vSphere Event Streaming

Prototype to show how to transform an existing (SOAP) API into a modern HTTP/REST streaming API.

Details

The vSphere Event Streaming server connects to the vCenter event stream, transforms each event into a standarized CloudEvent and exposes these as JSON objects via a (streaming) HTTP/REST API.

The benefits of this approach are:

Simplified consumption via a modern HTTP/REST API instead of directly using vCenter SOAP APIs
Kubernetes inspired watch style to stream events from a specific position (or "now")
Decoupling from vCenter by proxying multiple clients onto the (cached) event stream of this streaming server
Apache Kafka inspired behavior, using Offsets to traverse and replay the event stream
Lightweight and stateless: events are stored (cached) in memory. If the server crashes it resumes from the configurable VCENTER_STREAM_BEGIN (default: last 10 minutes)

The unique event ID of each vSphere event is mapped to the position (Offset) in the internal (immutable) event Log (journal). Clients use these event IDs (Offsets) to read/stream/replay events as JSON objects.

Example

This example uses curl and jq to query against a locally running vSphere Event Streaming server.

💡 If the server is running in Kubernetes (see below), use the kubectl port-forward command to forward CLI commands to streaming server running in a Kubernetes cluster.

# get current available event range
$ curl -N -s localhost:8080/api/v1/range | jq .
{
  "earliest": 44,
  "latest": 46
}

# read first available event
$ curl -N -s localhost:8080/api/v1/events/44 | jq .
{
  "specversion": "1.0",
  "id": "44",
  "source": "https://localhost:8989/sdk",
  "type": "vmware.vsphere.UserLoginSessionEvent.v0",
  "datacontenttype": "application/json",
  "time": "2022-01-14T13:26:22.0854137Z",
  "data": {
    "Key": 44,
    "ChainId": 44,
    "CreatedTime": "2022-01-14T13:26:22.0854137Z",
    "UserName": "user\n",
    "Datacenter": null,
    "ComputeResource": null,
    "Host": null,
    "Vm": null,
    "Ds": null,
    "Net": null,
    "Dvs": null,
    "FullFormattedMessage": "User user\n@172.17.0.1 logged in as Go-http-client/1.1",
    "ChangeTag": "",
    "IpAddress": "172.17.0.1",
    "UserAgent": "Go-http-client/1.1",
    "Locale": "en_US",
    "SessionId": "56c95aca-aed7-471d-b69f-be73468a89aa"
  },
  "eventclass": "event"
}

# watch for new events and use a jq field selector
$ curl -N -s localhost:8080/api/v1/events\?watch=true | jq '.eventclass+":"+.id+" "+.type'
"event:47 vmware.vsphere.VmStartingEvent.v0"
"event:48 vmware.vsphere.VmPoweredOnEvent.v0"

# start watch from specific id (offset)
curl -N -s localhost:8080/api/v1/events\?watch=true\&offset=44 | jq '.eventclass+":"+.id+" "+.type'
"event:44 vmware.vsphere.UserLoginSessionEvent.v0"
"event:45 vmware.vsphere.VmStoppingEvent.v0"
"event:46 vmware.vsphere.VmPoweredOffEvent.v0"
"event:47 vmware.vsphere.VmStartingEvent.v0"
"event:48 vmware.vsphere.VmPoweredOnEvent.v0"

💡 To retrieve the last 50 events use curl -N -s localhost:8080/api/v1/events. The current hardcoded page size is 50 and a pagination API is on my TODO list 🤓

Deployment

The vSphere Event Streaming server is packaged as a Kubernetes Deployment and configured via environment variables and a Kubernetes Secret holding the vCenter Server credentials.

Requirements:

Service account/role to read vCenter events
Kubernetes cluster to deploy the vSphere Event Stream server
Kubernetes CLI kubectl installed
Network access to vCenter from within the Kubernetes cluster

💡 The vCenter Simulator vcsim can be used to deploy a mock vCenter in Kubernetes for testing and experimenting.

Create Credentials

# create namespace
kubectl create namespace vcenter-stream

# create Kubernetes secret holding the vSphere credentials
# replace with your values
kubectl --namespace vcenter-stream create secret generic vsphere-credentials --from-literal=username=user --from-literal=password=pass

Optional if you want to use vcsim:

# deploy container
kubectl --namespace vcenter-stream create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vmware-samples/vcenter-event-broker-appliance/development/vmware-event-router/deploy/vcsim.yaml

# in a separate terminal start port-forwarding
kubectl --namespace vcenter-stream port-forward deploy/vcsim 8989:8989

Change `Deployment` Manifest

Download the latest deployment manifest (release.yaml) file from the Github release page and update the environment variables in release.yaml to match your setup. Then save the file under the same name (to follow along with the commands).

💡 The environment variables are explained below.

Example Download with curl:

curl -L -O https://github.com/embano1/vsphere-event-streaming/releases/latest/download/release.yaml

vSphere Settings

These settings are required to set up the connection between the event streaming server and VMware vCenter Server.

💡 If you are not making any modifications to the application leave the default value for VCENTER_SECRET_PATH.

Variable	Description	Required	Example	Default
`VCENTER_URL`	vCenter Server URL	yes	`https://myvc-01.prod.corp.local`	(empty)
`VCENTER_INSECURE`	Ignore vCenter Server certificate warnings	no	`"true"`	`"false"`
`VCENTER_SECRET_PATH`	Directory where `username` and `password` files are located to retrieve credentials	yes	`"./"`	`"/var/bindings/vsphere"`

Streaming Settings

These settings are used to customize the event streaming server. The event streaming server internally uses memlog as an append-only Log. See the project for details.

