How to be vSphere Automation Rockstar: PowerCLI, SOAP and REST APIs

Last month, I got an opportunity to share my expertise around vSphere automation as part of VMUG bangalore. I was pumped up to present it since it was my first ever VMUG session.  Exciting news is all sessions are recorded and I thought it would be great to share it with you. If you want to get started with vSphere automation or take your understanding to the next level, I am sure you will find this session very useful. I personally felt how cool it would have been if I would have come across such informative but crisp session (just 41 min) when I started my vSphere automation journey.

Agenda : 

Why APIs are needed?

Getting started: PowerCLI

PowerCLI cmdlets and beyond

PowerCLI: key noteworthy points

Basics : vSphere SOAP based SDKs

Getting started: vSphere API reference, MOB & pyVmomi

Basics: vSphere REST based SDKs

Getting started: API explorer, python

Useful resources

Your critical comment/feedback is welcome. Besides my session, we had great technical sessions as follows. I would suggest to take a look at it as well.

  1. Insightful Keynote by Mohit Kataria, Sr. Product Manager, CMBU, VMware.
  2. vSphere and vRA troubleshooting with use cases by Abhilash & Ravi
  3. vSAN use cases and troubleshooting by Cedric Rajendran & Hareesh

I would like to thank VMUG bangaluru organizing team and our VMUG leaders Sujith and Sumanth for giving this opportunity.

7 thoughts on “How to be vSphere Automation Rockstar: PowerCLI, SOAP and REST APIs

  1. Hi Vikas,
    It’s a damn good and simple explanation of a lot of my queries.
    Very helpful. Keep it up!

  2. Hi Vikas,
    Nice presentation, thanks for that. I have started working on a project to retrive information from vcenter and we are planning to use C#.NET .
    As i understand from your presentation.
    * I can go with PowerCli or vSphere Web Services API

    What are the pros and cons vs PowerCLI vs VSphere web serviec API
    Power CLi Pros
    Speedy development
    Easy to use object Model

    Poser Cli Cons
    Speeed
    has to rely on available cmdlt function.

    VSphere web serviec API
    Pros
    Speed
    Mor flexibility

    Cons.
    Development Speed may be lower than power CLI

    1. PowerCLI is great for scripting, automation, managing vSphere activities etc. Web services or REST API SDKs are great for any app development on the top of vSphere. Yes, powerCLI is easy to get started relative to SDK developement

      1. Basically wan use either PowerCLI or REST API SDK for developing .net application to get information about vms and usage. When it comes to development time powerCli would be faster, but purformance not good as Rest API SDK

        1. Yes, you can use PowerCLI. As the scale of number of vSphere objects goes up, you will have to optimize powerCLI scripts as much as possible. You can use powerCLi view objects rather powercli cmdlets if dealing with many objects.

  3. Hi,
    We have started to develop application using REST API and later found Rest API is not much capable enough to retrive vcenter stat information.
    for example Get-Stat in power cli not able to purform using Rest API.
    Found this article
    https://communities.vmware.com/thread/600324
    Please advice.
    Thank You.
    Mahesh.

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