Using web services through VBScript

[ChaitanyaS]

Hi,

I'm very much new to the VMware infrastructure.

1) In my application, I want to write a script (preferebly VBscript) which can consume the web services provided by ESX to clone the exsisting images and to do some basic operations like powern on, snapshot etc. Is it doable?

2) As per my understanding, the ESX web services and the vSphere services are same. Am i right?

3) Does vSphere web services need vSphere to be available actually?

Please forgive me if any of the questions does not make sense. Kindly guide me further.

[storm27 · Accepted solution]

Hi Chaitanya,

vSphere APIs provides a way of interfacing with the VMware infrastructure and these are exposed as web services on the ESX servers and Virtual center servers.

1) The vSphere Web Services SDK facilitates the development of the client applications that target the vSphere API. It allows building SOAP-based applications to control ESX Servers / vCenter Servers and virtual machines running on them.

You can write client applications either in Java or C#. vSphere web services SDK consists of WSDL files, sample code in Java and C#, various libraries, and all necessary components that are required to work with the vSphere APIs.

You can also use vSphere SDK for Perl which provides an easy-to-use Perl scripting interface to the vSphere API. SDK ships with utilities, and documentation for building vSphere management applications

2) Ya you are right ESX web services are actually vSphere web services. vSphere is bascially the name given to the latest 4.0 releases. Earlier it was VI SDK 2.5/2.0 and now it's vSphere web services SDK.

3) vSphere web services are exposed in the ESX servers so eventually you would need vSphere infrastruture at your end. Is this what were you asking?

Hope this information helps!

-Angela

[ChaitanyaS]

Thank you very mcuh for your answer.