vCenter

It’s called vCenter because that’s the host you’ll connect to. This object focuses more on interacting with Virtual Machines, than configuring the system.

Here’s an example of what using the vCenter object is like:

from vlab_inf_common.vmware import vCenter, vim
vc = vCenter(user='Alice', password='iLoveDogs', host='some-vcenter-server.corp')
vc.networks
{'front-end': 'vim.Network:network-14'}    # mapping of name -> object
vc.create_vm_folder(path='/some/new/path') # recursively creates the whole path
vms = vc.get_by_type(vim.VirtualMachine)
vms
(ManagedObject) [
'vim.VirtualMachine:vm-15'
]

Ova

This object abstracts use of an OVA file when creating new Virtual Machines. It handles both local paths and URLs for the OVA file location. Deploying the OVA is a single method call (once you’ve obtained a spec and lease).

Here’s an example of using the Ova object:

from vlab_inf_common.vmware import Ova
ova = Ova('https://some-server/myMachine.ova')
ova.networks
['eth0']
ova.vmdks
['disk-1.vmdk', 'disk-2.vmdk']
hasattr(ova, 'ovf') # b/c the ovf XML is too long to put in an example
True

Here’s an example using Ova and vCenter to deploy a new Virtual Machine It’s a bit long, but pyVmomi doesn’t make it easy…

import time
from vlab_inf_common.vmware import Ova, vCenter, vim
vc = vCenter(user='Alice', password='iLoveDogs', host='some-vsphere-server.corp')
ova = Ova('/some/path/myMachine.ova')
my_folder = vc.get_vm_folder('/users/alice')
network_map = vim.OvfManager.NetworkMapping()
network_map.name = ova.networks[0]
network_map.network = vc.networks['front-end'] # assuming you have a network named 'frond-end'
resouce_pool = vc.resource_pool['users']       # assuming your pool name is 'users'
datastore = vc.datastores['general']           # another assumption!
host = list(vc.host_systems.values())[0]       # if you don't care which host you upload to
spec_params = vim.OvfManager.CreateImportSpecParams(entityName='myNewVM', networkMapping=[network_map])
spec = vc.ovf_manager.CreateImportSpec(ovfDescriptor=ova.ovf,
         resourcePool=resouce_pool, datastore=datastore, cisp=spec_params)
lease = resource_pool.ImportVApp(spec.importSpec, folder=my_folder, host=host)
for _ in range(30):
  if lease.state != 'ready':
    time.sleep(1)
  else:
    break
print('starting deploy')
ova.deploy(spec, lease, host.name)
print('Upload complete')
ova.close()

FAQ

How do I deal with self-signed TLS certs in vCenter?

Set the environment variable INF_VCENTER_VERIFY_CERT to anything, and we’ll use the default context created by the Python ssl lib. By default, we’ll ignore self-signed certs.