By Alan Renouf, Sr. Product Line Manager, VMware
Today we are happy to announce the open sourcing of some of VMware’s key Software Development Kits (SDKs) allowing partners, automation engineers, DevOps teams and system admins a wealth of tooling to access the new vSphere Automation REST APIs.
Background
VMware vSphere has a large ecosystem of partners and tooling and applications built around its Application Programmable Interfaces (APIs). Feedback over the years and changes in technology have proven that the once popular SOAP protocol has been replaced by RESTful web services and simpler programmatic modeling of API resources.
In November 2016, VMware announced the availability of vSphere 6.5, as part of this release, one of the key new features was a REST based API as shown by VMware Executive Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, Ray O’Farrell on stage at VMworld 2016 Barcelona.
This API, designed with developers and automation in mind, provides a simplified and consistent way to access the features available in the API via multiple avenues including these SDKs.
This API currently covers the following features with more to be added in the future:
- VM Basic Lifecycle
- vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) Management APIs
- vCenter Tagging (Available since vSphere 6.0)
- vSphere Content Library (Available since vSphere 6.0)
APIs are just part of the story, VMware is focused on providing a simplified developer experience and extending the APIs to allow access to a wide breadth of API tooling including SDKs, Command Line Interfaces (CLIs), API explorers and workflow automation via vRealize Orchestrator. No matter what the language you program in or tool you use to automate, we at VMware want to provide you the programmatic interfaces to do your job!
Open Source SDKs
As part of the developer experience explained above, we are open sourcing the first of our “vSphere Automation SDKs” giving developers and automation focused admins access to download, contribute and give back to the community faster and easier than ever before.
The first SDKs to be released in this method are:
- vSphere Automation SDK for REST
This SDK includes detailed REST documentation, JavaScript and Postman (3rd party API development tool) samples and detailed documentation on how to easily and quickly integrate with the vSphere REST API.
- vSphere Automation SDK for Python
This SDK includes detailed Python documentation, Python Language bindings and detailed use case based Python samples showing how to easily and quickly integrate with the vSphere REST API.
More SDKs are planned to follow in the near future.
How do I get started?
Visit the new vSphere Automation SDKs GitHub landing page to get started with downloading and contributing back to the samples in these SDKs.
For more information make sure you check out the following blog posts:
- Getting started with the vSphere Automation SDK for REST
- Getting started with the vSphere Automation SDK for REST Part 2
We look forward to working with you and our Open Source SDKs!
