Questions from a Rookie

[jpatrick62]

Hello - I am a newbie to VMWare in general and VRO automation in particular, so please bear with me the following questions that I have.

1. In the API explorer of VR08, there are Types versus Objects. I have not been able to find an explanation as to the differences.

2. A javascript PROPERTIES object appears to be a Dictionary object from other languages - is this correct?

3. We are moving from VRO7 to VRO8. Some of the plugins - notably VCAC are no longer supported in VRO8. So I can see the VC:VirtualMachine in the API, but what replaces VCAC:VirtualMachine for VRO8? Is there a VRA VM object? Any hints on the VM object for VRO8?

Thanks!

[manoj-t]

Hey Rookie, 

Not sure if you have figured it already.. here's your answer:

1. Types are just classification in simple terms, where you see the Object and properties under it.

2. Object is the actual infra object that has some primitives like cpu/mem/size.. which are called properties. These properties could be used as your constructor in javascript.

3. A good question indeed.. since we had IaaS objects and VRA object during 7.x, vCAC existed, now I guess it's deprecated and the VRA:Machine seems to have most of the VRA level VM object properties while the VM level with VC:VirtulalMachine

Hope it helped!

[jpatrick62]

Manoj-t, thanks for the reply. So it appears that I can get a VRA8 VM collection of properties from the /iaas/api/machines/{id} IAAS API. That seems to provide all the necessary properties I need, However, there is a bit of an issue: If a user renames a VM in VCenter (for example from "MachineA" to "MachineB", I need to update VRA of this change. My plan was to use the PATCH operation /iaas/api/machines/{id} to change the "name" property. However, if you look at the API it says "Only description, tag, and custom property updates are supported." How am I to update the "name" property of the VRA VM?

[BrettK1]

I was wondering something similar to this myself today.

vRA seems to cope well with the VM being renamed in vSphere, but what Action can be kicked off to update something (for you 'name', for me 'CustomProperties: hostname') when an action is taken in vCenter?

The whole REST concept is still pretty new to me when it comes to working with information that way, so I currently wouldn't even know how to 'put' the new hostname (I'm sure I would figure it out eventually), but how does one trigger the action in the first place when the change is coming from outside vRA?