API – Lottabytes

Deploying vRealize Log Insight (vRLI) via API

June 8, 2017

I’ve finally gotten around to upgrading the vRLI Configuration Management and Audit Tool to handle the full deployment process as well as clustering! Let’s take it for a spin to see what the new features allow us to do!

1. First we need to deploy the vRLI VMs from OVA that can be downloaded from my.vmware.com. Once they have been fully booted and you see them serving the following webpage we can start. You can close your browser at this point; nothing is required here other than we are checking to make sure that they are fully booted.

2. The tool uses a JSON configuration file that you can see a sample of by running the program with a “-d” flag or browsing the first part of the Python (my recommended approach). You can also generate a simplified version by calling the wizard using a “-b” flag. For now, I’m going to create my configuration file based on the sample in the documentation with a single Master Node under the “fqdn” key and 2 Secondary Nodes under the “nodes” key in my JSON file. This means that when the script is done I will have a new, 3 node vRLI Cluster.

Let’s kick off the program and tell it to use my configuration file by running:

python li-json-api.py -f ctest.json -r

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Log Insight Configuration API Audit and Standalone Remediation Tool – Updated!

July 1, 2016

For those of you who are interested I have updated the API based audit and remediation tool with a couple new features. After all, what is the use of automation if it isn’t user friendly?

1. Better error handling of remediation errors: In the past you would just get a message to the effect of “Something went wrong” but now the tool will pass the HTTP status code and Error Details from the Log Insight Server’s response to your remediation request. In the below example you can see this in action.

2. Now includes a wizard to help build a simplified JSON configuration file! Now, without having to create a single bit of JSON you can quickly get value from the tool. The wizard is simplified because let’s be honest, if you want the wizard you don’t want to answer 250 questions. Because of this some things are assumed/disabled. If you want them then you can simply add it to the code or use the template in the included docs (use the -d switch).

I hope that this helps you get started in seeing the value of using Configuration APIs to manage your Log Insight Servers!

Setting vShield Edge Device Syslog via API

May 29, 2014

If you need to update your vSE devices to send traffic to a syslog server then you might be slightly disappointed to see that there are no instructions in the vCNS API guide to do this, especially if you have a bunch of edges. I experienced this same feeling today and am happy to say that now you don’t have to. Below are a quick couple scripts that will allow you to update single edges or a whole bunch at once using curl!

1. First off we need to get a list of our edge devices from the vCNS Manager. We will be using the edgeID acquired here to configure the syslog settings in a minute.

2. This list is a bit too much for our use so I’m going to parse it down to just the edgeID of all the devices.

3. But I’m going to add them all to a text file (edges_test.txt) that I can parse later (code below):

curl -k -H “Authorization: Basic XXXXXXXXXXXXX” -X GET https://vsm.sub.domain.com/api/3.0/edges | xmllint –format – | grep “<id>edge-[0-9]*” | sed -n ‘s/<id>//p’ | sed -n ‘s/</id>//p’ > edges_test.txt

Now you have to make a decision, modify individual edges or all of them?

a. Let’s just edit one (MAKE SURE to set the edgeID in the below statement):

curl -k -H “Authorization: Basic XXXXXXXXXXXXX” -H “Content-Type: application/xml” -d ‘<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?><syslog><enabled>true</enabled><protocol>udp</protocol><serverAddresses><ipAddress>XX.XX.XX.XX</ipAddress></serverAddresses></syslog>’ -X PUT https://vsm.sub.domain.com/api/3.0/edges/edge-282/syslog/config

b. Let’s edit them all! For this one I have a simple bash script that loops through the text file with all the edge devices and runs the curl statement against them.

Here’s the script:

while read edge; do
echo “Beginning Update on $edge”
curl -k -H “Authorization: Basic XXXXXXXXXXXXX” -H “Content-Type: application/xml” -d ‘<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?><syslog><enabled>true</enabled><protocol>udp</protocol><serverAddresses><ipAddress>XX.XX.XX.XX</ipAddress></serverAddresses></syslog>’ -X PUT https://vsm.sub.domain.com/api/3.0/edges/$edge/syslog/config
echo “Ending Update on $edge”
sleep 5s
done < edges_test.txt

Really simple but very effective!

Now all that is left is to verify the results:

curl -k -H “Authorization: Basic XXXXXXXXXXXXX” -X GET https://vsm.sub.domain.com/api/3.0/edges/edge-282/syslog/config | xmllint –format –

Have fun not having to use the UI 🙂

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Category: API