Where can I find script commands for PCNS 3.1 VA (Virtual Appliance)

[user792401]

Hello, I am using PCNS 3.1 VA (Virtual Appliance) in an ESXi 5.1 environment. I want to configure a script event. Does anyone know where I can find a command reference (or similar) for the PCNS VA? All the documentation that I have found refers to the vMA version of PCNS and this (the vMA) has different paths/commands than the VA. Thanks.

[user792401]

Hello, I am using PCNS 3.1 VA (Virtual Appliance) in an ESXi 5.1 environment. I want to configure a script event. Does anyone know where I can find a command reference (or similar) for the PCNS VA? All the documentation that I have found refers to the vMA version of PCNS and this (the vMA) has different paths/commands than the VA. Thanks.

[BillP]

Hi,

What do you mean by the command reference? PCNS on the virtual appliance default path is /opt/APC/PowerChute/group1. If you want PCNS to run a script you enter the path into the Web interface or .ini file where the script resides. 

[user792401]

I want the script to shutdown VMs and hosts so I want to call commands like vmware-cmd or shutdown-vmguest etc. However the VA doesn't seem to have any such commands, or at least I cannot seem to find them. (these commands do exist in the vMA). Basically, the VA has its own Linux environment, I want to write a script that will run in this environment, and I am trying to figure out what commands this script can include. Hope this makes sense. 🙂

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Hi,

With the release of PCNS 3.1 we no longer use the shutdown.sh and shutdownhost.pl. We are using VMware Java API's to do the shut down. On the Virtual Appliance the Linux shutdown.sh script is present and for vMA the shutdown.sh/shutdownhost.pl scripts are present but are never called by PCNS.

If you want to customize the shutdown you can install PCNS 3.0.1 on the vMA and modify the scripts as needed.

[user792401]

Hello and thanks for the reply. To confirm, if I want to use custom scripts then I cannot use the PCNS VA 3.1 but I should use PCNS 3.0.1 over vMA in order to get access to Linux commands for the script. Yes?

[BillP]

Hi,

No. PCNS 3.1 can run custom scripts. The understanding I had from you earlier
post is you wanted to edit the scripts provided with PCNS and as I wrote those
are no longer used. To run a customer script you can enter the path to the
script using the web interface or through pcnsconfig.ini.

From The web interface go to Shutdown Settings and select Run Command; this
will run the command file / script when PCNS is going to power down the host,
VMs, PCNS VM. The other option is to enter command file / script for an individual
event. Go to Configure Events and select Command File.

[user792401]

Hi Bill, I understand this part, my problem is that I don't know what commands to run. Is there a command reference? ie what command do I use to shutdown a VM? Or to shutdown a host? Thanks.

[BillP]

Hi,

As I wrote earlier "We are using VMware Java API's to do the shut down". There are no command files that can be run manually as there were with earlier versions of PCNS. If you want to write your own code to power down the host and VMs you can find that info on line. I did a search on VMware Java API and got lots of hits.