VMware AVI

Disclaimer: This is a community-maintained open-source project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by VMware, Inc. or Broadcom Inc. "VMware", "NSX", and "AVI" are trademarks of Broadcom. Source code is publicly auditable at github.com/vmware-skills/VMware-AVI under the MIT license.

AVI (NSX Advanced Load Balancer) application delivery and AKO Kubernetes operations — 28 MCP tools.

Dual mode: Traditional AVI Controller management + AKO K8s operations in one skill. Family: vmware-aiops (VM lifecycle), vmware-monitor (inventory/health), vmware-storage (iSCSI/vSAN), vmware-vks (Tanzu Kubernetes), vmware-nsx (NSX networking), vmware-nsx-security (DFW/firewall), vmware-aria (metrics/alerts/capacity), vmware-harden (compliance baselines). | vmware-pilot (workflow orchestration) | vmware-policy (audit/policy)

What This Skill Does

Category	Tools	Count	Read or Write
Virtual Service	list, status, enable/disable	3	2R / 1W
Pool Member	pool discovery, member list, enable/disable member (drain/restore traffic)	4	2R / 2W
SSL Certificate	list, expiry check	2	2R
Analytics	VS metrics overview, request error logs	2	2R
Service Engine	list, health check	2	2R
AKO Pod Ops	status, logs, restart, version info	4	3R / 1W
AKO Config	values.yaml view, Helm diff, Helm upgrade	3	2R / 1W
Ingress Diagnostics	annotation validation, VS mapping, error diagnosis (with fix recommendations)	3	3R
Sync Diagnostics	K8s-Controller comparison, inconsistency list, force resync	3	2R / 1W
Multi-cluster	cross-cluster AKO cluster list, AMKO status	2	2R

Total: 28 tools (22 read + 6 write)

Quick Install

uv tool install vmware-avi
vmware-avi doctor            # checks Controller connectivity + kubeconfig + avisdk

When to Use This Skill

• List, enable, or disable virtual services on AVI Controller
• Add, remove, drain, or restore pool members (maintenance windows, rolling deployments)
• Check SSL certificate expiry across all virtual services
• View VS analytics — throughput, latency, error rates, request logs
• Check service engine status (inventory-based) and per-SE VS placement counts
• Troubleshoot AKO pods — status, logs, restarts
• Manage AKO Helm configuration — view, diff, upgrade values.yaml
• Validate Ingress annotations and diagnose why a VS wasn't created as expected
• Detect sync drift between K8s resources and AVI Controller objects
• Get a cross-cluster view of AKO deployments and AMKO status

Use companion skills for:

• VM lifecycle, deployment, guest ops → vmware-aiops
• NSX segments, gateways, NAT → vmware-nsx
• DFW firewall rules, security groups → vmware-nsx-security
• K8s cluster lifecycle (Supervisor, TKC) → vmware-vks
• Read-only vSphere monitoring → vmware-monitor

Related Skills — Skill Routing

User Intent	Recommended Skill
Load balancer, VS, pool, AVI, ALB, AKO	vmware-avi ← this skill
VM lifecycle, deployment, guest ops	vmware-aiops (uv tool install vmware-aiops)
Read-only vSphere monitoring	vmware-monitor (uv tool install vmware-monitor)
Storage: iSCSI, vSAN, datastores	vmware-storage (uv tool install vmware-storage)
NSX networking: segments, gateways, NAT	vmware-nsx (uv tool install vmware-nsx-mgmt)
NSX security: DFW rules, security groups	vmware-nsx-security (uv tool install vmware-nsx-security)
Tanzu Kubernetes (Supervisor/TKC)	vmware-vks (uv tool install vmware-vks)
Aria Ops: metrics, alerts, capacity	vmware-aria (uv tool install vmware-aria)
Multi-step workflows with approval	vmware-pilot
Compliance baselines (CIS / 等保 / PCI-DSS), drift detection, LLM remediation advisor	vmware-harden (uv tool install vmware-harden)
Audit log query	vmware-policy (vmware-audit CLI)

Common Workflows

Maintenance Window — Drain a Pool Member

Pre-flight (judgment — affects live traffic):

• Capacity check: pool must have ≥ 2 healthy members. Disabling the only-other-healthy member is a self-DoS. Verify with pool members my-pool first.
• Connection persistence: if VS uses session persistence (cookie/source-IP), existing sessions stay pinned to the disabled member until they expire. "Drain" is not instant — 5-30 min depending on persistence TTL.
• Long-lived connections: WebSocket/streaming sessions can hold for hours. Decide upfront: hard-disconnect (faster, user-visible) or wait (slower, transparent).
• Observability: enable analytics on the VS BEFORE disabling — you need the baseline to detect degradation.

