROGRESS
task_id             : 06acfd3e-3278-4123-af8d-7e17aa07aed9
message             : Request has been accepted for processing
⏳ Waiting for request 186 to complete...
🎉 Request 186 completed successfully:
warnings            : New CPU is 2
errors              :

Decommission VM command adds support to use moref and name in addition to uuid (#284)

Commands:

```
compute vm rm
```

Decommissioning virtual machines is easier now. The command now has autocompletion and supports both vm identifiers (moref, uuid) and name:

vss-cli compute vm rm --wait vm-2173 vm-2180 1908Q-VM-2

  id  status       task_id                               message
----  -----------  ------------------------------------  ----------------------------------------
 191  IN_PROGRESS  526ec374-4cbc-49f5-a91b-d9e3927711de  Request has been accepted for processing
 192  IN_PROGRESS  6398c56b-bf95-4307-acd2-ecaaad483c56  Request has been accepted for processing
 193  IN_PROGRESS  c8f4b4c8-f6b7-4117-b0b6-20685eb0c2bf  Request has been accepted for processing

⏳ Waiting for request 191 to complete...
⏳ Waiting for request 192 to complete...
⏳ Waiting for request 193 to complete...
🎉 Request 191 completed successfully:
warnings            : Virtual Machine has been deleted.
errors              :
🎉 Request 193 completed successfully:
warnings            : Virtual Machine has been deleted.
errors              :
🎉 Request 192 completed successfully:
warnings            : Virtual Machine has been deleted.
errors              :

VM requests commands provide vm_moref (#287)

Commands:

```
request new ls
```
```
request change ls
```
```
request export ls
```
```
request snapshot ls
```

The vm_moref attribute has been added to the request objects and shown as follows.

vvss-cli request new ls -f vm_name=Front

  id  created_on                   updated_on                   status     vm_moref    vm_name           approval.approved    built_from
----  ---------------------------  ---------------------------  ---------  ----------  ----------------  -------------------  ------------
  75  2020-04-24 Fri 15:36:20 EDT  2020-04-24 Fri 15:36:22 EDT  PROCESSED  vm-2182     2004T-Frontend-1  True                 os_install
  76  2020-04-24 Fri 16:36:15 EDT  2020-04-24 Fri 16:37:31 EDT  ERROR      vm-2183     2004T-Frontend2   True                 clone
  78  2020-04-24 Fri 17:06:49 EDT  2020-04-24 Fri 17:06:51 EDT  PROCESSED  vm-2185     2004T-Frontend3   True                 os_install

vss-cli request change ls -f vm_name=Front

  id  created_on                   updated_on                   status     vm_moref    vm_name           approval.approved    attribute
----  ---------------------------  ---------------------------  ---------  ----------  ----------------  -------------------  -----------
 183  2020-04-27 Mon 16:29:06 EDT  2020-04-27 Mon 16:29:06 EDT  PROCESSED  vm-2182     2004T-Frontend-1  True                 template
 185  2020-04-28 Tue 10:28:23 EDT  2020-04-28 Tue 10:28:24 EDT  PROCESSED  vm-2183     2004T-Frontend2   True                 cpu
 186  2020-04-28 Tue 10:28:31 EDT  2020-04-28 Tue 10:28:32 EDT  PROCESSED  vm-2183     2004T-Frontend2   True                 cpu

Virtual Machine HA-Group mk command support for moref or name (#281)

Virtual Machine HA-Group get command support for moref or name (#282)

Commands:

```
compute vm set ha-group mk
```
```
compute vm get ha-group
```

Create a virtual machine ha-group with morefs or names:

vss-cli compute vm set --wait vm-2183 ha-group mk vm-2185

id                  : 195
status              : IN_PROGRESS
task_id             : d7adc2cd-1e83-42de-bf85-75ec159d512f
message             : Request has been accepted for processing
⏳ Waiting for request 195 to complete...
🎉 Request 195 completed successfully:
warnings            : New VM HA Group updated on vm-2183 to vm-2185, vm-2183, New VM HA Group updated on vm-2185 to vm-2185, vm-2183
errors              :

vss-cli compute vm get vm-2185 ha-group

moref    name             VALID
-------  ---------------  -------
vm-2183  2004T-Frontend2  False
vm-2185  2004T-Frontend3  False

Virtual Machine HA-Group mg for existing ha-group migration (#294)

Commands:

```
compute vm set ha-group mg
```

Although all existing HA Groups have been migrated to the new Moref format, we have created a command to migrate existing vm with ha-group:

vss-cli compute vm set --wait vm-2183 ha-group mg

Get quick link to vSphere Client from vss-cli (#286)

Commands:

```
compute vm get vsphere-link
```

The command allows to generate and launch a vSphere client link to a given virtual machine:

Usage: vss-cli compute vm get vsphere-link [OPTIONS]

  Get vSphere Client Link to VM

Options:
  -l, --launch  Launch link to default handler
  --help        Show this message and exit.

vss-cli compute vm get Frontend vsphere-link --launch

value               : https://vcenter-lab.eis.utoronto.ca/ui/#?extensionId=vsphere.core.inventory.serverObjectViewsExtension&objectId=urn:vmomi:VirtualMachine:vm-2183:f699427d-21a0-4509-8184-dff02273538a&navigator=vsphere.core.viTree.vmsAndTemplatesView

Updated documentation to prioritize moref over uuid (#293)

Update pyvss from 0.13.1-> 0.14.1 (#285)

Update click-spinner from v0.1.8 -> v0.1.10 (#291)

Bug Fixes

Missing autocompletion for request new get command (#289)

Missing autocompletion for request snapshot get command (#290)

Upgrade

Remember, VSS-CLI documentation is now available in VSS-CLI and the full Change Log is available here. Upgrade or install VSS-CLI as follows:

# using vss-cli
vss-cli upgrade 

# upgrade with pip
pip install vss-cli --upgrade

# install
pip install vss-cli

For more information, please refer to the official documentation site.