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Fixing SDKTypeConvertor_server related errors in vCenter Orchestrator 5.5.2

In vCO 5.5.2, when you get error messages “ch.dunes.vso.sdk.SDKTypeConvertor_server$1  cannot be cast to XYZ” or “Unable to serialize object of class : ch.dunes.vso.sdk.SDKTypeConvertor_server$1”, you hit a bug in the vCO platform.

This issue for example occurs if you use the vCAC Plugin, to run vCO workflows as part of vCAC lifecycle processes. Then the “workflow runner” workflow in the Library fails with the error (see screenshot)

To solve the problem, you have to install a patch, the description and the patch download you can find in the VMware KnowledgeBase:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2093444

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The Standalone VMRC Console and permissions…….

This Week I had a Customer requirement were the usage of the VMRC Plugin could be a good solution to resolve the issue. The customer had the requirement to use virtual machines as VPN gateways for connections outside his network. Therefore virtual machines were created and placed into a DMZ Zone. The customer Idea was, that his service staff could use the virtual machines to make VPN connections to external customers. One of the problems here is, that most VPN connections cut all other connections when the VPN connection is established.  These leads to the problem that RDP or VMware View connections could not be used because they are dropped when the tunnel came up……The Service people should not use a “full” Web Client therefore I made the suggestion to use the Standalone VMRC Console.

For those who are not familiar with the Standalone VMRC Console William Lam made a good post on it which could be found here: http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2014/10/standalone-vmrc-vm-remote-console-re-introduced-in-vsphere-5-5-update-2b.html

After installing and configuration of the VMRC Console I created a new role on the vCenter Server. This role had the permissions to interact with the Client Console and some other stuff like stopping and starting the VM.

After that, I created used a group which was provided with the created role and permissions.

When I was finished, I made a test with the VMware Web Client and could access the console without any problems. I created links for the user so that could connect directly with the virtual machine without starting the VMware Web Client. The links I created was from type: vmrc://[VC]/?moid=[VM-MOREF-ID]

I didn’t used a Username in the call so every user could start the VM Console with his user and password. For me as administrator of the environment everything worked link expected…..

We rolled out the solution to the user. The user were requested to provide a Username and password but then get and error message.

I did some research and that but could find an answer in the first step…..after a chat with Joerg Lew  he pointed me to the right direction……Thanks Jörg!

When you use the Standalone VMRC Console with Username and Password the VMRC Console redirect the connections after the initial connection with the vCenter Server to the ESXi host. So I had to include the group with the permissions on the ESXi Hosts.

After that, the VMRC Console worked like a charm and we could solve the customer requirement without the usage of the VMware Web Client.

So have fun and orchestrate the World 😉

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vCO and defensive scripting – practical experience

In the last couple of weeks I did a lot of Customer vCO Workshops to enable the Customers to create their own solutions. During the workshops I noticed some recurrent errors which were made from the  teams.

On some point of our Workflow, we will work with Userinputs. These Inputs can be direct Inputs from the users or maybe also Lines which are read from a file (CSV as example). Mostly these Inputs are compared to other Information’s . In this example I will use the ESX Hostname.

As you can see I have a VC with an cluster and one ESX Host with the name vmware01.example.com

Now we want to check if a Host with a specific name. So we use a really simple workflow.

In the scripting element I use this code:


for (i = 0; i < allHostsofVC.length; i++) {

if (HosttoCheck == allHostsofVC[i].name)

{

System.log("Yeah, we found the Host. Input is " + HosttoCheck + " Value from allHostsofVC[i].name is: " +  allHostsofVC[i].name);

}

else

{

System.log("oh no......no host found.Input is " + HosttoCheck + " Value from allHostsofVC[i].name is: " +  allHostsofVC[i].name);

}

}

So, now let’s make a first run

As we can see the search string and the hostname are identical.

Now let’s see what happens when the user write the hostname in Uppercase.

As we can see the name isn’t resolved. This leads to wrong results. The easiest way to avoid this is to change everything into LowerCase. So let’s modify our scripting element:

for (i = 0; i < allHostsofVC.length; i++) {

if (HosttoCheck.toLowerCase() == allHostsofVC[i].name.toLowerCase())

{

System.log("Yeah, we found the Host. Input is " + HosttoCheck + " Value from allHostsofVC[i].name is: " +  allHostsofVC[i].name);

}

else

{

System.log("oh no......no host found.Input is " + HosttoCheck + " Value from allHostsofVC[i].name is: " +  allHostsofVC[i].name);

}

}

Let’s start the last run again:

Also the User Input and the return string are different, we got the correct match.

This example leads us to another problem when we have to catch a user input regarding the hostnames. Most users tend to write only the name as shortname.

We can check it with the code we used before.

As we can see we didn’t catch the server. Why can we see in the vCenter Server MOB Browser. The Server is registered with the FQDN and from VMware API sight the shortname isn’t available.

How can we solve this problem? It is quite easy……. We just split the name at the dot and compare it with the name.

for (i = 0; i < allHostsofVC.length; i++){

var HostShortName = new Array()

HostShortName = allHostsofVC[i].name.toLowerCase().split(".")

if (HosttoCheck.toLowerCase() == allHostsofVC[i].name.toLowerCase() || HosttoCheck.toLowerCase() == HostShortName[0])

{

System.log("Yeah, we found the Host. Input is " + HosttoCheck + " Value from allHostsofVC[i].name is: " +  allHostsofVC[i].name);

}

else

{

System.log("oh no......no host found.Input is " + HosttoCheck + " Value from allHostsofVC[i].name is: " +  allHostsofVC[i].name);

}

}

Then we get our Hostname also when it is insert as shortname.

So, hope this help some to get their workflow created without to big problems. Have fun and Orchestrate the world 😉

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vCO and the parseInt JavaScript “Bug”

Today I was by a customer to develop a Custom workflow to evacuate one of his DCs with vCO. The evacuation should be done by only invoking an String into the Workflow. The Hosts were stretched over both DCs and also the Datastores. The ESX Hosts in his environment were named with vmwareXX were the XX represent a number. For the DC1 the Hosts had an even number. The Hosts in the DC2 the numbers are even.

There were hosts with names from

vmware01 till vmware24

So we developed some task to get the Datastores and the Hosts to divide them to their correct DCs. Therefore we created two Arrays were the hosts were placed for future actions. The names of the hosts were split and the Number was taken into a variable as integer. We made this with the command:

substring = parseInt(Hostname[i].substring(6,8))

After we had the number, we created an loop with if-else and placed the Hosts into the correct array.

var Odd_array = new Array ()

var Even_array = new Array()

var Nametemp

var Substring

for (i = 0; i < Hostname.length; i++) {

substring = parseInt(Hostname[i].substring(6,8))

System.log("Substring = " + substring + " Hostname = " + Hostname[i])

if (substring % 2)

{

//it is odd

Odd_array.push(Hostname[i])

System.log( Hostname[i] + " is in Odd Array")

}

else

{

//it is even

Even_array.push(Hostname[i])

System.log( Hostname[i] + " is in even Array")

}

}

The above script generates this output.

Take a deeper look on the part with the hostnames vmware07 to vmware09. As you can see we get wrong results. The Host with the Name vmware07 was in the correct Array. The Hosts with the name vmware09 was in the even array were it was wrong.

It took some time to figure out that this is a JavaScript parseInt “Bug”. A good explanation about this behavior can be found here:

http://www.breakingpar.com/bkp/home.nsf/0/87256B280015193F87256C85006A6604

So for us the solution was to use

substring = parseInt(Hostname[i].substring(6,8), 10)

as command and everything worked like expected.

Maybe everyone expect me did not this before but this information could be useful for others so that is the reason why I created this post.

Have fun and orchestrate the World 😉

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Import workflow package to your vCO server via command line

vCenter Orchestrator’s REST API allows not only to start and monitor workflows, but also manage the content of your vCO server. With the Packages manager of the API it’s for example possible to import workflow packages via  the API. Example to do exactly this via command line using curl:


curl --form "name=file" --form "[email protected]"  -X POST -u vcoadmin:vcoadmin -k https://172.16.96.130:8281/vco/api/packages

…with de.vcoportal.someTestPackage is the full filename of the package to upload.

See more details in the API reference documentation on https://your-vco-server:8281/vco/api/docs