VMware vSphere Web Services SDK Readme





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VMware vSphere Web Services SDK Readme







 
Readme for Java Samples

 
Readme for C# (.NET) Samples
 
Readme for the vSphere Management SDK






Welcome to the VMware vSphere Web Services SDK. This Readme contains these topics:


What’s in the SDK Package?
What is the VMware vSphere API?
Checklist of Setup Tasks
VMware Resources






Note:   Information in this document may not be current. For up-to-date information, check these VMware Web sites:


Beta or Pre-release Products

VMware Beta Community

Released SDK ProductsVMware vSphere Web Services SDK







What’s in the SDK Package?
The vSphere Web Services SDK provides:


Sample code that demonstrates common tasks involved in using the vSphere API to manage the virtual infrastructure.
The sample code includes compiled and ready-to-run Java class files, as well as Java and C# source code files.
See the respective readme files
(readme_java and
readme_dotnet)
for information about building and using the samples.

Web Services Definition Language (WSDL) definitions that describe the API for accessing
ESXi and vCenter Server systems. The WSDL is divided into two separate files:

vim.wsdl
vimService.wsdl (imports the vim.wsdl. Use the vimService.wsdl file to generate stubs.)


Batch files and shell scripts to automate the process of generating client-side stubs, and for re-building the sample applications.


For Java developers, compiled client-side libraries (vim.jar, vim25.jar, apputils.jar, samples.jar) are available for testing and development purposes.

For C# developers, the Microsoft Visual Studio project files (.sln) have been included.



Reference documentation (vSphere API Reference)
that provides language-neutral descriptive information (object type definitions, properties, and method
signatures, for example) for the VMware vSphere API.



The vSphere Web Services SDK is contained in the SDK\vsphere-ws directory in the vSphere Management SDK.

    VMware-vSphere-SDK-5.0.0-build
      SDK
        vsphere-ws

The following table contains a brief description of the contents of the vSphere Web Services SDK.


Directory structure (under \SDK\vsphere-ws):


DirectoryContentsDocumentation


docresources
HTML and graphics resource files.
 



docs
Legal documents and this vSphere Web Services SDK readme file.
vSphere WSSDK Readme



docs\java
Root directory for sample documentation.

JAXWS samples documentation




docs\ReferenceGuide
vSphere API Reference documentation files.
User guides (Developer’s Setup Guide and Programming Guide) are available in the
VMware Document Center. You can find a link to the document center on the
http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vc-sdk/index.html.

vSphere API Reference



dotnet
Root directory for the .NET (DotNet) samples.
Includes batch files, plus several other sub-directories containing
Windows C# sample applications (in the appropriate namespace structure),
and the Microsoft Visual Studio project files (.sln files).

Readme for .NET (DotNet) samples



java\JAXWS
Root directory for the JAXWS files.
Contains batch files, .jar files, and samples.

Readme for Java samples



wsdl\vim

WSDL files for VI 2.0:

vim.wsdl - Contains the VMware vSphere API definitions.
vimService.wsdl - Defines the Web services endpoint. Your client
application uses this endpoint to access vSphere services.
The vimService.wsdl file references the vim.wsdl with an import statement;
specify the vimService.wsdl file (rather than vim.wsdl directly) when you use a generation tool.


 



\wsdl\vim25

WSDL files for VI 2.5 and 2.5u2, and vSphere 4.0 and later:

vim.wsdl - WSDL file that contains the VMware vSphere API definitions.


vimService.wsdl - Defines the Web services endpoint. Your client application
uses this endpoint to access vSphere services.
The vimService.wsdl file references the vim.wsdl with an import statement;
specify the vimService.wsdl file (rather than vim.wsdl directly) when you use a generation tool.


 






What is the VMware vSphere API?
The VMware vSphere API (vSphere API) provides language-neutral interfaces to the vSphere management framework.
In much the same way that JMX (Java Management Extension) provides an infrastructure for managing and monitoring
Java applications, the VMware vSphere API lets you do the same for VMware vSphere
components (for example, virtual machines, host systems) and services (such as performance manager).

The API provides industry-standard Web services that are hosted on ESXi and vCenter systems.
The API complies with the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) Basic Profile 1.0,
which includes XML Schema 1.0, SOAP 1.1, and WSDL 1.1. For more information about the WS-I Basic Profile 1.0,
see:


http://www.ws-i.org/Profiles/BasicProfile-1.0-2004-04-16.html


The Web services provide life-cycle operations and operations for managing
vSphere components—compute resources, virtual machines, networks, storage, and the like.


