This document provides an overview and summary of the various APIs and tools available for managing and automating VMware vSphere environments. It discusses the vSphere Web Services SDK, hardware health monitoring via CIM SMASH, command line interfaces like vCLI and PowerCLI, language-specific SDKs for Perl, .NET and Java, and APIs for interacting with virtual machines like the Guest SDK and VIX. The document provides examples and explanations of how to use these various interfaces to configure, monitor and automate vSphere.

1. London Workshop
Exploring VMware APIs
Preetham Gopalaswamy
Group Product Manager vCenter Server and vSphere APIs
October 8, 2010
Managing Large vSphere Environments using SDKs / PowerCLI
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2. Disclaimer
This session may contain product features that are
currently under development.
This session/overview of the new technology represents
no commitment from VMware to deliver these features in
any generally available product.
Features are subject to change, and must not be included in
contracts, purchase orders, or sales agreements of any kind.
Technical feasibility and market demand will affect final delivery.
Pricing and packaging for any new technologies or features
discussed or presented have not been determined.
“THESE FEATURES ARE REPRESENTATIVE OF FEATURE AREAS UNDER
DEVELOPMENT. FEATURE COMMITMENTS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE,
AND MUST NOT BE INCLUDED IN CONTRACTS, PURCHASE ORDERS,
OR SALES AGREEMENTS OF ANY KIND. TECHNICAL FEASIBILITY AND
MARKET DEMAND WILL AFFECT FINAL.”
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3. VMware API Overview
VMware Enabled Independent
Secure Private Cloud
Public Clouds Public Clouds
Solution API/CLI
View Thin App Zimbra SaaS Other SaaS
Applications Providers
VMware End-User Computing
Application API
Google App
VMforce Engine
Spring vFabric Hyperic
Other cloud
Oher PaaS infrastructure
VMware Cloud Application Platform Partners providers
Virtualization/Hardware Health/Cloud API/CLI
VMware Cloud Infrastructure and Management vCloud
Datacenter
vCenter vShield vCloud Director vCloud Express
VMware vSphere: Foundation for Cloud Computing
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4. Some Much That I Can Do…
Management capabilities available in the vSphere platform
• Virtual Machine management
• Host configuration (storage, networking)
• Performance monitoring and management
• Events and Alarms
• Host hardware management and health monitoring
• Virtual Storage management
• Virtual machine content back-up and restore
• User management (on hosts)
• Virtual Disk manipulation
• Communication from the host to the guest
• Hypervisor information from inside the guest
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5. … But Which API Do I Use?
What is your role and what are you trying to do?
• System Administrator managing a few virtualized servers
• Using the command-line to troubleshoot
• Trying to configure an aspect of your infrastructure that does not have a GUI
• Datacenter administrator in a Cloud Service Provider or large enterprise
• Automate provisioning and management of 100s of hosts and 1000s of VMs
• Monitor the hardware in your datacenter
• Software developer in an ISV or large datacenter
• Developing a management application that monitors and manages a virtual
datacenter
• Testing software in multiple VMs each running different a different OS
• Creating a smart guest application that is virtualization-aware
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6. Agenda
Guiding principles
Virtualization Management through the Web Services API
Hardware Health Monitoring and Management (CIM SMASH)
Automation through CLIs (vCLI, PowerCLI)
Language Specific SDKs (Perl, .NET, Java)
Bridging the Hypervisor and the Guest (Guest SDK, VIX)
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7. Introduction
Some core principles of the vSphere management capabilities:
• They will be exposed by the server as a web-accessible interface
• Any SDK that is distributed by VMware will leverage one or more
of these interfaces
• All capabilities available on ESXi will also be available on ESX and through the
same interfaces
• Management tools must integrate through vCenter where-ever possible
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8. vSphere Web Services SDK
Once known as the VI API
Service
Web
• Always available
• Secure
• Firewall friendly
• Designed for network access
• Standards based
• Governed by access control rules
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9. vSphere Web Services SDK
Available on ESX, ESXi, vCenter
Service
and VMware Server 2.0
Web
Comprehensive interface for vSphere
virtualization management
Server (ESX/ESXi or vCenter) authentication credentials must
be provided to access this interface
The Web Services SDK will be refreshed each time the vSphere
interface is enhanced to include new features – typically during
major and minor vSphere releases
This interface will maintain backward and forward compatibility
for 2 releases
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10. vSphere Web Services SDK
Provides interfaces to do the following:
Service
Web
• Inventory retrieval (Hosts, VMs, Virtual Devices)
• Virtual Machine management
• Host configuration (storage, networking)
• Performance monitoring and management
Sample utilities are included with the vSphere SDK package
to demonstrate use of the APIs. We are happy to enhance the
samples based on input from our partners
Clients can monitor the infrastructure through this API so that
they are informed any time there is a change – through events
or through the PropertyCollector
vCenter enables the creation and configuration of alarms
