VSS Command Line Interface (vss-cli) v0.10.4🎉

VSS-CLI v0.10.4 is available for download via PyPI or GitLab. Latest version includes the following improvements and bug fixes:

Improvements

compute vm set disk mk: scsi bus support (#387)

Commands:

• compute vm set diks mk --disk
  
  

By default, the ITS Private Cloud API creates disks using the first SCSI controller and available slots in it. If a SCSI controller is full, a new controller will be created using our pre-defined settings based on operating systems.

There are cases when a virtual machine has more than one SCSI controller to ensure compatibility during the installation of the operating system and an additional using the VMware Paravirtual SCSI Controller to take advantage of the greater throughput and lower CPU utilization.

Assuming there is a virtual machine with the following SCSI controller layout:

vss-cli compute vm get vm-2551 controller scsi

label                bus_number  type
-----------------  ------------  -------------------------
SCSI controller 0             0  VirtualLsiLogicController
SCSI controller 1             1  ParaVirtualSCSIController

And there is a requirement to create a 100GB disk on SCSI controller 1 (Paravirtual), just include the scsi attribute with the bus_number as value in the --disk JSON payload as follows:

vss-cli compute vm set vm-2551 disk mk --disk '{"capacity_gb": 100, "scsi": 1}'

The previous command creates a disk in the next available slot of SCSI Controller 1.

compute vm mk from-image: --network-config improvements to handle cloud config network-config file. (#385)

compute vm mk from-image: --user-data improvements to handle cloud config user data file. (#383)

Commands:

• compute vm mk from-image
  
  

Deploying Cloud images with pre-installed operating systems such as Ubuntu Cloud in the ITS Private Cloud has become simpler and more powerful. With a recent update in the ITS Private Cloud API, we have updated the Cloud-Init (NoCloud datasource) integration, which allows customizing the Cloud image upon first boot. To deploy a virtual machine and customize it with the VSS CLI, you just need the following files:

• network-config.yaml: network configuration for the virtual machine.  For instance: 

  dhcp

  version: 2
  ethernets:
    ens192:
     dhcp4: true

  fixed ip

  version: 2
  ethernets:
    ens192:
       addresses: [192.168.0.125/24]
       gateway4: 192.168.0.1
       dhcp6: false
       nameservers:
         addresses:
           - 192.168.0.1
           - 128.100.100.128
         search:
           - dept.utoronto.ca
       dhcp4: false
       optional: true

• cloud-init.yaml: contains the cloud-config descriptor where you can define users, disk layout, filesystem setup, mounts, files, commands, etc. For example:

   Expand source

  #cloud-config
  hostname: host.dept.utoronto.ca
  timezone: America/Toronto
  fqdn: host.dept.utoronto.ca
  
  disk_setup:
    /dev/sdb:
      table_type: 'mbr'
      layout: True
      overwrite: True
    /dev/sdc:
      table_type: 'mbr'
      layout: True
      overwrite: True
  
  fs_setup:
    - label: DATA
      device: /dev/sdb
      partition: 'auto'
      filesystem: ext4
    - label: DATANOSNAP
      device: /dev/sdc
      partition: 'auto'
      filesystem: ext4
  
  mounts:
    - [ /dev/sdb, /data, "auto", "defaults,nofail", "0", "0" ]
    - [ /dev/sdc, /data-nosnap, "auto", "defaults,nofail", "0", "0" ]
  
  # Add users to the system. 
  # Users are added after groups are added.
  users:
     - name: vss-admin
      gecos: VSS Admin
      sudo: ALL=(ALL) ALL
      groups: users, admin
      ssh_import_id: None
      lock_passwd: false
      shell: /bin/bash
      passwd: <password hash>
      ssh_authorized_keys:
        - <ssh pub key 1>
  	  - <ssh pub key 2>
    - name: nosshlogins
      ssh_redirect_user: true
  
  rsyslog:
    remotes:
      log_serv: "*.* @<ip-address>:514"
  
  write_files:
  - path: /etc/update-motd.d/10-motd-vss
    permissions: '0755'
    content: |
      #!/bin/bash
  
      INSTANCE_ID=`vmtoolsd --cmd "info-get guestinfo.ut.vss.instance.id"`
      INSTANCE_NAME=`vmtoolsd --cmd "info-get guestinfo.ut.vss.instance.name"`
      printf "\n"
      printf "  University of Toronto ITS Private Cloud Instance\n"
      printf "\n"
      printf "  Name:     $INSTANCE_NAME\n"
      printf "  ID:       $INSTANCE_ID\n"
  
  packages:
    - csh
    - ntp
    - git
    - tcsh
    - snmp
    - nginx
    - snmpd
    - unzip
    - httpie
  
  runcmd:
  - sudo cp /usr/share/doc/util-linux/examples/securetty /etc/securetty
  - chmod -x /etc/update-motd.d/50-motd-news
  - chmod -x /etc/update-motd.d/10-help-text
  - touch /etc/cloud/cloud-init.disabled

With the previous files just execute the following command to deploy a virtual machine:

vss-cli --wait compute vm mk from-image \
--memory 4 --cpu 1 \
--source ubuntu-20.04-focal-server-cloudimg-amd64.ova \
--disk 10 --disk 200 --disk 200=independent_persistent \
--description 'Application for a new dept.' \
--client EIS --os ubuntu64Guest --usage Prod \
--folder group-v4122 --net NET  \
--extra-config disk.EnableUUID=TRUE \
--network-config network-config.yaml \
--user-data cloud-init.yaml \
--power-on app-01

core: direct status messages and user-interaction prompts to stderr instead of stdout. (#379)

core: direct migrate from jsonpath-rw to jsonpath-ng. (#380)

Bug Fixes

compute vm mk from-image:  throws VssError (#378)

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.