How to set vmGuestOsIdentifier within of a scriptable task?

[Aramaki]

Hello,

i am struggling with the fine-tuning of my workflow fo VM creation.

As you probably know, when creating a VM, the guestOS needs to be set.

At first, i've set the input type to vmGuestOsIdentifier, but this didn't look so nice, because the IDs aren't exactly like the original OS-names (e.g. "winLonghorn" is "Windows Server 2008 32-bit").

So i've created a list of all the OS names, that are being used on our VMs, set the input type to string and set the list as a list of predefined elements.

Nonetheless i still need to have a variable of the type vmGuestOsIdentifier which needs to be set, but now within a scriptable task.

And that's what i'm struggling with.

How can i set the the vmGuestOsIdentifier within a scriptable task?

Thanks and

Regards

Andreas

[mmarinov]

Hi Andreas,

If I understand you correct, you have a predefined list with all OS names (full description) you are using in your organization. As a result you need to find out how to get an individual OS's identified. If this is the case, the type VcVirtualMachineGuestOsIdentifier has a fromString method which will return you the correct OS identifier.

If I miss something, please elaborate further.

Regards,

--Martin

[Aramaki]

Hi Martin,

i already tried using the fromString method, but no matter how i use it, it always runs into an error.

I tried:

vmGuestOSID = VcVirtualMachineGuestOsIdentifier().fromString(vmGuestOsString) ;

This fails with: Cannot call method "fromString" of null

I also tried things like this:

vmGuestOSID.fromString(vmGuestOsString) ;

But this encounters the same error.

[mmarinov · Accepted solution]

HI Andreas,

My bad. I should carefully use the documentation. The purpose of the fromString method is to convert a well-known enum value to enum. For example, it can be used as

VcVirtualMachineGuestOsIdentifier.fromString("darwin64Guest")

This will result in

VcVirtualMachineGuestOsIdentifier.darwin64Guest

On other hand, because the description column http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vc-sdk/visdk41pubs/ApiReference/vim.vm.GuestOsDescriptor.Gue... from here should be localized thus the VC objects from the VC plugin,

the VC itself exposes the same values.Thus everybody that wants friendly names should handle it case-by-case.

So in your case since you have the friendly names, you should bind them to the specific VcVirtualMachineGuestOsIdentifier values. Ugly hack, but this is the current implementation. Sorry.

Regards,

--Martin

[colinj]

Since this is the very thing that I was looking for I thought I would follow up with an example to make sure that I understand this. The following code should give me the VcVirtualMachineGuestOsIdentifier object for the darwin64Guest guest OS.

var GuestOSID = new VcVirtualMachineGuestOsIdentifier();

GuestOSID = VcVirtualMachineGuestOsIdentifier.fromString("darwin64Guest");

I could then pass GuestOSID to a workflow that wanted a parameter of type VC:VirtualMachineGuestOsIdentifier that could then create a vm set up for that guest OS.

Is this what we are saying?

Thanks!

[qc4vmware]

I am attempting to do pretty much the same thing in a scriptable task but I keep getting an error when I run:

Unable to create object : VcVirtualMachineGuestOsIdentifier

Anyone have an idea what would be causing this to fail?

Paul

[MicahGaither]

I'm also getting:

Unable to create object : VcVirtualMachineGuestOsIdentifier

Were you able to resolve?

[cdecanini_]

Try this:

var virtualMachineGuestOsIdentifier = VcVirtualMachineGuestOsIdentifier.darwin64Guest;

Christophe.

[cdecanini_]

I mean

var virtualMachineGuestOsIdentifier = VcVirtualMachineGuestOsIdentifier.fromString("darwin64Guest");

Christophe.

[cdecanini_]

Also a sample workflow on how to make the presentation looks nicer to display OS names.

Christophe.