DavidRing.ie

The VxRail REST API provides a programmatic interface for performing VxRail administrative tasks. There are many ways to interact with the VxRail API functions, in this example I cover the Return nodes by auto discovery API function using 2 different methods:

1. VxRail Manager Embedded (interactive web-based API)
2. CLI using a wrapped CURL command

This is a v2 version of this particular API function which is supported in 7.0.240+ and I’d like to highlight that this API provides new disk_group_config and storage_types objects in the return schema. This discovered node API function is run before initializing the VxRail nodes and provides a wealth of information about the nodes discovered.

1. VxRail Manager Embedded (interactive web-based API)

From VxRail code version 7.0.350 we have migrated to a new interface based on spotlight with greater capabilities. To access the native API client navigate to the following URL replacing <VxM> with the VxRail Manager FQDN/IP (No need for a special API client):

Expanding ‘vxrail installation’ API function we click on ‘Return nodes by auto discovery’ and click ‘Send Request’:

API status Code 200 implies a successful operation. Note the red arrow below points at a copy config option which is useful:

API provides new disk_group_config and storage_types objects in the return schema:

Note:

• disk_group_config type: The first two digits in disk group type represent the number of disk slots in the appliance. The second two digits represent the disk group configuration. For example, 1002 represents an E660F with 10 disk slots using the disk group2 (DG2) configuration, meaning 2 disk groups consisting of 1 cache disk and up to 4 capacity disks.
• storage_types of the node: Supported values include Local, External, None, Unknown.

2. CLI using a wrapped CURL command

Using a CURL cmd from a VxRail Manager SSH console:

curl -k --request GET \ -u https://192.2.0.10/rest/vxm/v2/system/initialize/nodes \ --header 'Authorization: Basic undefined' \ --header 'Content-Type: application/json' | json_pp

Reference Material:

https://dl.dell.com/content/docu91468