Tag Archives: VICT

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

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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.

Revision 502 – Obsessive Parser Retry

Posted on by

I’m not proud of this one. Please bear with be:

In revision 493, I wrote about how the parser for “–nickname=” actually pushes content to three separate parsers, and simply chooses the one with the best results. That was all about not trying to guess the content, but leave the guessing to the parsers. Whichever one gets the most, it wins. Too easy, and extremely scalable.

Problem is, the underlying Apache lib used to fork-off the incoming stream — to avoid downloading a file multiple times to parse it — that doesn’t always seem to work.

I put a lot of time and concern into trying to figure out why, but in the end, I just added a retry-counter.

When all parsers return a “shoot, I dunno” response, we simply run it again. And again. And again. …not so obsessive because we give up after 3 times, but you’re free to make it as psychotic/obsessive as you want.

To describe this, I verbosely wrote “add retries to the parsing so that we can thrash on a file if we need to just-get-it-done”

I promise to do better design in the future, but for now, this will only re-download a file for each full retry cycle. This doesn’t matter at all for file:// URLs, but for ftp://, bnapsql://, and http://, it will show up as multiple tries.

Revision 493 – Nickname Parses ZoneShow

Posted on by

For this revision, I wrote: “enable the –nickname= function to fork inbound content to a number of parsers; the one with the most results wins. Net result: the FAE or user needs not worry what they send to the tool, it will try to figure out what the file is. Supports user-selected columns in CSV, Brocade ZoneShow, and BNA”

What does that mean, in detail?

In past, the –nickname= fed directly into a single consumer that understand the user giving a “;WWN=x” or “;Nickname=y”, and uses those columns as input to nickname data.

Now, there are three parsers all feeding from the same resource, so even remote content (ie ftp:// and http:// URLs) is only downloaded once, but forked to many parsers. Without the user worrying about format, the three parsers try to interpret the stream to see what they can dig up. The “winning” parser is the one with the most results, effectively adapting to whatever the user sends it …of the three formats currently understood directly:

  • WWN,Nickname (WWN=x and Nickname=y are still effective)
  • Brocade zoneshow output (accuracy is challenged if the user sends a logdump of a screen-scraped output; for best results, treat the output as binary, and convert it directly using plink.exe or ssh, not a screen-capture of a log dump)
  • Brocade binary zone information from BNA versions 11 or 12

To re-iterate, the following URI types are understood:

  • http://www.example.com/file.ext
  • ftp://ftp.example.com/file.ext (anonymous FTP; have not tested user/pass)
  • file://current/directory/subdir/file.ext (same as .\current\directory\subdir\file.ext in windows)
  • file:///current/directory/subdir/file.ext (three slashes, same as \current\directory\subdir\file.ext in windows)
  • bnapsql://bna.example.com/
  • no URL: –nickname=sampleZone.zone (confirmed in testcases)

Revision 424 – Dump Current Detected VMs

Posted on by

In revision 424, similar to 423 wherein I added the ability to dump out detected ESXs, I added the ability to dump out the virtualserver table as vm.csv or vm.xml. The outputs are self-documenting in #comments in the CSV, or as XML self-documents already. Note that the XML has no whitespace, so “xmllint -format vm.xml” is your friend.

For example:

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

java -jar vict.jar -D vm.csv

or

java -jar vict.jar -D vm.xml

…and in long-options too:

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

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

VICT.BAT -D vm.xml

Revision 368 – Kerberos Config Helper

Posted on by

Due to frustration on people updating Kerberos config data without actually, well, being correct, I’ve added a helper to vict.jar: “Created a quick tool to dump out Kerberos config information in text and XML format to help reduce ambiguity in documented AD authentication via Kerberos”.

I hope this avoids further misguided dependence on Jambons who just cannot check a detail.

Try it out on your server:

java -jar vict.jar --kerberos

There’s an article (How to Enable Active Directory Authentication via Kerberos) describing the process of adding a Kerberos user, but this output accelerates the process.

Revision 365 – Inflight BNAPSQL Changes

Posted on by

Revision 365 improves the BNAPSQL Client to avoid null nicknames, and avoid quoting those nicknames that are already quoted.

This was performed live with a customer on the conference call; really great debugging experience.

As a reminder:

 java -jar vict.jar --nickname=bnapsql://user:pass@server:port/resource

where the default is:

 java -jar vict.jar
   --nickname=bnapsql://dcmadmin:passw0rd@localhost:5432/dcmdb

…and if you just want to spit the nicknames right back out from two servers:

java -jar vict.jar
--nickname=bnapsql://server1/
--nickname=bnapsql://server2/
--nicknameout=output.csv