Accessing VMware vSphere Web Servers

By default, a VMware vSphere Server listens on port 443, the well-known port for Secure HTTP (HTTPS),
which uses SSL (secure sockets layer) to encrypt communications between client application and server.
To access a server, use the URN from a web-services client application, as in:

https://FQDN_Server_or_IP_Address/sdk

The certificate of the target server must reside on the client machine.
See “Obtaining Server Certificates” in the Appendix (“vSphere Server Certificates”) of the
Developer’s Setup Guide.

To configure the server to support HTTP (rather than HTTPS), see
“Modifying the Server Configuration to Support HTTP” in the Appendix (“vSphere Server Certificates”)
of the Developer’s Setup Guide.




For access to the guide, use the link to the vSphere Document Center on the
vSphere Web Services SDK Documentation page.



Checklist of Setup Tasks


Setting up your workstation for developing client applications using the vSphere Web Services SDK
involves several steps. Assuming you are already developing applications of one kind or another,
some of the steps below may be unnecessary. Modify the details of the process as appropriate
or the specifics of your system. See the
Developer’s Setup Guide
for complete details. Also see the appropriate readme for your development platform
(readme_java.html,
readme_dotnet.html).


To get started with the vSphere Web Services SDK:

Choose a development language (Java or C#) to use for Web-services client application development.
Identify the target server (or servers) that you’ll use during development. (“Target servers”
refers to the vCenter or ESXi systems that will be the targets of the client applications that you develop.)

Verify network access to each server by launching a browser and connect to its URL:

https://vsphere-server-name





vSphere servers (vCenter and ESXi) use SSL (secure sockets layer) to encrypt communications,
so the default protocol is HTTPS (as shown above).


You can configure a vSphere server to use HTTP (rather than HTTPS).
See “Modifying the Server Configuration to Support HTTP” in the Appendix
(“vSphere Server Certificates”) of the Developer’s Setup Guide.


If a server is configured for HTTPS, you must import its server-certificates as described in
“Obtaining Server Certificates” in the (“vSphere Server Certificates”) Appendix
of the Developer’s Setup Guide.




For access to the Developer’ Setup Guide, use the link to the vSphere Document Center on the
vSphere Web Services SDK Documentation page







Note:



For testing purposes, you can circumvent server-certificate verification by using the Java
TrustManager. The JAX-WS samples included in the SDK contain examples of this technique.
For production environments, you must establish a keystore for certificate verification.
See the information about using a client-side credential store in the “Authentication and
Authorization” chapter of the vSphere Web Services SDK Programming Guide.













Install the development environment appropriate for your programming language.


For C#, use one of the Microsoft development environments,
such as Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 or 2005, Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003, or Microsoft Visual C#.
(VMware recommends using Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 or 2005; both include the required .NET Framework.)
For more information, visit:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com


For Java, use the JDK. VMware recommends JDK 6; you can use JDK 5.0,
Update 8 or later. For more information, visit:
http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/





Obtain the appropriate Web-services client tools (XML parser, WSDL-to-proxy-code generation tools, runtime) for your programming language:


For C#, use Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1.
If you have been using Microsoft development tools for any length of time, it's likely you already
have what's needed. You can obtain Microsoft .NET Framework from Microsoft, at:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/default.aspx

You will also need the Microsoft .NET 2.0 Software Development Kit, which includes the WSDL-to-stub
generation tool (wsdl.exe) and the command-line version of the C# compiler (csc.exe), both of which are
called from the Build2005.cmd. You can obtain the Microsoft .NET 2.0 Sofware Development Kit from:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=FE6F2099-B7B4-4F47-A244-C96D69C35DEC&displaylang=en


For Java, use the JAX-WS that comes with the JDK.






Configure environment and other settings on the workstation (as described in the appropriate language-specific
sections in the Developer’s Setup Guide),
or in the respective readme files (readme_java.html,
readme_dotnet.html) for the samples.






VMware Resources

Developer Center
Knowledge Base
User Groups
VMware Communities


For released product information, including known issues,
see the VMware Infrastructure SDK page.
Be sure to read the Release Notes for the most recent information.






Copyright © 2010-2012 VMware, Inc. All rights not expressly granted herein are reserved.

Last updated: 10Sep2012 |  VMware vSphere Web Services SDK