Replacing VAMI CLI commands with DCLI

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

In older version of the vCenter Service appliance, it was possible to make networking changes via VAMI commands:

• VAMI_CONFIG_NET
  
  
• VAMI_SETHOSTNAME

These commands have been deprecated for multiple versions and should not be used.

Environment

vCenter Server

Cause

The reason for the deprecation of these commands is that a more modern API set has been implemented called Data Center Command Line (DCLI). DCLI allows more robust functionality when it comes to providing CLI command for the vCenter server appliance. Most commands that are appliance shell commands, can be translated to DCLI commands 

Resolution

As an example, if it was required to change the NIC on the vCenter to a static IPv6 address, the following commands would be used:

dcli com vmware appliance networking interfaces ipv6 set +generate-json-input

That would generate a JSON example that looks like the following:

{
    "config": {
        "addresses": [
            {
                "address": "2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334",
                "prefix": 64
            }
        ],
        "autoconf": false,
        "default_gateway": "2001:db8:85a3:1::1",
        "dhcp": false
    },
    "interface_name": "nic0"
}

After creating a JSON file and filling out the information above, the following command would then be used to implement the new IPv6 address:

dcli com vmware appliance networking interfaces ipv6 set +json-input ./addresses.json

Additional Information

Further reading of the above command, as well as additional resources for DCLI and appliance shell. 

Ipv6 Namespace DCLI documentation
DCLI 3.0 Release Blog
VMware Data Center CLI
Using the Appliance Shell to Configure vCenter Server