NSX-T

Customizing the NSX-T Login UI

10/29/2019 by William Lam Leave a Comment

I have been doing some automation with NSX-T 2.5 lately and for troubleshooting and validation purposes, I obviously make use of the NSX-T UI. After each new deployment I need to login to verify a few things. Out of pure laziness, I really would like to be able to login with just a single click for development purposes. I certainly could use password manager but it would still be a couple of clicks but I was looking something slightly quicker and that could easily work in a number of environments that I have.

Looking around the filesystem of the NSX Unified Appliance, I found the structure for the login UI to be fairly similiar (thanks to VMware Clarity) to that of the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA). I found that I could apply the same techniques I had used to customize the VCSA Login UI including setting up pre-filled credentials (no recommended for obvious reasons) on the NSX-T Appliance.

Disclaimer: This is not officially supported by VMware, use at your own risk. Please make sure to perform a backup of all original files prior to editing in case you need to restore back the system defaults.

How to debug NSX-T API Automation with PowerCLI?

10/25/2019 by William Lam Leave a Comment

I recently needed to deploy the latest version of NSX-T (2.5) for some work I was doing with Project Pacific and of course it was related to Automation 🙂 It has been some time since I have touched the NSX-T Manager API (2.0) and although most of my existing code still worked, there were some things that broke due to API deprecation and also net new functionality that I needed to use.

I normally use PowerCLI for my Automation work and/or for prototyping purposes, not only is it easy to do but PowerCLI is still one of the most popular tool used by our customers and it means that they can easily benefit from my work. However, one of my pet peeves when working with the NSX-T APIs and PowerCLI is simply the lack of useful error messages. Here is the generic error message that you would normally see even checking the $Error[0].Exception.ServerError variable, it generally does not contain anything useful or actionable.

A server error occurred: 'com.vmware.vapi.std.errors.invalid_request': . Check $Error[0].Exception.ServerError for more details.

Here is a concrete example where I am attempting to create a new Transport Zone but I am purposing leaving out a required parameter and as you can see from the output, the same generic error message is shown and not very actionable.

I normally debug NSX-T API issue whether it is a syntax or usage problem by SSH'ing to the NSX-T Manager and monitoring the actual API logs to figure out what is actually going. It usually has exactly what I am looking for in terms of the actual server error message along with details on how to fix the problem.

Connecting to NSX-T Policy API using NSX-T Private IP in VMC

05/30/2019 by William Lam 1 Comment

As explained in my Getting started with NSX-T Policy API in VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) article, there are two ways in which you can interact with the NSX-T Policy API in VMC. The initial method is with the NSX-T Reverse Proxy which designed for initial setup including Edge Firewall and connectivity configuration (VPN/Direct Connect). Once you have enabled remote access from your network to the SDDC, you can continue using the reverse proxy method or you can connect directly to the NSX-T Manager via its private IP Address.

So how do you actually connect to the NSX-T Manager using its private IP? To be honest, this was not something I had to do before as I really like the simplicity of the reverse proxy but since this came up today in one of our VMC Slack channels, I figured I take a closer look.

NSX-T Policy API Explorer, Docs and Sample Updates for VMC

05/20/2019 by William Lam Leave a Comment

The VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) in-product API Explorer is something that I use on a regular basis, especially for executing a quick tasks without needing to write a single line of code or for documentation purposes to understand the required parameter to a specific API. Today, the VMC API Explorer includes both the VMC Service and Cloud Services Platform API, but one key API that has been missing is the inclusion of the NSX-T Policy API.

With the release of VMC 1.7 which just came out a few days ago, customers will now be able to also access the NSX-T Policy API directly from within the VMC API Explorer! In addition to adding to the VMC API Explorer, the NSX team has also enhanced their Swagger JSON and documentation to provide a better developer experience when working with NSX-T in VMC.

NSX-T Policy API Explorer

The new NSX-T Policy API Explorer is only available for SDDCs running 1.7, which can be newly created SDDC or an SDDC that has been upgraded to 1.7. In addition, since there still SDDC running NSX-V, to view the new API Explorer, you will need to select an NSX-T 1.7 SDDC and then two new NSX-T API references will be available: NSX VMC Policy API and NSX VMC AWS Integrations API

NSX-T Opaque Networks now supported with Cross vCenter Workload Migration Fling

04/15/2019 by William Lam Leave a Comment

The Cross vCenter Workload Migration Fling continues to be an extremely powerful tool for our customers and I just love hearing successful customer stories like the one recently shared by Jason on how the tool allowed him to easily migrate over 600 Virtual Machines and with more to come!

Moved 600 and looking at another thousand. Some monster VMs... our test environment moved as easy as vmotion.

— Jason 🛠 (@JasonThoms) April 9, 2019

One capability that customers have been asking for is the ability to migrate to and from an NSX-T Opaque Network type, which the current Fling does not support. This has become more and more important as the default NSX stack for VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) is now NSX-T by default, rather than NSX-V. We are also seeing requests from on-premises customers who have deployed NSX-T for their next generation infrastructure and needing the ability to easily migrate workloads between their old infrastructure that maybe running VSS/VDS or NSX-V backed networks.

With the help from two new colleagues, Vikas Shitole and Rajmani Patel, we are excited to announce the release Cross vCenter Workload Migration v2.6 which now adds support for NSX-T Opaque Networks!

Which NSX-T Policy APIs are used in the NSX-T UI in VMC?

02/20/2019 by William Lam Leave a Comment

As the adoption of VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) continues to accelerate, one of the very first UI interface that customers must interact with is the NSX-T UI, for enabling basic connectivity. By default the Edge Gateway has a Deny All Firewall Rule, so you will need to come to this screen to setup connectivity from your on-premises environment including a Direct Connect (DX) or Route/Policy-Based VPN. For some customers who have familiarize themselves with the NSX-T UI and its capabilities, usually the next order of business is how do I go about automating these various aspects from Day 0 setup all the way to Day N where I am migrating in or creating additional workloads.

A very common set of questions that I have been getting lately is which API do I need to look at to do X in the NSX-T UI in VMC?

Having spent some time with the NSX-T Policy API, I figure it would be useful to share the categories of NSX-T Policy API that maps back to what you see in the NSX-T UI in VMC. The list below is not exhaustive, but should it should point you in the right direction when needing to automate a particular operation.