The Problem
I wanted to play around with automation of things inside my ESXi server. Automated snapshots are one of these things that can be useful if you can automate them - so I started researching how to do it. Here is the result !
The Solution
The solution is simple: esxcli is a tool which is built exactly for such a purpose. It can be accessed from within the command line of the hypervisor (so don't forget to enable SSH to be able to log into the machine).
Usage: esxcli [options] {namespace}+ {cmd} [cmd options]
Options:
--formatter=FORMATTER
Override the formatter to use for a given command. Available formatter: xml, csv, keyvalue
--debug Enable debug or internal use options
--version Display version information for the script
-?, --help Display usage information for the script
Available Namespaces:
device Device manager commands
esxcli Commands that operate on the esxcli system itself allowing users to get additional information.
fcoe VMware FCOE commands.
graphics VMware graphics commands.
hardware VMKernel hardware properties and commands for configuring hardware.
iscsi VMware iSCSI commands.
network Operations that pertain to the maintenance of networking on an ESX host. This includes a wide variety of commands to manipulate virtual networking components (vswitch, portgroup,
etc) as well as local host IP, DNS and general host networking settings.
sched VMKernel system properties and commands for configuring scheduling related functionality.
software Manage the ESXi software image and packages
storage VMware storage commands.
system VMKernel system properties and commands for configuring properties of the kernel core system.
vm A small number of operations that allow a user to Control Virtual Machine operations.
vsan VMware VSAN commands.
It can be used for different purposes. Here a re a few examples:
List all virtual machines
office.bytebang.local
World ID: 2888116
Process ID: 0
VMX Cartel ID: 2888115
UUID: 56 4d c3 d9 78 11 87 21-ea 8b fe f8 c0 36 c9 c7
Display Name: office.bytebang.local
Config File: /vmfs/volumes/5693d9a9-3ad56f7a-8c5e-901b0e6ab3b0/office.bytebang.local/office.bytebang.local.vmx
machine01.bytebang.local
World ID: 3742262
Process ID: 0
VMX Cartel ID: 3742261
UUID: 56 4d 21 1b f4 48 13 3a-7d 2a b2 0c 73 0f fd e6
Display Name: machine01.bytebang.local
Config File: /vmfs/volumes/5693d9a9-3ad56f7a-8c5e-901b0e6ab3b0/machine01.bytebang.local/machine01.bytebang.local.vmx
monitoring
World ID: 3063343
Process ID: 0
VMX Cartel ID: 3063342
UUID: 56 4d e6 2f be e1 63 7a-74 ec 98 fc 72 52 98 37
Display Name: monitoring
Config File: /vmfs/volumes/5693d9a9-3ad56f7a-8c5e-901b0e6ab3b0/monitoring/monitoring.vmx
machine02
World ID: 442364
Process ID: 0
VMX Cartel ID: 442361
UUID: 56 4d 16 60 47 17 ff 13-81 cd 73 87 34 6e fd ac
Display Name: machine02
Config File: /vmfs/volumes/5693d9a9-3ad56f7a-8c5e-901b0e6ab3b0/machine02/machine02.vmx
SERVER.bytebang.local
World ID: 6547812
Process ID: 0
VMX Cartel ID: 6547811
UUID: 56 4d 3a f3 12 d7 76 4d-f1 d3 cd be 0e 85 88 e3
Display Name: SERVER.bytebang.local
Config File: /vmfs/volumes/5693d9a9-3ad56f7a-8c5e-901b0e6ab3b0/SERVER.bytebang.local/SERVER.bytebang.local.vmx
or ... if you prefer it more compact
Vmid Name File Guest OS Version Annotation
3 machine02 [midperf] machine02/machine02.vmx windows8Server64Guest vmx-09
5 office.bytebang.local [midperf] office.bytebang.local/SRVADE.bytebang.local.vmx windows7Server64Guest vmx-08
7 monitoring [midperf] monitoring/monitoring.vmx ubuntu64Guest vmx-08
8 machine01.bytebang.local [midperf] machine01.bytebang.local/machine01.bytebang.local.vmx winNetEnterpriseGuest vmx-08
9 SERVER.bytebang.local [midperf] SERVER.bytebang.local/SERVER.bytebang.local.vmx windows7Server64Guest vmx-09
The interesting thing here is the vmid - which is an unique identifier for a virtual machine.
List snapshots for a machine
To list the snapshots for a machine you have to provide the vmid of the machine.
Get Snapshot:
|-ROOT
--Snapshot Name : before cabeling
--Snapshot Id : 14
--Snapshot Desciption :
--Snapshot Created On : 2/2/2016 9:15:29
--Snapshot State : powered on
We can see that we habe a single snapshot with the id 14, labelled 'before cabeling'.
Take a snapshot
To take a snapshot from the actual state you have to provide the vmid of the machine and a name for the new snapshot:
Create Snapshot:
/vmfs/volumes/5693d9a9-3ad56f7a-8c5e-901b0e6ab3b0 # vim-cmd vmsvc/snapshot.get 7
Get Snapshot:
|-ROOT
--Snapshot Name : before cabeling
--Snapshot Id : 14
--Snapshot Desciption :
--Snapshot Created On : 2/2/2016 9:15:29
--Snapshot State : powered on
--|-CHILD
----Snapshot Name : test
----Snapshot Id : 15
----Snapshot Desciption :
----Snapshot Created On : 4/5/2016 12:18:40
----Snapshot State : powered off
Here we created a new snapshot named 'test' which is the child of our old snapshot. Of course you can provide more details how the hypervisor should create the snapshot, but i wanted to keep it simple.
Delete snapshots
Finally you can delete snapshots as well. Therefore you have to provide the vmid and the snapshotid of the snapshot which should be removed:
Remove Snapshot:
|-ROOT
--Snapshot Name : before cabeling
--Snapshot Id : 14
--Snapshot Desciption :
--Snapshot Created On : 2/2/2016 9:15:29
--Snapshot State : powered on
Thats it - have fun !
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