Steps:

1. pool members my-pool → confirm ≥ 2 healthy members and identify session persistence config
2. pool disable my-pool <server-ip> (graceful drain — new connections stop, existing finish)
3. analytics my-vs --duration 15m → watch active connection count to the drained member trend toward zero
4. Perform maintenance only after active connections = 0 (or you've decided to hard-disconnect)
5. pool enable my-pool <server-ip> → re-enable
6. Verify before declaring success: health monitor passes (typically 30-90 sec) AND new connections are landing on the member (analytics drill-down)

AKO Ingress Not Creating VS

Judgment: this is a layered failure — figure out which layer broke before randomly probing. AKO is a controller; like all K8s controllers, the failure modes are: (a) controller down, (b) controller running but seeing wrong inputs, (c) controller acting but Avi rejecting outputs.

1. ako status → controller running, recent reconciles, no panic logs? If not, fix here first
2. ako ingress check <namespace> → required annotations present? Common miss: kubernetes.io/ingress.class, aviinfrasetting.ako.vmware.com/name
3. ako sync status → drift between K8s state and Avi state. Drift > a few minutes usually means controller error
4. ako ingress diagnose <ingress-name> → AKO's own diagnostic; often pinpoints the issue
5. If sync drifted: ako sync diff → review what's missing on Avi side. Force resync only after you understand why drift happened — blind resync masks bugs that will recur

SSL Certificate Expiry Audit

Judgment: cert expiry is the most preventable outage in the LB world. Run this regularly, not reactively. The 30-day window is a minimum — for prod, set 60+ to allow renewal lead time.

1. ssl expiry --days 60 → catch certs expiring within 60 days, not 30; enterprise renewal cycles take 2-4 weeks
2. Cross-reference VS mapping (in output) → identify which apps are at risk; some certs may be unused (orphans, candidates for cleanup)
3. Decision: certs marked unused (no VS) → propose deletion as part of audit; certs in_use → escalate to cert team with VS list and exact expiry date
4. Schedule a follow-up rescan post-renewal (not just rely on cert team confirming)

Usage Mode

Scenario	Recommended	Why
Local/small models (Ollama, Qwen)	CLI	~2K tokens vs ~8K for MCP
Cloud models (Claude, GPT-4o)	Either	MCP gives structured JSON I/O
Automated pipelines	MCP	Type-safe parameters, structured output
AKO troubleshooting	CLI	Interactive log tailing, Helm diff output

MCP Tools (28 — 22 read, 6 write)

Category	Tools	R/W
Virtual Service (3)	vs_list, vs_status	Read
	vs_toggle	Write
Pool Member (4)	pool_list, pool_members	Read
	pool_member_enable, pool_member_disable	Write
SSL Certificate (2)	ssl_list, ssl_expiry_check	Read
Analytics (2)	vs_analytics, vs_error_logs	Read
Service Engine (2)	se_list, se_health	Read
AKO Pod (4)	ako_status, ako_logs, ako_version	Read
	ako_restart	Write
AKO Config (3)	ako_config_show, ako_config_diff	Read
	ako_config_upgrade	Write
Ingress Diagnostics (3)	ako_ingress_check, ako_ingress_map, ako_ingress_diagnose	Read
Sync Diagnostics (3)	ako_sync_status, ako_sync_diff	Read
	ako_sync_force	Write
Multi-cluster (2)	ako_clusters, ako_amko_status	Read

Read/write split: 22 tools are read-only, 6 modify state. Write tools require double confirmation and are audit-logged.

