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caseyandgina
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Does vSphere need API manually enabled or is a license required?

Hi, I'm quite new to vSphere - I have set up the free version of vSphere 6.7 on a machine and set up a few VM's manually.  So far so good...

I'm now attempting to use some software that should work with vSphere's API, but it appears to be failing to successfully call the API.  This is somewhat of a guess I'm also new to this software (GitHub - chef/kitchen-vcenter: A test-kitchen driver for vCenter REST API ) and the debugging is not very good, but the debug log indicates that it is failing when it attempts to create a VM with an API call.

I wondered if there's a simple way I can manually check that the API is working as it should be, or perhaps there's just a configuration option I need to enable somewhere.  Or maybe this is only available in a paid version?

Thanks in advance for any insight!

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sjesse
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the rest api needs vcenter, see the name in the link you added, vsphere is not the same thing as vcenter. vCenter is not free, and requires a license. What you installed was esxi, vsphere is more esxi and vcenter combined

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sjesse
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the rest api needs vcenter, see the name in the link you added, vsphere is not the same thing as vcenter. vCenter is not free, and requires a license. What you installed was esxi, vsphere is more esxi and vcenter combined

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caseyandgina
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The link lists this requirement actually, not just vCenter:

  • VMware vCenter/vSphere 5.5 or higher
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sjesse
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vcenter is a component of vsphere. Look at this it explains it

VMware vSphere: Cheat sheet - TechRepublic

  • What is VMware vSphere? vSphere is made up of two components: the hypervisor and the management platform.

Esxi is where the vms live. vCenter is a management tool for managing multiple esxi servers from one interface and have some extra features, like the rest api, that are not available in the esxi hypervisor. The rest api is only available through vcenter

Its a common mistake to think the hyper-visor(where the vms run) is called sphere.

caseyandgina
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Okay, so I guess vCenter is in fact needed.  Do I need a commercial license for ESXi, or can I just add vCenter to it?  What's the minimum licensing cost to a viable solution?  Does vCenter require an additional host machine?

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sjesse
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Whats the purpose for this, your own learning, if so look at

https://www.vmug.com/vmug2019/membership/evalexperience

you can get licenses for a year for $200 for your own use. If this is for a company and its for production based workloads then you have to buy a license which you want to conact a local reseller directly to discuss. You can purchase it directly from vmware, and the cheapest version is essentials

VMware vSphere Essentials Kit

but there are higher versions that cost much more, but it depends on what you actually need.

caseyandgina
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The ESXi host is local at my home, nobody has or will have access to it but me.  I was hoping to use it as an alternative to running VirtualBox VM's on my laptop which is painfully slow.

I would be using it to do local development/testing for my job - they use Chef and I would use this to test recipe changes.

So I'm not sure if this counts as personal learning or not, as I would be using it in support of my work.  There is no production-level traffic - the ESXi server sits there completely idle most of the time.  I also have the option to use cloud provider VM's, but I feel a lot more comfortable with local stuff.

Secondarily though, my intention *IS* to learn a lot more about it, and one day I hope to start my own business - in that case, I believe these products would be something I would purchase full commercial licenses for at that point in time...

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sjesse
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I'm not expert on what qualifies as what is non production, if your concerned I think you can ask vmug directly

https://community.vmug.com/contactus

caseyandgina
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Thank you for the information - I will check out the possibilities further.

One small question - as I am reading about vSphere Essentials Kit, it states that it includes 6 CPU licenses, for 2 CPUs in each of 3 servers.  I only have one server, but it is multicore.  Do you know if the license is per-socket or per-core?

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sjesse
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In general for most vmware related products its per socket.

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