How to build an API Connection to vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) Offline Depot

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

How to use vSphere Automation APIs to connect to a Lifecycle Manager offline depot.

Environment

vSphere Lifecycle Manager

VMware vCenter Server

Cause

A vCenter user session ticket needs to be created and passed to the vLCM fileupload login endpoint (i.e. https://{VC}:9087/vum-fileupload/login) to authenticate and authorize a user for access to the offline depot.

Resolution

How to create a VC user session ticket

You call a POST method to https://<vcenter>/api/session with the username and password as headers. The post method in curl would look like something like the following:

curl -X POST -H "Username:<user>" -H "Password:<pass>" https://<vcenter>/api/session

Here is also a script using pyVmomi to create a session ticket:

#PYTHONPATH=/usr/lib/vmware/site-packages python /root/pyvmomi.py

 

import pyVmomi

import pyVim.task

from pyVmomi import integrity, vim, vmodl

import datetime, time

import threading

 

from pyVmomi import Vim, Vmodl, SoapStubAdapter

  

# Disable Python Certificate Validation. Otherwise the following connection to a VUM with a self-signed certificate fails.

import os, ssl

ssl._create_default_https_context = ssl._create_unverified_context

 

 

stub = pyVmomi.SoapStubAdapter("127.0.0.1",version="vim.version.version8", port=80, sslProxyPath="/sdkTunnel")

vcsi = pyVmomi.vim.ServiceInstance("ServiceInstance", stub)

content = vcsi.RetrieveContent()

 

userSession = content.sessionManager.Login('[email protected]', 'Admin!23', None)

#userSession = content.sessionManager.Login('[email protected]', 'Admin!23', None)

print("VC connection established session with key: " + userSession.key)

 

sessionCookie = stub.cookie.split('"')

print("Login Session Cookie: ")

print(sessionCookie)

 

# stub.cookie = ""  # Done to remove the cookie, if we do this, the AcquireSessionTicket call fails as unauthenticated

 

sessionTicket = content.sessionManager.AcquireSessionTicket()

print("Session Ticket is: " + sessionTicket)

 

hasPriv = content.authorizationManager.HasPrivilegeOnEntity(content.GetRootFolder(), userSession.key, "VcIntegrity.lifecycleSettings.Write")

 

# stub.cookie = ""  # Done to remove the cookie, if we do this, the GetCurrentSession call fails as unauthenticated

userSession2 = content.sessionManager.GetCurrentSession()

 

print("stub.cookie: " + stub.cookie)

print("userSession2: " + userSession2.key)

 

print("Has Privileges : ")

print(hasPriv)

How to use the session ticket

This session ticket can then be used in any following commands to the vCenter, including logging into the vLCM offline depot and getting a session cookie from there. The below command should produce a session cookie in the headers of the response. You will want to save this value for the vum-fileupload/login call. This is how that might look in curl:

curl -X POST -d "sessionticket=<ticket>" https://<vcenter>:9087/vum-fileupload/login

How to pass the session cookie to the upload command

The cookie produced in the last call will be named "vmware_soap_session". This cookie you will pass as a header to the vum-fileupload/upload call. Along with file-size, file-type, and file-data. In curl it might look like this:

curl -X POST -H "vmware_soap_session=<session_id>" -d "file-size=<size of file>" -d "file-type=<type of file>" -d "file-data=<file_name_with_extension>" https://<vcenter>:9087/vum-fileupload/upload

This is demonstrated in the following screenshot:

 

Additional Information

Please see the below for common failures:

• Error: "Failure, Authentication failed, not a valid user" - KB 411037
• Error: "Failure, Authorization failed, user doesn't have enough privileges to upload file" - KB 411048
• Error: "Failure, unsupported file extension" - KB 411049