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wodge
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Adding custom properties from external source to existing vSphere Managed Entities

Hi,

I would like to display additional properties to existing vSphere managed entities (e.g. Hostsystem) in the H5/webclient. The additional properties are coming from another source (through an API).

From reading the documentation, I know that in the service layer I need to create a Data Service adapter. However, this comes in two forms:

1) Property Provider Adapter (PPA)

2) Data Provider Adapter (DPA)

I would like to know which of these (or both) I need to create?

I was thinking that I need to create a PPA because the documentation says this:

"Property Provider Adapters

You create a Property Provider Adapter to allow the Data Service to access new properties for existing 

vSphere objects, such as virtual machines or hosts. For example, your vSphere environment might contain 

custom virtual machines or hosts that provide extra properties not normally available through the Data

Service. You can create a Property Provider Adapter to extend the Data Service to fetch these additional

properties."

 

However, it also looks like a PPA can only be used to collect properties from vCenter?

 

Could you please advise what is the correct approach to being able to achieve this please? 

 

Many thanks.

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wodge
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I'm sorry it's a newbie question - but could anyone give just a quick response to point me in the right direction please?

Thank you

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laurentsd
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Property Provider Adapters are the simplest for getting new properties from vSphere objects.

See samples/vsphere-wssdk-service/src/main/java/com/vmware/samples/vspherewssdk/DataProviderImpl.java which defines custom VM and Host properties.

Data Property Adapters are a more advanced version of PPA, where you can handle different query types and object types (not just vSphere objects). See the Chassis samples for that.

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