If you want to account for longer downtime you might want to increase the default value of 5m used to replay vCenter events after starting the server.

The defaults for LOG_MAX_RECORD_SIZE_BYTES and LOG_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE are usually fine. The total number of records in the internal event Log is twice the LOG_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE (active and history segment). If the active segment is full and there is already a history segment, this history segment will be purged, i.e. events deleted from the internal Log (but not within vCenter Server!).

Trying to read a purged event throws an invalid offset error.

💡 If you are seeing the server crashing with out of memory errors (OOM), try increasin the specified memory limit in the release.yaml manifest.

Variable	Description	Required	Example	Default
`VCENTER_STREAM_BEGIN`	Stream vCenter events starting at "now" minus specified duration (requires suffix, e.g. `s`/`m`/`h` for seconds/minutes/hours)	yes	`"1h"`	`"5m"` (stream starts with events from last 5 minutes)
`LOG_MAX_RECORD_SIZE_BYTES`	Maximum size of each record in the log	yes	`"1024"` (1Kb)	`"524288"` (512Kb)
`LOG_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE`	Maximum number of records per segment	yes	`"10000"`	`"1000"` (1000 entries in active, 1000 in history segment)

Deploy the Server

kubectl -n vcenter-stream create -f release.yaml

Verify that the server is correctly starting:

kubectl -n vcenter-stream logs deploy/vsphere-event-stream
2022-01-14T14:31:43.798Z        INFO    eventstream     server/main.go:166      starting http listener  {"port": 8080}
2022-01-14T14:31:43.874Z        INFO    eventstream     server/main.go:104      starting vsphere event collector        {"begin": "5m0s", "pollInterval": "1s"}
2022-01-14T14:31:44.877Z        DEBUG   eventstream     server/main.go:122      initializing new log    {"startOffset": 27, "maxSegmentSize": 1000, "maxRecordSize": 524288}
2022-01-14T14:31:44.878Z        DEBUG   eventstream     server/main.go:155      wrote cloudevent to log {"offset": 27, "event": "Context Attributes,\n  specversion: 1.0\n  type: vmware.vsphere.UserLoginSessionEvent.v0\n  source: https://vcsim.vcenter-stream.svc.cluster.local/sdk\n  id: 27\n  time: 2022-01-14T14:31:43.7884757Z\n  datacontenttype: application/json\nExtensions,\n  eventclass: event\nData,\n  {\n    \"Key\": 27,\n    \"ChainId\": 27,\n    \"CreatedTime\": \"2022-01-14T14:31:43.7884757Z\",\n    \"UserName\": \"user\",\n    \"Datacenter\": null,\n    \"ComputeResource\": null,\n    \"Host\": null,\n    \"Vm\": null,\n    \"Ds\": null,\n    \"Net\": null,\n    \"Dvs\": null,\n    \"FullFormattedMessage\": \"User user@10.244.0.6 logged in as Go-http-client/1.1\",\n    \"ChangeTag\": \"\",\n    \"IpAddress\": \"10.244.0.6\",\n    \"UserAgent\": \"Go-http-client/1.1\",\n    \"Locale\": \"en_US\",\n    \"SessionId\": \"72096903-7acb-476f-bb76-29941a91fa1b\"\n  }\n", "bytes": 646}

💡 If you delete (kill) the Kubernetes Pod of the vSphere Event Stream server to simulate an outage, Kubernetes will automatically restart the server. You will then be able to query the events starting off of the specified interval defined via VCENTER_STREAM_BEGIN. Events within this timeframe will not be lost and clients can restart their watch from the earliest event retrieved via the /api/v1/range endpoint.

Set up Port-Forwarding

Inside Kubernetes the server is configured with a Kubernetes Service and accessible over the Service port 80 within the cluster.

To query the server from a local (remote) machine it is the easiest to create a port-forwarding.

# forward local port 8080 to service port 80
kubectl -n vcenter-stream port-forward service/vsphere-event-stream 8080:80

Then in a separate terminal run curl as usual.

curl -s -N localhost:8080/api/v1/range
{"earliest":27,"latest":27}

Uninstall

To uninstall the vSphere Event Stream server and all its dependencies, run:

kubectl delete namespace vcenter-stream

Build Custom Image

Note: This step is only required if you made code changes to the Go code.

This example uses ko to build and push container artifacts.

# only when using kind: 
# export KIND_CLUSTER_NAME=kind
# export KO_DOCKER_REPO=kind.local

export KO_DOCKER_REPO=my-docker-username
export KO_COMMIT=$(git rev-parse --short=8 HEAD)
export KO_TAG=$(git describe --abbrev=0 --tags)

# build, push and run the worker in the configured Kubernetes context 
# and vmware-preemption Kubernetes namespace
ko resolve -BRf config | kubectl -n vcenter-stream apply -f -

To delete the deployment:

ko -n vcenter-stream delete -f config

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 61 Commits
.github		.github
cmd		cmd
config		config
.gitignore		.gitignore
.ko.yaml		.ko.yaml
LICENSE		LICENSE
README.md		README.md
go.mod		go.mod
go.sum		go.sum

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vSphere Event Streaming

Details

Example

Deployment

Create Credentials

Change `Deployment` Manifest

vSphere Settings

Streaming Settings

Deploy the Server

Set up Port-Forwarding

Uninstall

Build Custom Image

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vSphere Event Streaming

Details

Example

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Create Credentials

Change Deployment Manifest

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Streaming Settings

Deploy the Server

Set up Port-Forwarding

Uninstall

Build Custom Image

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