PCA 3.x Service CLI basics: connecting and finding your way around

The Service CLI is the command-line interface to the Service Enclave of Private Cloud Appliance 3.x, the side where the appliance hardware, tenancies, upgrades and monitoring are managed. It is not the OCI CLI and has nothing to do with workloads inside tenancies. Access is meant for a small team of appliance administrators.

Connecting

Open an SSH connection to TCP port 30006 on a management node and log in as an authorized administrator. Oracle recommends connecting to the address of the primary management node; you can also connect to a specific node.

ssh [email protected] -p 30006
# or a specific management node
ssh admin@pcamn02 -p 30006

After authentication you land in a closed shell with the PCA-ADMIN> prompt. It is not a Linux shell. Type exit to leave.

Command syntax

PCA-ADMIN> command objectType <attributes> [options]

• command: what to do, such as list, show, create, edit, delete.
• objectType: what to act on, such as ComputeNode, ManagementNode, Tenant, RackUnit.
• attributes: identify one object, written as name=value, for example show ManagementNode name=pcamn02. Lists are comma-separated.
• options: change the output, for example fields, where, orderby and limit on list.

Discovering commands

You rarely need to memorize object names. help explains common command types, and a question mark lists what can come next. Put a space before ?; without the space the CLI shows options for the current level instead of the next one. Tab completes names.

PCA-ADMIN> help
PCA-ADMIN> ?
PCA-ADMIN> list ?
PCA-ADMIN> list ComputeNode ?
PCA-ADMIN> list ComputeNode where ?
PCA-ADMIN> list Com<Tab>
PCA-ADMIN> showobjtypes
PCA-ADMIN> showcustomcmds ComputeNode

Useful read-only examples

PCA-ADMIN> list ComputeNode
PCA-ADMIN> list ComputeNode where provisioningState EQ READYTOPROVISION
PCA-ADMIN> list RackUnit fields ipAddress,name,rackElevation,serialNumber,firmwareVersion where state eq running
PCA-ADMIN> show ManagementNode name=pcamn02
PCA-ADMIN> getFaultDomainInfo
PCA-ADMIN> list ZfsPool

getFaultDomainInfo shows compute node counts and total and free memory and vCPUs per fault domain. list ZfsPool followed by show ZfsPool id=... shows storage pool status and usage.

Reading the output

Every command prints a header with Command, Status (for example Success), Time and then Data. Long-running operations return a job ID instead; check it with show job id=....

Good habits

• Start with list and show. Commands such as create, edit and delete change the appliance immediately; read the Administrator Guide section for the task first.
• Use an account with the least privilege that does the job. The appliance has roles such as a read-only Monitor role in addition to full administrator roles.
• Keep port 30006 reachable only from your administration network.

Official documentation

• Oracle PCA: Using the Service CLI
• Oracle PCA Administrator Guide (3.0): Monitoring with Grafana