What Does it take to write a good blog?!

A friend of mine asked me last week, where have you been ?! you don’t blog that much ?!

I replied by telling him that I already blogged the vCloud automation series, he told me it isn’t that much blogging.

It is fair comment from him anyway , I did about 10 to 15 blogs last year, and I haven’t written any blog since July, but what does it take to write a good blog ?!

It took me 4 months to write a good blog I work hard to provide original contents and posts, I don’t blog novice How Tos, I can do that, but my readers know that when I blog, it is something series.

I didn’t blog since last July because I was heavily focused on vCloud Automation project that produced the 5 parts series (4 published so far); to do it properly I had to stop and learn vCloud Director and Orchestrator inside out, then I had to learn heavy JavaScripting because vCloud Orchestrator automation requires JavaScripting. Then spent 2 month developing the solution then re-enhance it for public reading, asking for more feedback from my community that leaped the automation to another level when they asked med to include reading data from CSV hence you got the blog series.

It is easy to comment or cross reference other posts, but I don’t, I provide my readers with genuine and original ideas and technical material; I believe this is what the community expects from me.

So, are you gonna wait another 4 months for the other blog series ?! maybe …

A look back to 2013

In the 1st of Jan 2013, I published this article to plan for 2013 https://autodiscover.wordpress.com/2013/01/01/what-i-plan-to-do-in-2013/, these were high-level activities to guide me through 2013, I listed the below activities (I will strikethrough what I have done):

– Lose some weight, at least 10 Kg, aiming for 15 or 20 Kg. < Started, and lost some weight but I don’t know how much I lost 22 Kgs so far.

– Gain some muscle back. < Started

– pushing my wife into the decoration BA.

On Career:

– MBA – But I don’t think I will go for it this year, maybe in 2014.

– Complete the CCEE < Will book the Exam Next Month

– Go for the CCIA.

– Go through ITIL certificate (as long as my company will put me into the ITIL training).

– Go for the TOGAF certificate. < Started but the Study guide is the most boring thing ever

– Complete MCSE Certificate (Private Cloud, Exchange 2013 and Lync 2013).

– Go through the CCIE Data Center Video training, I won’t go for the exam, at least this year.

– Go Through the Cisco UCS training. Will start this one today, but I am so lazy to go to the garage to bring my headset.

– Complete the Exchange 2013 Arabic Training video series.

– Complete Office 365 lab, maybe doing Arabic videos as well.

– Publish another book. Working with PackT on the new title.

– keep the MVP and BExpert certificates. I am thinking about changing my MVP track, not sure. I also attained VMware’s vExpert award

– Complete the documentation automation script, the one we use at the work.

– Auh, complete the 3PAR training I didn’t finish it in 2012.

I believe I did good, maybe I missed some career objectives, but I completed others, like learning VNX, vCloud Director ; vCloud Orchestrator and upgrading my Netscaler/XenDesktop and Windows 2012R2 skills

Tomorrow I will layout 2014 Objectives .

vCloud Director automation via Orchestrator, Automating Org,vDC,vApp Provisioning via CSV Part3- Adding NICs, CPU and modify Memory

In part1: https://autodiscover.wordpress.com/2013/11/05/vcloud-orchestrator-automating-orgvdcvapp-provisioning-via-csv-part1/

and pat2: https://autodiscover.wordpress.com/2013/11/11/vcloud-orchestrator-automating-orgvdcvapp-provisioning-via-csv-part2reading-csv-files/

We explored the building blocks for automating vCloud Director cloud provisioning, we provisioned Orgs, vDCs and VMs by reading a CSV file and automating most of the provisioning process, in this blog post we will take a look on how we can add NICs, CPU and modify memory based on VM specs.

Remember, the CSV file structure is:

so we need to have VM name, Template name, No. of vCPUs, memory in GB, no. of HDDs and the size of each harddisk.

To start, you will need to clone add NIC to VM, Change Number of CPUs, Change memory capacity and Add a harddisk workflows.

Next, we will create what we will call “A caller” workflow, because each workflow requires certain parameters that only can be ready via query because some of them still not created yet like VM with that name or vDC for example.

