Useful Commands for VCD (VMware Cloud Director)

Managing VMware Cloud Director (vCD) environments efficiently involves the use of various commands to handle routine and critical tasks. Here’s a guide to some of the most useful vCD commands according to me.

I am using VCD 10.5.1

1. Confirming Primary vCD Cell

Finding the primary vCD cell is like identifying the lead actor in a movie. Here are two ways to get the star of your show:

sudo -i -u postgres repmgr node check --role

Or, if you need more details you can switch to postgres

su postgres

/opt/vmware/vpostgres/current/bin/repmgr -f /opt/vmware/vpostgres/current/etc/repmgr.conf node status

2. Start, Stop and check status of VCD service

service vmware-vcd start

service vmware-vcd status

service vmware-vcd stop

To do a Graceful shutdown of the cell you can follow

root@imthi-vcd01[ ~ ]# $VCLOUD_HOME/bin/cell-management-tool -u administrator cell --status
Please enter the administrator password:
Job count = 0
Scheduled job count = 14
Is Active = true
In Maintenance Mode = false
 
 
root@imthi-vcd01[ ~ ]# $VCLOUD_HOME/bin/cell-management-tool -u administrator cell --quiesce true
Please enter the administrator password:
 
 
root@imthi-vcd01[ ~ ]# $VCLOUD_HOME/bin/cell-management-tool -u administrator cell --status
Please enter the administrator password:
Job count = 0
Scheduled job count = 0
Is Active = false
In Maintenance Mode = false
 
 
root@imthi-vcd01[ ~ ]# $VCLOUD_HOME/bin/cell-management-tool -u administrator cell --shutdown
Please enter the administrator password:
Cell successfully deactivated and all tasks cleared in preparation for shutdown
 
 
root@imthi-vcd01[ ~ ]# service vmware-vcd status
* vmware-vcd.service - LSB: The VMware vCloud Director service
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/rc.d/init.d/vmware-vcd; generated)
  Drop-In: /etc/systemd/system/vmware-vcd.service.d
           `-10-aftervaos.conf
   Active: inactive (dead) since Thu 2024-03-09 12:16:16 UTC; 7s ago
     Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
  Process: 12521 ExecStop=/etc/rc.d/init.d/vmware-vcd stop (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
  Process: 1668 ExecStart=/etc/rc.d/init.d/vmware-vcd start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 
 
root@imthi-vcd01[ ~ ]# service vmware-vcd stop
 
 
root@imthi-vcd01[ ~ ]# service vmware-vcd start
 
 
root@imthi-vcd01[ ~ ]# tail -f /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/logs/cell.log

3. Check and update NTP settings

You can check and update the timzeone, VCD service should be restarted after the timezone has been updated.

timedatectl status    ###will show the local time and time zone

/opt/vmware/share/vami/vami_set_timezone_cmd America/New_York        ###To update timezone.

service vmware-vcd restart

tail -f /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/logs/cell.log     ###Tail the cell log to check

4. Query for Stale entries in DB

It’s always a good practice to a take a Backup before making any changes on DB. You can also schedule automatic Backups for VCD

Generally occurs when there’s a connection issue with VC, Check the VM which are present in vCenter but missing from VCD. Thank you @Santosh for sharing this query.

sudo -i -u postgres psql vcloud

select cloud_uuid, name, is_deleted, * from vm_inv where moref not in
(select moref from vm where vm_inv.vc_id = vm.vc_id and vm_inv.moref = vm.moref and vm.moref is not null)
and name like '%pf4-%'
--and cloud_uuid is not null
and is_deleted = false;

The results will display the stale entries, you can search this directly on VC GUI and delete these VMs.

Hope this helps