in response to specific events. The response to an alarm
can be configured
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11. Hardware Health Monitoring and Management
Hardware asset information and health information H
He /W
is exposed through the standards-based CIM a lt
h
SMASH interface (Systems Management Architecture
for Server Hardware)
This API is accessible on the hosts through an https interface
VMware’s implementation uses the SFCB CIMOM and the default
providers that ship in-box are open-source OMC providers
VMware supports both CIM XML over http and WSMan
While several management tools support CIM data, not many
support CIM Indications or WSEventing. So, all CIM Indications are
also available as SNMP traps
VMware partners with all its OEM vendors and IHV partners to
enable them to create CIM providers that enhance the hardware
data available in vSphere
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12. What is CIM
CIM stands for “Common Information Model”,
an industry standard, object-oriented data model
that provides a UML-based framework for describing
management data
CIM schemas are defined in a language called Managed Object
Format (MOF). The Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF)
is a standards body defining the CIM Schema with over1000
classes and associations
Web-based Enterprise Management (WBEM) is a set of standards
defining web-based CIM implementations. Transport between the
CIM server and client can be CIM XML over http/https or WSman
WBEM profiles define a collection of CIM elements and rules
pertaining to a specific area of management
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13. Hardware Health Monitoring and Management
CPU details H
He /W
a lt
h
Fan
Battery
Local RAID storage
Power Supply
Power State Management
System logs
System Memory
Firmware
Temperature Sensors
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14. vSphere CIM SMASH API
vCenter includes a monitoring Service that aggregates H
He /W
hardware information (primarily health) from each a lt
h
of the hosts that it manages
This service exposes information to the vSphere Client
through a proprietary HTML interface
The service is also integrated with the vCenter Alarms
infrastructure so that key hardware events can trigger alarms
The hardware health data is available only on the host. API users
are encouraged to authenticate against vCenter and use the
AcquireCIMTicket method to work against a host – rather than
authenticate against the host
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15. Hardware Health Providers
VMware provides a set of default hardware H
He /W
health providers a lt
h
Server and IHV partners often supply additional
hardware health providers
Experience enhanced if you install the partners’ providers
Providers may need to be installed separately
Server vendors often distribute an ESXi image customized for their hardware
Each hardware vendor (server or IHV) is responsible for developing
additional providers are installed if the default set of hardware
health data does not give you all the information
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16. Command Line Interfaces
VMware offers 2 types of command line interfaces
• vSphere CLI/vCLI – once known as RCLI or VI CLI
• PowerCLI – previously known as the VI Toolkit (for Windows) CL
I
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17. vCLIs
vSphere CLI offers the capabilities previously
available only on the COS (Console Operating
System) in Classic ESX, through a remote interface.
CL
This CLI is supported on both ESX and ESXi I
Functionally, they are mainly focused on host configuration
Most of the vSphere CLI commands are currently
available through vCenter. VMware plans to support
all of them through vCenter in a future release
Most of the commands are Perl scripts and hence run in Linux
and Windows
The vSphere CLI can be downloaded and installed separately
or as part of a VMware supplied virtual machine vMA (vSphere
Management Assistant)
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18. vCLI: The Next Generation - esxcli
esxcli was first introduced in vSphere 4.0
At its simplest it can be described as CLIs that run on
the server with an XML front-end CL
I
The CLI functionality is broken into logical namespaces
with actions specific to each namespace. To run such a
command, one would say:
esxcli [generic options] <namespace> <action> [specific options]
Enables easy extensibility/upgrade of the command-line
functionality without changing the client
The goal is to transition all the current vCLI commands to the
esxcli style in the future
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19. vSphere PowerCLI
PowerCLI offers a command-line/scripting interface to
vSphere management based on Microsoft PowerShell
VMware has created over 250 cmdlets that expose CL
I
the most common management use-cases
Cmdlets are simple, intuitive and can be easily and
elegantly chained to accomplish complex management tasks
This product boasts of a large, extremely active user community,
that is enhancing our base implementation with new scripts that
are available on the forum and at
http://blogs.vmware.com/vipowershell
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20. The Simple Elegance of PowerCLI
The script below shows how one can create
snapshots for all VMs that are currently powered on
The same task would be several 100 lines CL
I
of code using the vSphere Web Services SDK
(Java binding)
connect
get-vm | where {$_.powerstate eq “poweredOn”} | new-snapshot
get-cluster -name “mycluster” | get-vmhost | Get-VMHostStorage -RescanAllHBA
disconnect
The PowerCLI model will form the basis for all the language
specific SDKs that VMware will offer the ecosystem