We will create 4 callers to call each of the above work flows, here are their Java Scripts code:

VHD Caller Script:

var queryService = vapp.getHost().getQueryService();
var expression = new VclExpression(VclQueryVMField.NAME, vmname , VclExpressionType.EQUALS);
var filter = new VclFilter(expression);
var params = new VclQueryParams();
params.setFilter(filter);
var resultSet = queryService.queryRecords(VclQueryRecordType.ADMINVM, params);
    var records = resultSet.getRecords(new VclQueryResultAdminVMRecord());
Server.log (records.length);
for each (var record in records) { 
        if (record.vdc == vdc.getReference().href) {
Server.log("i am in the VMREF")
            var VMref = new VclReference(); 

        VMref.href = record.href; 
        VMref.name = record.name; 
        VMref.type = record.type; 
      myVMname = host.getEntityByReference(VclFinderType.VM, VMref);
}
}
Server.log (myVMname.name);
var addHDworkflowParameters = new Properties();
addHDworkflowParameters.put("vm",myVMname);
addHDworkflowParameters.put("size",hdsize);
addHDworkflowParameters.put("controller","SCSI Controller 0");
var myaddHDWorkflowToken = new WorkflowToken() ;
myaddHDWorkflowToken = MyAddVHDWF.execute(addHDworkflowParameters);
myaddHDworkflowTokens = new Array(); 
myaddHDworkflowTokens.push(myaddHDWorkflowToken);
System.getModule("com.vmware.library.workflow").waitAllWorkflowComplete(myaddHDworkflowTokens)

 

 

Memory Caller:

var ChangeVMMemParameters = new Properties();
var queryService = INPVMvApp.getHost().getQueryService();
var expression = new VclExpression(VclQueryVMField.NAME, INPVMNameString , VclExpressionType.EQUALS);
var filter = new VclFilter(expression);
var params = new VclQueryParams();
params.setFilter(filter);
var resultSet = queryService.queryRecords(VclQueryRecordType.ADMINVM, params);
    var records = resultSet.getRecords(new VclQueryResultAdminVMRecord());
Server.log (records.length);
for each (var record in records) { 

        if (record.vdc == vdc.getReference().href) {
Server.log("i am in the VMREF")
            var VMref = new VclReference(); 

        VMref.href = record.href; 
        VMref.name = record.name; 
        VMref.type = record.type;
 
      myVMname = host.getEntityByReference(VclFinderType.VM, VMref);
}
}
Server.log (myVMname.name);
ChangeVMMemParameters.put("vm",myVMname);
ChangeVMMemParameters.put("newSize",INPNewMem);

var ChangeVMmemWorkflowToken = new WorkflowToken() ;
ChangeVMmemWorkflowToken = AttChangeVMMemWF.execute(ChangeVMMemParameters);
ChangeVMmemWorkflowTokens = new Array(); 
ChangeVMmemWorkflowTokens.push(ChangeVMmemWorkflowToken);
System.getModule("com.vmware.library.workflow").waitAllWorkflowComplete(ChangeVMmemWorkflowTokens)

Change CPU Caller:

var ChangeVMCPUParameters = new Properties();
var queryService = INPVMvApp.getHost().getQueryService();
var expression = new VclExpression(VclQueryVMField.NAME, INPVMNameString , VclExpressionType.EQUALS);
var filter = new VclFilter(expression);
var params = new VclQueryParams();
params.setFilter(filter);
var resultSet = queryService.queryRecords(VclQueryRecordType.ADMINVM, params);
    var records = resultSet.getRecords(new VclQueryResultAdminVMRecord());
Server.log (records.length);
for each (var record in records) { 

        if (record.vdc == vdc.getReference().href) {
Server.log("i am in the VMREF")
            var VMref = new VclReference(); 

        VMref.href = record.href; 
        VMref.name = record.name; 
        VMref.type = record.type;
 
      myVMname = host.getEntityByReference(VclFinderType.VM, VMref);
}
}
Server.log (myVMname.name);
ChangeVMCPUParameters.put("vm",myVMname);
ChangeVMCPUParameters.put("cpuNumber",INPNewCPU);

var ChangeVMCPUWorkflowToken = new WorkflowToken() ;
ChangeVMmemWorkflowToken = AttChangeVMCPUWF.execute(ChangeVMCPUParameters);
ChangeVMCPUWorkflowTokens = new Array(); 
ChangeVMCPUWorkflowTokens.push(ChangeVMmemWorkflowToken);
System.getModule("com.vmware.library.workflow").waitAllWorkflowComplete(ChangeVMCPUWorkflowTokens)

