{"id":3678,"date":"2018-11-15T16:32:52","date_gmt":"2018-11-15T22:32:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benincosa.com\/?p=3678"},"modified":"2018-11-15T16:36:19","modified_gmt":"2018-11-15T22:36:19","slug":"esxi-kickstart-and-automated-vcenter-registration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/?p=3678","title":{"rendered":"ESXi Kickstart and automated vCenter registration"},"content":{"rendered":"

I haven’t worked on VMware for a while but needed to work on a project to automatically install ESXi on a few servers.\u00a0 I invented a tool called KUBAM that was originally for deploying Kubernetes on UCS Bare Metal (KUBAM) but have realized there are a lot of people that can benefit from the use of vMedia policy installations.\u00a0 I’ve written a few articles on this method here<\/a> and there.<\/a><\/p>\n

When looking to deploy ESXi we had made the kickstart portion work perfectly and even upgraded it to 6.7.\u00a0 However, when looking for information on how to automatically register the ESXi servers to vCenter after the installation was concluded the best we found was information from the legendary WIlliam Lam at VMware from a post in 2011<\/a>.\u00a0 Here we are 7 almost 8 years later still trying to accomplish the same thing.\u00a0 The problem is the post was written in 2011 and ESXi updated the version from Python 2 to Python 3 and so parts of the script don’t work.\u00a0 I’ve updated it in a dirty way to make it work and checked the code into the KUBAM project.\u00a0 It could use some cleaning up to make it nice like William’s python.\u00a0 I may do that as time goes on.\u00a0 For now here is the code:<\/p>\n

import sys,re,os,urllib,base64,syslog,socket\r\nimport urllib.request as request\r\nimport ssl\r\n\r\n# used for unverified SSL\/TLS certs. Insecure, not good for public.\r\nssl._create_default_https_context = ssl._create_unverified_context\r\n\r\n## Variables that need to be filled out for different environments ##\r\n# URL of vcenter, just the IP address\r\nvcenter = \"10.93.140.100\"\r\n\r\n# Data center\r\n#cluster = \"<datacenter>\/host\/<cluster>\"\r\ncluster = \"Lucky Lab (LK02)\/host\/SandyBridge\"\r\n\r\n# vCenter credentials\r\nuser = \"administrator@vsphere.local\"\r\npassword = \"Cisco.123\"\r\n\r\n# host ESXi credentials\r\nhost_username = \"root\"\r\nhost_password = \"Cisco.123\"\r\n\r\nurl = \"https:\/\/\" + vcenter + \"\/mob\/?moid=SearchIndex&method=findByInventoryPath\"\r\n\r\n\r\npassman = request.HTTPPasswordMgrWithDefaultRealm()\r\npassman.add_password(None,url, user, password)\r\nauthhandler = request.HTTPBasicAuthHandler(passman)\r\nopener = request.build_opener(authhandler)\r\nrequest.install_opener(opener)\r\n#cont = ssl._create_unverified_context()\r\n#ssl._create_default_https_context = ssl._create_unverified_context()\r\nreq = request.Request(url)\r\n#cont = ssl._create_unverified_context()\r\n#page = request.urlopen(req, context=context)\r\npage = request.urlopen(req)\r\npage_content = page.read().decode('utf-8')\r\n#print(page_content)\r\n\r\nreg = re.compile('name=\"vmware-session-nonce\" type=\"hidden\" value=\"?([^\\s^\"]+)\"')\r\nnonce = reg.search(page_content).group(1)\r\n\r\nheaders = page.info()\r\ncookie = headers.get(\"Set-Cookie\")\r\n\r\nparams = {'vmware-session-nonce':nonce,'inventoryPath':cluster}\r\ne_params = urllib.parse.urlencode(params)\r\n#print(e_params)\r\nbin_data = e_params.encode('utf8')\r\nreq = request.Request(url, bin_data, headers={\"Cookie\":cookie})\r\npage = request.urlopen(req)\r\npage_content = page.read().decode('utf-8')\r\n#print(page_content)\r\n\r\nclusterMoRef = re.search('domain-c[0-9]*',page_content)\r\nif clusterMoRef:\r\n\tprint(\"Found cluster: \" + cluster)\r\nelse:\r\n\topener.close()\r\n\tsys.exit(1)\r\n\r\n# cert stuff\r\ncmd = \"openssl x509 -sha1 -in \/etc\/vmware\/ssl\/rui.crt -noout -fingerprint\"\r\ntmp = os.popen(cmd)\r\ntmp_sha1 = tmp.readline()\r\ntmp.close()\r\ns1 = re.split('=',tmp_sha1)\r\ns2 = s1[1]\r\ns3 = re.split('\\n', s2)\r\nsha1 = s3[0]\r\n\r\nif sha1:\r\n\tprint(\"Hash: \", sha1)\r\nelse:\r\n\topener.close()\r\n\tsys.exit(1)\r\n\r\nxml = '<spec xsi:type=\"HostConnectSpec\"><hostName>%hostname<\/hostName><sslThumbprint>%sha<\/sslThumbprint><userName>%user<\/userName><password>%pass<\/password><force>1<\/force><\/spec>'\r\n \r\n# Code to extract IP Address to perform DNS lookup to add FQDN to vCenter\r\nhostip = socket.gethostbyname(socket.gethostname())\r\n\r\nif hostip:\r\n\tprint(\"IP address of host: \", hostip.strip())\r\nelse:\r\n\topener.close()\r\n\tsys.exit(1)\r\n\r\n# could add logic to do DNS lookup, but no dns in our environment. \r\n\r\nxml = xml.replace(\"%hostname\",hostip)\r\nxml = xml.replace(\"%sha\",sha1)\r\nxml = xml.replace(\"%user\",host_username)\r\nxml = xml.replace(\"%pass\",host_password)\r\nprint(xml)\r\n# now join to vcenter cluster\r\ntry: \r\n\turl = \"https:\/\/\" + vcenter + \"\/mob\/?moid=\" + clusterMoRef.group() + \"&method=addHost\"\r\n\tparams = {'vmware-session-nonce':nonce,'spec':xml,'asConnected':'1','resourcePool':'','license':''}\r\n\te_params = urllib.parse.urlencode(params)\r\n\tbin_data = e_params.encode('utf8')\r\n\treq = request.Request(url, bin_data, headers={\"Cookie\":cookie})\r\n\tpage = request.urlopen(req).read()\r\nexcept IOError as e:\r\n\topener.close()\r\n\tprint(\"Couldn't join cluster\", e)\r\n\tsys.exit(1)\r\nelse:\r\n\tprint(\"Joined vcenter cluster!\")\r\n\turl = \"https:\/\/\" + vcenter + \"\/mob\/?moid=SessionManager&method=logout\"\r\n\tparams = {'vmware-session-nonce':nonce}\r\n\te_params = urllib.parse.urlencode(params)\r\n\tbin_data = e_params.encode('utf8')\r\n\treq = request.Request(url, bin_data, headers={\"Cookie\":cookie})\r\n\tpage = request.urlopen(req).read()\r\n\tsys.exit(0)\r\n<\/pre>\n
A few notes here:<\/p>\n