Bug 2024931

I read over some of the REST API docs today and checked the API responses from the BRQ vCenter to see what we do and don't get. It's frustrating to say the least. The list outputs don't display the VM UUID in any form (which we've already established in another BZ). Running a GET on a particular VM also doesn't seem to give us the UUID.

Another really bad limitation: The filterspec in `vcenter/vm?filter` calls doesn't appear to allow wildcards. You have to specify a list of exactly whatever term you want to match.


Here is the best workaround I've come up with. Every VM seems to have a unique ID, which is the value of the 'vm' key of the response dict. In the following example, the ID is vm-1038.

{'value': [{'memory_size_MiB': 16384, 'vm': 'vm-1038', 'name': 'ocp4-hl8r8-master-1', 'power_state': 'POWERED_OFF', 'cpu_count': 4}]}


We could make a small modification to the fence agent to allow users to pass VM IDs rather than names. We could choose the lookup type in one of at least two ways:
  1. Create a new boolean option that says the plug is a VM ID instead of a VM name. This keeps the number of API calls in the fence agent the same. We would build our API call based on whether the "plug_is_id" option is set or not. (Pick a different option name.)
  2. Try to look up a plug as a VM ID first and then fall back to looking up the plug as a name if that fails. This requires a tad less work on the user's part but potentially doubles the amount of work on the fence agent's part.

I'd prefer option #1 unless you all think of a better approach or find an API mechanism that I didn't find.

Something like this (rough draft, seems to work fine):
~~~
def get_power_status(conn, options):
    if options["--plug_is_id"]:
        options["id"] = options["--plug"]

        try:
            res = send_command(conn, "vcenter/vm/{}".format(urllib.quote(options["--plug"])))["value"]["power_state"]
        except Exception as e:
            logging.debug("Failed: {}".format(e))
            fail(EC_STATUS)

        result = res

    else:
        try:
            res = send_command(conn, "vcenter/vm?filter.names={}".format(urllib.quote(options["--plug"])))["value"]
        except Exception as e:
            logging.debug("Failed: {}".format(e))
            fail(EC_STATUS)

        if len(res) == 0:
            fail(EC_STATUS)

        options["id"] = res[0]["vm"]

        result = res[0]["power_state"]

    return state[result]
~~~

Ah, looks like all we have to do is quote the VM name that's of the format `<vm_name> (<vm_uuid>)`. Oyvind will have details. I had a mistake in my command line when I tried that simple approach.

Thanks, all.