Vcenter APIs

Vcenter APIs

The vcenter package provides services for managing VMware vSphere environments. The package is available starting in vSphere 6.5.

API Categories
Vm

The VM service provides operations for managing the lifecycle of a virtual machine.

Cluster

The Cluster service provides operations to deploy and undeploy a vCenter High Availability (VCHA) cluster, failover from the active VCHA node to the passive VCHA node, and retrieve the status of the VCHA cluster.

Datacenter

The Datacenter service provides operations to manage datacenters in the vCenter Server.

Datastore

The Datastore service provides operations for manipulating a datastore.

Deployment

The Deployment service provides operations to get the status of the vCenter appliance deployment.

Folder

The Folder service provides operations for manipulating a vCenter Server folder.

Host

The Host service provides operations to manage hosts in the vCenter Server.

Network

The Network service provides operations for manipulating a vCenter Server network.

ResourcePool

The ResourcePool service provides operations for manipulating a vCenter Server resource pool. This service does not include virtual appliances in the inventory of resource pools even though part of the behavior of a virtual appliance is to act like a resource pool.

System

The System service contains operations for negotiating API communication parameters including release ID. Software developers obtain a list of supported API release IDs from vCenter documentation or as part of the client library (SDK) they work with at the time they develop and test a solution. The software solution initiates a handshake by sending a prioritized list of release IDs supported by the solution. The server selects the first release ID it supports from the list.

Negotiating API release ID is necessary to use APIs utilizing inheritance based polymorphism. These include all VI/JSON APIs and a set of vSphere Automation APIs. vSphere Automation APIs that require API release ID state this in their documentation. Consult the Programming Guide and API reference documentation of specific operations for more information.