CLASH – CLoud Admin SHell

It has been several weeks since I have posted to this blog.  I would blame this on the holidays, but that would be inaccurate as it has been something far more insidious!

What is CLASH?
CLASH is a universal shell.  What is a universal shell?  First, by universal I mean that it is intended to run on all major desktop operating system platforms including:
Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7

Now the shell portion is a bit different.  Since this is a CLoud Admin SHell, Cloud is an important part of idea.  In this initial prototype I went through many experiments in learning the nuances of JRuby <follow on post link here>, but have been able to get a reasonable working version of VIJava (the interface I’m using to get JRuby to work with VMware vCenter/vSphere).

Great, so what can I do with this prototype?

-You can try it out on any of the platforms listed above!
-If you are on a Windows System, you can either edit the clash.bat file and put in your server’s IP or name along with a username and password to connect
-If you are on Mac or Linux, you can simply type ./clash –Server 127.0.0.1 –Username administrator –Password password to connect 

-The following are the working commands:
> Get-VM SomeVMName
Above gets the VM object and prints out the Guest Operating System type

This command prints the name of the VM object

> $result $
This displays the methods available to the VM object

> $result $.get
This shows only the methods with “get” in them

> $result $.set
This shows only the methods with “set” in them

> $result $.find something
This shows only them methods that contain “something” in them

> $result method
This will execute the method against the object (i.e. $result getName will display the name property of the VM object from Get-VM)

> disconnect
This will cleanly disconnect from the vCenter / vSphere server

> Start-VM SomeVMName
This command is flakey at the moment, this will be fixed when the next prototype is released in a few weeks

> Stop-VM SomeVMName
This is in the same state as Start-VM

Where is this headed?
After many experiments, it will be broken out into a flexible system that allows many different options and cool capabilities against not only vCenter and vSphere, but most Cloud platforms as well.  Currently planned platforms include:
-Amazon EC2 and S3
-Rackspace
-(Looking for the next provider for this list)

Other interfaces to the shell (for both input and output) will include a Web interface, I’m looking for thoughts on other types of interfaces desired.

How will this work?
Below is my latest planned diagram for how I hope/think things should work:

Where can I get the Prototype?
You can get the code from GitHub here
You can download the entire package here

Installation Directions (AGAIN, this is a PROTOTYPE, it does NOT follow best practices)
1.) Make sure that you have Java 1.5 or Above Installed
Download Java from Here

2.) Install JRuby 1.5.6

Download JRuby from Here

3.) Follow the JRuby Setup Instructions Here

4.) Download the CLASH prototype/alpha-1 from GitHub (See Above Links)

Unzip/Tar it to c:\clash or /clash directory in ROOT

5.) Start clash by going to c:\clash\bin\ or /clash/bin

On Windows edit clash.bat to contain the correct IP Address, Username, and Password

then run clash.bat

On Mac and Linux type ./clash –Server 127.0.0.1 –Username administrator –Password password

Make sure to select the IP or Name of a valid vCenter / vSphere Server

6.) Play with clash

Please supply feedback to me through comments to this post or communicate directly with me through Twitter – my handle is @mccrory

I’m looking for ideas/things that you would like to see clash do, better commands, capabilities, features, etc.