I am querying ESX hosts, some of which are managed by a vCenter server, and some are not. I want to find out the name of the vCenter server that manages this host, if it there is one.
I'm using the Python psphere module, but all I want is the types of objects and attributes I should be looking in. This is the relevant excerpt from my code:
from psphere.client import Client
import psphere.managedobjects
items = []
cl = Client( hostname, userid, password )
dcs = psphere.managedobjects.Datacenter.all( cl )
I identify an ESX host vs. a vCenter server by checking the datacenters list:
if len( dcs ) == 1 and dcs[0].name == 'ha-datacenter':
hosts = psphere.managedobjects.HostSystem.all( cl )
Typically, hosts above will be a list of one element: the ESX host. I want to know how to find out if there is a managing ESX server for this host. The vSphere client does it, so there must be a way.
else: # This is a vCenter server, so we can drill down to find the ESX servers
for dc in dcs:
items.extend( getEntities( dc, [hostname] ) )
getEntities() is my own function for collecting details about hosts and vCenter servers.
I found the following property within the HostSystem object: .summary.managementServerIp. Not all HostSystem objects will have this property, so I check for it as follows:
host = ... a HostSystem object, acquired as described in the question ...
if 'managementServerIp' in host.summary:
... do something with the management server IP address ...