vSphere Automation API

This is the vSphere REST API Reference. It provides API documentation, request/response samples, and usage description of the following vSphere services:

Getting Started with vSphere REST APIs in 5 Minutes

To get you started quickly let’s dive into the necessary steps to enable you to begin calling APIs.

Step 1 - Authenticate to the API Endpoint

The first setup is to create a session ID using the following API:

POST Create Session

Step 2 - Use the session ID in subsequent calls

On subsequent API calls you will need to include the session ID returned in the above call using an HTTP header as follows:

GET /api/cis/tagging/category HTTP/1.1

vmware-api-session-id: b00db39f948d13ea1e59b4d6fce56389

For more details on the API sessions you can refer Common Infrastruture Services documentation.

Step 3 - Create your first Virtual Machine

You have been authenticated and have retrieved your API session ID. Now, you can create your first virtual machine using this API:

POST Create VM

Step 4 - Get details about your VM

Once your VM is created, you can get the details of your VM by passing VM identifier

GET Get VM

API Categories

Appliance

The Appliance APIs provides services for managing vCenter Appliance configuration.

Common Infrastructure Services(CIS)

The CIS APIs provide VMware common infrastructure services such as session management, tags, and task management.

Content

The Content APIs provide services to manage and configure content libraries.

ESX

The ESX APIs provide services related to host management, host provisioning, KMS, and many more.

Snapservice

The snapservice package provides services for configuring and managing vSAN protection groups and snapshots.

Note: Snapservice APIs support only the SAML bearer token based authentication.

Here are the steps to perform bearer token based authentication.

Acquire bearer token from the SSO : https://${VC}/sts/STSService
GZIP and BASE64 encode the token received from the SSO Execute HTTP request against endpoint including the following header.

 Authorization: SIGN token="{token}"

When the {token} goes into the Authorization header that contains the 'SIGN token=' value. Note that the 'Accept', 'Content-Type' and 'vmware-use-header-authn' headers are also required:

 Accept: application/json
 Content-Type: application/json
 vmware-use-header-authn: true

Example Snapservice About Info Request:

 POST https://${SANPSERVICE}/api/snapservice/info/about
 Accept: application/json
 Content-Type: application/json
 vmware-use-header-authn: true
 Authorization: SIGN token="H4sIAAAAAAAAANVZaW+j ...."

Examples of how the SAML based authentication is done in the Automation SDKs for Snapservice APIs :

Python: snap_service_client.py

Java: SnapserviceClient.java