NIC Caller:

var ChangeVMCPUParameters = new Properties();
var queryService = INPVMvApp.getHost().getQueryService();
var expression = new VclExpression(VclQueryVMField.NAME, INPVMNameString , VclExpressionType.EQUALS);
var filter = new VclFilter(expression);
var params = new VclQueryParams();
params.setFilter(filter);
var resultSet = queryService.queryRecords(VclQueryRecordType.ADMINVM, params);
    var records = resultSet.getRecords(new VclQueryResultAdminVMRecord());
Server.log (records.length);
for each (var record in records) { 

        if (record.vdc == vdc.getReference().href) {
Server.log("i am in the VMREF")
            var VMref = new VclReference(); 

        VMref.href = record.href; 
        VMref.name = record.name; 
        VMref.type = record.type;
 
      myVMname = host.getEntityByReference(VclFinderType.VM, VMref);
}
}
Server.log (myVMname.name);
ChangeVMCPUParameters.put("vm",myVMname);
ChangeVMCPUParameters.put("ipAddressingMode",ipAddressingMode);

var ChangeVMCPUWorkflowToken = new WorkflowToken() ;
ChangeVMmemWorkflowToken = AttChangeVMCPUWF.execute(ChangeVMCPUParameters);
ChangeVMCPUWorkflowTokens = new Array(); 
ChangeVMCPUWorkflowTokens.push(ChangeVMmemWorkflowToken);
System.getModule("com.vmware.library.workflow").waitAllWorkflowComplete(ChangeVMCPUWorkflowTokens)

 

Now we finished with our callers scripts, let us go back to the original code to see what is happening.

now to continue interpreting the CSV file, to do that, we need to modify the original script we used to read the CSV file to be like this (this is the final script code):

var i = 0;
var csvFileName = "c:\\Orchestrator\\customer.csv";
Server.log(csvFileName);

var fileReader = new FileReader(csvFileName);
fileReader.open();
var line=fileReader.readLine();
Server.log (line);

while (line != null){
Server.log ("loop Started");
var lineValues = line.split(",");
var linelength = lineValues.length
var vmname = lineValues[0];
var INPTemplateNameString = lineValues[1];
var MyNoCPU = lineValues[2];
var MyNoMemory = lineValues[3] * 1000;
var MyNoNICS = lineValues[4];
var addVMworkflowParameters = new Properties();
var ChangeVMmemworkflowParameters = new Properties();
var ChangeVMCPUworkflowParameters = new Properties();
var ChangeVMNICworkflowParameters = new Properties();

addVMworkflowParameters.put("INPdestinationVapp",MyVappName);
addVMworkflowParameters.put("INPTemplateNameString",INPTemplateNameString);
addVMworkflowParameters.put("INPVMNameString",vmname);
var myaddVMWorkflowToken = new WorkflowToken() ;
myaddVMWorkflowToken = MyAddVMWF.execute(addVMworkflowParameters);
myaddVMworkflowTokens = new Array();
myaddVMworkflowTokens.push(myaddVMWorkflowToken);
System.getModule("com.vmware.library.workflow").waitAllWorkflowComplete(myaddVMworkflowTokens)

while (MyNoNICS > 0)
{
ChangeVMNICworkflowParameters.put("INPVMNameString",vmname);
ChangeVMNICworkflowParameters.put("INPVMvApp",MyVappName);
ChangeVMNICworkflowParameters.put("INPVMvDC",myvdcname);
var myaddNICWorkflowToken = new WorkflowToken() ;
myaddNICWorkflowToken = AttNICWF.execute(ChangeVMNICworkflowParameters);
myaddNICWorkflowTokenS = new Array();
myaddNICWorkflowTokenS.push(myaddNICWorkflowToken);
System.getModule("com.vmware.library.workflow").waitAllWorkflowComplete(myaddNICWorkflowTokenS)

MyNoNICS = MyNoNICS – 1
}

Server.log("Adding Memory to" + " " + vmname);

ChangeVMmemworkflowParameters.put("INPVMNameString",vmname);
ChangeVMmemworkflowParameters.put("INPNewMem",MyNoMemory);
ChangeVMmemworkflowParameters.put("INPVMvApp",MyVappName);
ChangeVMmemworkflowParameters.put("INPVMvDC",myvdcname);
var ChangeVMmemWorkflowToken = new WorkflowToken() ;
ChangeVMmemWorkflowToken = AttMemWF.execute(ChangeVMmemworkflowParameters);
ChangeVMmemWorkflowTokens = new Array();
ChangeVMmemWorkflowTokens.push(ChangeVMmemWorkflowToken);
System.getModule("com.vmware.library.workflow").waitAllWorkflowComplete(ChangeVMmemWorkflowTokens)

