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.
- Insightful Keynote by Mohit Kataria, Sr. Product Manager, CMBU, VMware.
- vSphere and vRA troubleshooting with use cases by Abhilash & Ravi
- 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.
Vikas Shitole is a Staff engineer 2 at VMware (by Broadcom) India R&D. He currently contributes to core VMware products such as vSphere, VMware Private AI foundation and partly VCF . He is an AI and Kubernetes enthusiast. He is passionate about helping VMware customers & enjoys exploring automation opportunities around core VMware technologies. He has been a vExpert since last 11 years (2014-24) in row for his significant contributions to the VMware communities. He is author of 2 VMware flings & holds multiple technology certifications. He is one of the lead contributors to VMware API Sample Exchange with more than 35000+ downloads for his API scripts. He has been speaker at International conferences such as VMworld Europe, USA, Singapore & was designated VMworld 2018 blogger as well. He was the lead technical reviewer of the two books “vSphere design” and “VMware virtual SAN essentials” by packt publishing.
In addition, he is passionate cricketer, enjoys bicycle riding, learning about fitness/nutrition and one day aspire to be an Ironman 70.3
Hi Vikas,
It’s a damn good and simple explanation of a lot of my queries.
Very helpful. Keep it up!
Thanks a lot. I am glad you found it is helpful
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
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
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
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.
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.