VDSCLI stands for VMware Distributed Switch Command Line Interface VMware Distributed Switch (DVS) is also known as Distributed Virtual Switch (VDS).

1. © 2014 VMware Inc. All rights reserved.
Community Project DVSCLI
CLI for VMware Virtual Distributed Switch
David Pasek, VMware Technical Account Manager, VCDX #200
2017-12-04

2. Disclaimer
• DVSCLI is not officially supported by VMware
• However, DVSCLI is based on publicly available VMware
API and is leveraging VMware Perl SDK, therefore the
approach is fully supported but the whole solution is the
personal effort for VMware community, therefore VMware
Support Organization (GSS) cannot support DVSCLI
• If the official VMware support is required, “VMware SDK and
API Support” is the option, at least for Perl SDK part of
DVSCLI solution
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3. Project History
• One of my customers migrated from Cisco Nexus 1000v to
VDS (VMware Distributed Switch)
• Migration was easy and very successful but customer was
missing two features
– They use open source project NetDB to keep track of devices,
including VMs, in the network. NetDB integration with Nexus
1000V was simple because it has CLI like physical Nexus
switch
– Network admins liked Nexus 1000v CLI but there is no CLI for
VMware VDS
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4. Problem definition
• How to use NetDB with VMware VDS?
• How to expose at least some basic CLI commands to
network administrators and give them expected user
experience?
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5. What is NetDB?
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https://sourceforge.net/projects/netdbtracking/

6. How to integrate NetDB with VMware DVS?
• NetDB is written in Perl
• NetDB has a framework for implementing NetDB with third-
party devices – they call it Scrapers
• Scraper is the perl script with following custom functions to
gather data from devices
– connectDevice
– getMacTable
– getInterfaceTable
– getARPTable
– getIPv6Table (IPv6 Neighbor Table)
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7. VDSCLI Perl Script – vdscli.pl
• Available at
https://github.com/davidpasek/vdscli/blob/master/vdscli.pl
• vdscli.pl has 132 lines of code = It’s not rocket science
• vdscli.pl usage for NetDB function getMacTable
– ./vdscli.pl --server=$VDSCLI_VSPHERE_VCENTER --username
$VDSCLI_VSPHERE_USERNAME --password
$VDSCLI_VSPHERE_PASSWORD --cmd show-mac-address-table
• vdscli.pl usage for NetDB function getInterfaceTable
– ./vdscli.pl --server=$VDSCLI_VSPHERE_VCENTER --username
$VDSCLI_VSPHERE_USERNAME --password
$VDSCLI_VSPHERE_PASSWORD --cmd show-port-status
• I did not implement NetDB scraper for VMware DVS but it should be
easy just by calling vdscli.pl to get data from vSphere or reuse the code
natively in NetDB scraper for VDS
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8. VDSCLI.pl output – show-mac-address-table
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9. VDSCLI.pl output – show-port-status
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10. How to emulate switch CLI?
• Leverage vdscli.pl
• Implement interactive CLI wrapper around vdscli.pl
• Allow ssh or telnet access to CLI
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11. Interactive CLI wrapper = VDSCLI
• Leveraging Python iShell for interactive
– ishell helps you to easily create an interactive shell for your
application. It supports command completion, dynamic
arguments, a command history, and chaining of commands.
• Leveraging Linux for ssh or telnet access
– Standard linux shell (bash) is replaced by VDSCLI Python/iShell
wrapper
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12. Interactive CLI wrapper – vdscli-ishell.py
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13. VDSCLI – interactive command line interface
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14. Further information
• CLI for VMware Virtual Distributed Switch
– http://www.vcdx200.com/2017/06/cli-for-vmware-virtual-
distributed.html
• CLI for VMware Virtual Distributed Switch - implementation
procedure
– http://www.vcdx200.com/2017/09/cli-for-vmware-virtual-
distributed.html
• VDSCLI - VMware Distributed Switch CLI
– https://github.com/davidpasek/vdscli
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15. Questions and Answers
E-mail: dpasek@vmware.com or david.pasek@gmail.com
Twitter: @david_pasek
Blog: http://vcdx200.com