Which VMware API should I use? [closed]

Answer 1

I feel your pain. I'm sitting on a longer rant about how painful their APIs are, but I'll spare you. Here's what worked reasonably well for me (I am connecting directly to ESX boxes, but I think you should be able to build on this to get where you want to go):

(Edit: Formatting fixed)

1. Grab the vSphere PowerCLI here (previously called VI Toolkit (for Windows)); it includes the VMware.Vim API and the required underlying implementation classes that interface defers to (though naturally, the later is not obvious from reading the docs). Install it on your dev machine (this puts the .NET VMware.Vim implementation libraries in your Global Assembly Cache; we'll extract the libraries we care about for portability later)

2. Create a VS project, and throw in some hello world code.

   using VMware.Vim;
   
   //some namespace, some class, some method...
   
   VimClient c = new VimClient();
   ServiceContent sc = c.Connect("hostnameOrIpHere");
   UserSession us = c.Login("usernameHere", "passwordHere");
   
   IList<VMware.Vim.EntityViewBase> vms = c.FindEntityViews(typeof(VMware.Vim.VirtualMachine), null, null, null);
   foreach (VMware.Vim.EntityViewBase tmp in vms)
   {
       VMware.Vim.VirtualMachine vm = (VMware.Vim.VirtualMachine)tmp;
       Console.WriteLine((bool)(vm.Guest.GuestState.Equals("running") ? true : false));
       Console.WriteLine(new Uri(ENDPOINTURL_PREFIX + (vm.Guest.IpAddress != null ? vm.Guest.IpAddress : "0.0.0.0") + ENDPOINTURL_SUFFIX));
       Console.WriteLine((string)vm.Client.ServiceUrl);
       Console.WriteLine(vm.Guest.HostName != null ? (string)vm.Guest.HostName : "");
       Console.WriteLine("----------------");        
   

   }

3. If that works and prints out some info about your VMs then so far, so good. If you see something like System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'VimService40, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, Public KeyToken=10980b081e887e9f' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. then you know you don't have the actual implementation files installed: VMware.Vim.dll is just the interface, and the actual per-protocol implementations are in files like VimService40.dll that you should have gotten with step 1.

4. Once you want to deploy this code somewhere, you have to send the actual implementation dlls with it (again, VMware.vim.dll isn't sufficient). You can use the command line (not Explorer, it won't work) to copy them out of the Global Assembly Cache.

   Get VimService DLL from GAC:

   cd %windir%\assembly\GAC_MSIL
   cp VimService20\2.0.0.0__10980b081e887e9f\VimService20.dll %HOMEDRIVE%\%HOMEPATH%\Desktop
   cp VimService20.XmlSerializers\2.0.0.0__10980b081e887e9f\VimService20.XmlSerializers.dll %HOMEDRIVE%\%HOMEPATH%
   cp VimService25\2.5.0.0__10980b081e887e9f\VimService20.dll %HOMEDRIVE%\%HOMEPATH%\Desktop
   cp VimService25.XmlSerializers\2.5.0.0__10980b081e887e9f\VimService20.XmlSerializers.dll %HOMEDRIVE%\%HOMEPATH%
   ... etc, for all the VimService versions you might use ...
   

5. When you deploy your code to another machine, put those DLLs in the same folder (or on the path) and you should have a decent basis for building and deploying code that works with ESX boxes.