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21. vSphere [Language Specific] SDKs
VMware offers its customers SDKs for different
programming languages
The following SDKs are currently available: SD
K s
• Perl (previously known as the VI Perl Toolkit)
• .NET (available as part of the PowerCLI)
• Java (now available as a Technology preview)
These SDKs define a client-side data model specific to the
particular programming language (Perl objects, .NET objects,
Java objects)
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22. vSphere SDKs Architecture
VMware CLIs and Customer/Partner Solutions SD
K s
vSphere SDK Utility Applications and Samples
Abstraction Layer
maps VMware entities into native objects
provides a simple API to retrieve objects
Runtime Layer
interfaces with the web services
vSphere Web Services SDK vSphere CIM SMASH API
vCenter
ESX ESX ESX ESX
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23. vSphere SDK for Perl (example)
# login
Util::connect(); SD
K s
# get VirtualMachine views for all powered on VM's
my $vm_views = Vim::find_entity_views(view_type => 'VirtualMachine',
filter => { 'runtime.powerState' => 'poweredOn' });
# snapshot each VM
foreach my $vm (@$vm_views) {
$vm->CreateSnapshot(name => 'snapshot sample',
description => 'Snapshot created from workshop sample',
memory => 0,
quiesce => 0);
print "Snapshot complete for VM: " . $vm->name . "n";
}
# logout
Util::disconnect();
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24. Vitual Disk Development Kit (VDDK)
Use the Virtual Disk Libraries to
• Access/modify virtual disks (VixDiskLib)
• Mount a volume/disk (ViMntapi)
The vmdk file format is public… but
• Let us avoid everyone implementing VMDK readers/writers
• Avoid updating the readers/writers for every format update
• Optimized code from VMware which has already done all this work
• Low threshold to let ISV’s use VMDK as their native format (e.g. for backup)
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25. Vitual Disk Development Kit (VDDK)
VDDK App
1. Login
vCenter
2. Open(VM, vmdk, …)
4. Read(handle, …)
2a. GetTicket(Vm, Vmdk,…)
3. Open(vmdk, Ticket, …)
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26. vSphere Guest SDK
API available to developers writing applications
that will run in a virtual machine on a vSphere platform
Available as a C or a Java library SD
K
Provides information about the virtual machine
and limited information about the host that the machine
is running on
Enables customers to write smart applications that respond to
changes at the virtual environment layer
This SDK is available in guest operating systems (Windows and
Linux) where VMware Tools is installed
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27. vSphere Guest SDK
Data that is displayed includes:
• Resources that the host has allocated to this virtual machine
• Actual resource utilization by the VM SD
K
• Elapsed time since this VM was last powered on or reset
• CPU time scheduled on the host system for a particular VM’s CPU
(this information combined with other available statistics allows you
to estimate how fast this VM’s CPU is running relative to the host CPU)
Since vSphere 4.0, the Guest SDK now reports on more VM-
specific performance statistics than were previously available
Strong security rules prevent a virtual machine from having
complete knowledge of the host that it runs on
Applications requiring host level data must use the vSphere Web
Services SDK (which would require host/vCenter authentication)
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28. VIX API
The VIX API offers 2 categories of capabilities:
• VM operations
• Ability to transfer files between the hypervisor and the guest SD
K
• Start and stop applications inside the guest (needs VMware tools)
The first category of actions are available through the vSphere Web
Services API (already discussed earlier)
The latter categories of actions will be available in the WS API in
a future release – at that point, the VIX API will become defunct
Communications with the guest require a valid credential against
the Guest Operating System
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29. vSphere Management Automation Interfaces
vSphere Management
Guest SDK Assistant (vMA)
Partner Agents/Tools/CLIs
Partner GUI Plug-in
Power CLI vSphere CLI
SDK for Java SDK for .NET SDK for Perl
Client Plug-in API VIX API Web Services API H/W Mgmt APIs
vSphere (ESX/ESXi + vCenter) Virtual Disk
Development Kit
Platform Memory Network Storage Other
Host
Hardware
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30. Helpful Resources
For all your integration needs go to http://developer.vmware.com
Developer Support can be purchased from the GSS organization.
They answer questions like
• Can I automate the following use-case using the APIs?
• If so, where is the documentation/samples to help me?
• I tried it and it does not work. Can you help me troubleshoot?
• I think I found a bug in vSphere
Some other related sessions that may be of interest
• PPC-02: Best Practices in Using the vSphere Web Services SDK
• PPC-03: All about vSphere Events, Alarms and Tasks
• PPC-04: vSphere APIs for Performance Monitoring
• PPC-05: Demystifying Property Collector
• PPC-07: War Stories from the Trenches (from our Developer Support team)
• PPC-14: vCloud API – SDK to Improve Efficiency when Building Your Clouds
• PPC-17: Hardware Health Monitoring – Present and Future
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31. Support and Training available for PowerCLI and SDKs
Scripting / development support for SDKs and PowerCLI
http://vmware.com/go/sdksupport
PowerCLI Training: http://vmware.com/go/vsphereautomation
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