Server.log("Adding CPU to" + " " + vmname);
ChangeVMCPUworkflowParameters.put("INPVMNameString",vmname);
ChangeVMCPUworkflowParameters.put("INPNewCPU",MyNoCPU);
ChangeVMCPUworkflowParameters.put("INPVMvApp",MyVappName);
ChangeVMCPUworkflowParameters.put("INPVMvDC",myvdcname);
var ChangeVMCPUWorkflowToken = new WorkflowToken() ;
ChangeVMCPUWorkflowToken = AttCPUWF.execute(ChangeVMCPUworkflowParameters);
ChangeVMCPUWorkflowTokens = new Array();
ChangeVMCPUWorkflowTokens.push(ChangeVMCPUWorkflowToken);
System.getModule("com.vmware.library.workflow").waitAllWorkflowComplete(ChangeVMCPUWorkflowToken)

Server.log("Adding NICs to" + " " + vmname);

var j = 5;

while (j < linelength)
{
Server.log ("i" + " " + i);
Server.log ("j" + " " + j);
Server.log ("linelength" + " " + linelength);
Server.log ("lineValues[j]" + " " + lineValues[j]);
var addHDworkflowParameters = new Properties();

addHDworkflowParameters.put("host",host);
addHDworkflowParameters.put("vdc",myvdcname);
addHDworkflowParameters.put("vapp",MyVappName);
addHDworkflowParameters.put("hdsize",lineValues[j]);
addHDworkflowParameters.put("vmname",vmname);
var myaddHDWorkflowToken = new WorkflowToken() ;
myaddHDWorkflowToken = MyAddVHDWF.execute(addHDworkflowParameters);
myaddHDworkflowTokens = new Array();
myaddHDworkflowTokens.push(myaddHDWorkflowToken);
System.getModule("com.vmware.library.workflow").waitAllWorkflowComplete(myaddHDworkflowTokens)
j = j + 1;

}
i = i + 1;
Server.log("looping");
line=fileReader.readLine();
}
fileReader.close;

 

no we are reading the file, storing the configuration in parameters, cloning the VM then looping through the configuration of NIC, vCPU and memory to configure the VM accordingly, let us take a look to what is happening exactly.

Adding NICs:

The following portion of the above code adds NICs to each VM, let us see how:

while (MyNoNICS > 0)
{
ChangeVMNICworkflowParameters.put("INPVMNameString",vmname);
ChangeVMNICworkflowParameters.put("INPVMvApp",MyVappName);
ChangeVMNICworkflowParameters.put("INPVMvDC",myvdcname);
var myaddNICWorkflowToken = new WorkflowToken() ;
myaddNICWorkflowToken = AttNICWF.execute(ChangeVMNICworkflowParameters);
myaddNICWorkflowTokenS = new Array();
myaddNICWorkflowTokenS.push(myaddNICWorkflowToken);
System.getModule("com.vmware.library.workflow").waitAllWorkflowComplete(myaddNICWorkflowTokenS)

MyNoNICS = MyNoNICS – 1
}

The above code creates a workflow parameters with VM name, VApp and vDC, then we create a token and execute The Caller script, the workflow then go and execute and return some parameters that is necessary for the Add NIC workflow and execute the Add NIC workflow.

the same goes for the rest of callers and java codes with different parameters and attributes.

once all set and done, you are ready to go, and this will read the CSV, create org, vdc, vapp, vms with the specifications you set in the CSV.

below is a copy of the workflows to import them and have a look.

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=6B566FD2C47B21C4%21130

In Part 4 we will look on how to add approval and send email notifications.

 

Merry Christmas.

PACKT Bonanza for holiday session,hurry and check it out

If you haven’t hear

With the holiday season approaching, Packt will be hosting a $5 Bonanza offer. During this event from 19th December 2013 you will be able to get any eBook or Video from Packt for just $5. This sale covers every title in the 1700+ range and you can grab as many as they like until 3rd January 2014.

 

Don’t be late and hurry and check it out: