Tag Archives: VIClientTool

Revision 551 – Suggested Nicknames for Known WWN Patterns

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In deployments, very often customers zone their storage based only on a zone-name and WWPN members. Typically this causes a need for the Zone-Vote Algorithm to be used, but that’s an approximation that requires the user to be consistent in Zone names, consistent in zone membership (ie anywhere one FA or HBA is used for an entity, all the others need to be used at the same time).

There are some cases where the WWN is entirely predictable; in such cases, the option “-w” to vict.jar (such as vict.jar -w 50060482B82F9654) shows a suggested nickname or alias such as “Symm-182500953-05bA” (per http://www.emcstorageinfo.com/2007/08/how-to-decode-symmetrix-world-wide.html) which can be leveraged to provide for missing nicknames.

Revision 541 – Added Parsing of DCNM Data for Nicknames

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In revision 541, the basic capability to ask a DCNM service for the Nickname/WWPN mapping has been started. This has the potential to reuse the information entered into DCNM rather than re-entering manually, and avoid pulling zonefiles from each zone for parsing using a –nickname=file:// or –nickname=http:// method. As well, in situations where aliases are not used, we can collect the port labels or private aliases that DCNM may not share down to the switch.

This method is only initially defined, but requires a bit more work.

The same parser logic is used as was added for OnCommand in OnCommand Query and for BNA in BNA Query. Like the BNA and OnCommand work, the DCNM query simply reformats a query and sends it through the array of parsers to vote upon:

java -jar vict.jar --nickname=dcnmsql://user:pass@server:port/ --nicknameout=\VirtualWisdomData\DeviceNickname\nicknames.csv

Default user/pass should be accurate but need additional testing to confirm. Like the BNA parser, this method hits the underlying database directly, so it needs (firewalls/filters) direct access to the server, and is vulnerable to schema changes. Schema is based on 5.2 documentation.

In the meantime, cisco-shows2wwncsv.awk is also provided to build portlabel nicknames as import CSVs; this awk file needs two “show” commands on every switch. NOTE: every switch, not just every fabric, and it needs to see the output of “show flogi database” before it sees “show interface description”.

Revision 536 – FixNickNameHistory for Database Back-Edits

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In Revision 536, I implemented “–fixnicknamehistory” which applies any loaded nicknames (for example, those gained using OnCommand Extraction, those Parsed from Cisco Zones, or those extracted from BNA) to the underlying Portal Server database retroactively.

So long as the Portal Service is shut down, this can be done on a customer’s live server, but it’s more useful in analysis where nicknames arrived late yet the analyst cannot wait another week or so for nickname-ful summaries to be collected.

Revision 521 – Dump-Config for ESX HBAs to Check PHC

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In revision 521, I added the ability to dump out the esx hbas as esxhbas.csv, esxhbas.xml, vminventoryraw.csv, or vminventoryraw.xml similar to dumping roving.xml and roving.csv. The outputs are self-documenting in #comments in the CSV, or as XML self-documents already. The benefit of this function is that when the PHC seems to miscalculate the HBA speeds in phc-vm.csv, the raw data can be debugged. Note that the XML has no whitespace, so “xmllint -format esxhbas.xml” is your friend.

For example:

(typically running locally: the MySQL is configured to only accept local connections)

java -jar vict.jar -D esxhbas.csv

or

java -jar vict.jar -D esxhbas.xml

…and in long-options too:

java -jar vict.jar --dump-config esxhbas.xml

…but since the JRE is typically hidden below the VirtualWisdom directory, use vict.bat:

VICT.BAT -D esxhbas.xml

VICT.BAT --dump-config esxhbas.xml

Revision 516 – Added parsing of OnCommand Data for Nicknames

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In revision 516, the basic capability to ask an OnCommand/NetApp management console for the Nickname/WWPN mapping has been added. This allows the reuse of the information it has collected by various device-specific methods to add meaning and facility to VirtualWisdom.

The ability to avoid re-polling and re-querying data essentially reduces the load to the devices polled and reduces the management effort: re-using the effort already expressed to configure one tool means that no additional effort is required — so long as the information is usable.

In this case, the same parser logic is used as was added for BNA in BNA Query later expanded to both “pools” in BNA. Like the BNA work, the OnCommand query simply reformats a query and sends it through the array of parsers to vote upon:

java -jar vict.jar --nickname=osmsql://user:pass@server:port/ --nicknameout=\VirtualWisdomData\DeviceNickname\nicknames.csv

Default user/pass are not accurate, so that still needs to be resolved. Like the BNA parser, this method hits the underlying database directly, so it needs (firewalls/filters) direct access to the server, and is vulnerable to schema changes.

Revision 512 – Vict Nickname Now Parses Cisco Device-Alias Database

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The vict (VI Client Tool) “nickname” action now understands the output of a “show device-alias database” command on cisco.

In past, customers and users generate these files either by running the command in a plink.exe or ssh session (ie: the simplest way), or by capturing a log from their ssh session and running the command manually (ie the more-work way). Unfortunately, in the awk-based parser, replacing spaces with tabs blows away the parser, so this smarter parser should be able to handle that now.

My commit note was simply “Added basic parser for output of Cisco ‘show device-database alias’ behind VIClientTool’s –nickname= option”, and that says it all to ME, but to expand for others, this is what that means:

Recall that with multi-column CSVs, Brocade “alishow”, and Brocade “zoneshow”, a user can ignore the format of the file and just send it in with a “nickname” long-option or “N” for the short-option aficionados.

Now, if you give VICT a cisco “show device-alias database” output, it’ll make sense of that too.

The logic is the same: throw the content scattered at all the parsers, and see who gets the most results.

Although this and other parsers will get the reformatted output from a BNA ext ration (and soon, NetApp), only the basic parser ever gets results form those, so this new parser shouldn’t affect anything adversely. ..but without much forethought, the user gets another format to use.