Access Your Environment

Get Metadata About a Running VM
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CloudShare enables you to retrieve useful metadata parameters from a currently-running VM via a simple API call.

Accessing VM metadata can provide key data, which can be used in custom scripts that you execute while an environment is running.

Note

To enable execution of custom scripts whenever an environment is created, contact CloudShare at support@cloudshare.com.

Using the Metadata Provider

There are two ways to invoke the CloudShare metadata provider with your VM:

  • Add the desired metadata command to a custom script or batch file that will be executed by the VM.

  • Open a browser tab in the running VM and enter the desired command into the address bar as a URL.

The metadata provider API can only execute from inside a running VM with a network connection.

For either of these methods, the basic metadata provider call is:

https://metadata.cloudshare.com/api/v3/unauthenticated/metadata

You can request that only selected data be returned by the metadata provider by adding specific parameters to the command line. See the complete list of available parameters here.

Sample from a Windows Powershell Script

  1. From Powershell, use the Invoke-WebRequest command, for example:

    PS C:\Users\Adminstrator> Invoke-WebRequest https://metadata.cloudshare.com/api/v3/unauthenticated/metadata

    This example will return a detailed HTTP response that includes all content from metadata provider:

    StatusCode        : 200
StatusDescription : OK
Content           : {"machine-hostname": "D7269590243","machine-fqdn":"uvo1q5bardqu896vodb.vm.cld.sr","machine-fqdn-webaccess":"uvo1q5bardqu896vodb.env.cloudshare.com","machine-vanity-name-generic":"Training7","machine-internal-ip": "10.164.85.38","machine-id": "MCoa0S6q0f-GyTSRjxu7tFnA2","machine-name": "Windows Server 2019 Standard","env-id":"ENLjPZPxkVvjYbTeHhGPlSNQ2","env-name": "Training 7","env-owner-email":"praveengupta@3dportals.com","env-owner-id": "USf6aALaE_bfBrAcL2o1ikBg2","class-id":null,"env-region": 0}
RawContent        : HTTP/1.1 200 OK
                   Pragma: no-cache
                   X-XSS-Protections: 1; mode=block
                   X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
                   Content-Length: 471
                   Cache-Control: no-cache
                   Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
                   Date: Wed, 1...
Forms             :
Headers           : {[Pragma, no-cache], [X-XSS-Protections, 1; mode=block], [X-Content-Type-Options, nosniff], [Content-Length, 471]...}
Images            : {}
InputFields       : {}
Links             : {}
ParsedHtml        : System.__ComObject
RawContentLength  : 471

  2. To parse the content portion from the metadata provider, use the following command:

    PS C:\Users\Administrator> (Invoke-WebRequest https://metadata.cloudshare.com/api/v3/unauthenticated/metadata).Content

    In this example, only the content is returned:

    {"machine-hostname": "D7269590243","machine-fqdn": "uvo1q5bardqu896vodb.vm.cld.sr","machine-fqdn-webaccess": "uvo1q5bardqu896vodb.env.cloudshare.com","machine-vanity-name-generic": "Training7","machine-internal-ip": "10.164.85.38","machine-id": "MCoa0S6q0f-GyTSRjxu7tFnA2","machine-name": "Windows Server 2019 Standard","env-id": "ENLjPZPxkVvjYbTeHhGPlSNQ2","env-name": "Training 7","env-owner-email": "praveengupta@3dportals.com","env-owner-id": "USf6aALaE_bfBrAcL2o1ikBg2","class-id": null,"env-region": 0}

Note

Should you encounter SSL errors when running the CloudShare metadata provider command in a script, run the following commands prior to invoking the metadata provider:

$AllProtocols = [System.Net.SecurityProtocolType]'Ssl3,Tls,Tls11,Tls12'
[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = $AllProtocols

From a Browser Tab

  1. Enter the metadata provider call directly in the address bar as a URL, for example:

    https://metadata.cloudshare.com/api/v3/unauthenticated/metadata/env-owner-email

  2. The command response is displayed as plain text directly in the browser window:

    MetadataProvider-BrowserExample_110522.png

    Note that this example returns only the metadata parameter that was specified in the call.

Returning Specific VM Data with the Metadata Provider

You can return any of the following data elements from your running VM by adding a specific parameter to your metadata provider call.

The format for requesting a specific parameter with the call is:

https://metadata.cloudshare.com/api/v3/unauthenticated/metadata/[parameter name]

For an example, see above.

Data Element

Parameter Name

VM Host Name

machine-hostname

VM Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN)

machine-fqdn

Web Access Address of the VM as FQDN

machine-fqdn-webaccess

VM Vanity Name

machine-vanity-name-generic

VM Internal IP

machine-internal-ip

VM Unique ID

machine-id

VM Name

machine-name

Current Environment Unique ID

env-id

Current Environment Name

env-name

Email of Current Environment Owner

env-owner-email

Unique ID of Current Environment Owner

env-owner-id

Unique ID of the Current Class

class-id

Region ID of the Current Environment

env-region

For additional information about using the metadata provider, contact CloudShare support.

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