CLI Quick Reference

# === Traditional Mode (AVI Controller) ===
vmware-avi vs list [--controller <name>]
vmware-avi vs status <vs-name>
vmware-avi vs enable <vs-name>
vmware-avi vs disable <vs-name>           # double-confirm

vmware-avi pool members <pool-name>
vmware-avi pool enable <pool> <server-ip>
vmware-avi pool disable <pool> <server-ip>  # double-confirm (graceful drain)

vmware-avi ssl list
vmware-avi ssl expiry [--days 30]

vmware-avi analytics <vs-name>
vmware-avi logs <vs-name> [--since 1h]

vmware-avi se list
vmware-avi se health

# === AKO Mode (K8s) ===
vmware-avi ako status [--context <k8s-context>]
vmware-avi ako logs [--tail 100] [--since 30m]
vmware-avi ako restart                    # double-confirm

vmware-avi ako config show
vmware-avi ako config diff
vmware-avi ako config upgrade             # double-confirm + --dry-run default

vmware-avi ako ingress check <namespace>
vmware-avi ako ingress map
vmware-avi ako ingress diagnose <ingress-name>

vmware-avi ako sync status
vmware-avi ako sync diff
vmware-avi ako sync force                 # double-confirm

vmware-avi ako clusters
vmware-avi ako amko status

Full CLI reference: see references/cli-reference.md

Troubleshooting

"Controller unreachable" error

1. Run vmware-avi doctor to verify connectivity
2. Check if the controller address and port are correct in ~/.vmware-avi/config.yaml
3. For self-signed certs: set verify_ssl: false in config.yaml (lab environments only)

AKO Pod in CrashLoopBackOff

1. Check logs → vmware-avi ako logs --tail 50
2. Common causes: wrong controller IP in values.yaml, network policy blocking AKO→Controller, expired credentials
3. Fix config → vmware-avi ako config show to inspect, then vmware-avi ako config upgrade with corrected values (release auto-discovered — official installs use --generate-name; pulls the official Broadcom OCI chart oci://projects.packages.broadcom.com/ako/helm-charts/ako)

Ingress created but no VS on Controller

1. Validate annotations → vmware-avi ako ingress check <namespace>
2. Check AKO logs for rejection reason → vmware-avi ako logs --since 5m
3. Run sync diff → vmware-avi ako sync diff to see if the object is stuck

Pool member shows "down" after enable

Health monitor may still be failing. Check the actual health status on the Controller side — the member is enabled but unhealthy. Fix the backend service first, then the health status will auto-recover.

SSL expiry check shows 0 certificates

Verify the controller connection has tenant-level access. Certificates are tenant-scoped in AVI — the configured user may only see certs in their tenant.

AKO sync force has no effect

Force resync triggers AKO to re-reconcile all K8s objects. If the drift persists, the issue is likely in the K8s resource definition itself (bad annotation, missing secret). Use vmware-avi ako ingress diagnose to pinpoint the root cause.

Setup

uv tool install vmware-avi
mkdir -p ~/.vmware-avi
vmware-avi init              # generates config.yaml and .env templates
chmod 600 ~/.vmware-avi/.env
vmware-avi doctor            # verify Controller + K8s connectivity

All tools are automatically audited via vmware-policy. Audit logs: vmware-audit log --last 20

Supported versions: AVI Controller 22.1.x (analytics endpoint quirks fixed in v1.5.11) and 30.x. VCF 9.0 / 9.1 declared compatible (avisdk >=22.1,<31.0 covers bundled AVI). Python 3.11+. Full table: references/capabilities.md → Version Compatibility.

Full setup guide, security details, AI platform compatibility, and container/Smithery deployment: see references/setup-guide.md

Audit & Safety

All operations are automatically audited via vmware-policy (@vmware_tool decorator):

• Every tool call logged to ~/.vmware/audit.db (SQLite, framework-agnostic)
• Policy rules enforced via ~/.vmware/rules.yaml (deny rules, maintenance windows, risk levels)
• Each controller may declare environment: in config.yaml (production / staging / lab) as an optional label; an environment-scoped deny rule in ~/.vmware/rules.yaml can match on it to block writes (e.g. freeze production). A controller with no label is simply not matched by such a rule. Reads are never affected
• Destructive operations (vs_toggle disable, pool_member_disable, ako_restart, ako_config_upgrade, ako_sync_force) require double confirmation
• ako_config_upgrade defaults to --dry-run mode — user must explicitly confirm to apply
• View recent operations: vmware-audit log --last 20

License

MIT — github.com/vmware-skills/VMware-AVI