Types of Applications That You Can Build Using This SDK

The VMware vSphere Client application and VMware vSphere Web Access are two examples of client applications that were developed using vSphere API. The vSphere Client is a traditional Windows client application. Web Access is a browser plug-in that is available through the Web server port on ESXi and vCenter Server systems.

With the vSphere Web Services SDK, you can create your own client applications that automate many administration, provisioning, or monitoring tasks associated with virtual infrastructure management and operations. The following examples are operational tasks that you can automate using the vSphere Web Services API:

• Create, configure, power cycle, or suspend virtual machines explicitly or by using profiles or templates to facilitate faster provisioning.
• Create, configure, and manage virtual devices, such as virtual CD-DVD drives, virtual network interface cards, virtual switches, and other components.
• Connect, power cycle, and disconnect ESXi host systems.
• Capture the state of a virtual machine to a snapshot and restore the state of a virtual machine from a snapshot, such as in a backup application.
• Gather statistics about host system and virtual machine performance.
• Manage events generated by the server, such as those created by alarms set for specific thresholds.
• Move virtual machines between hosts automatically.
• Manage load balancing and failover through the distributed resource scheduler (VMware DRS) and high availability (VMware HA) subsystems. VMware DRS and VMware HA require vCenter Server.

This list is not comprehensive. Also, some of the operations pertain to the service as a whole, not specific hosts or virtual machines. For example, load balancing can be a service-wide operation rather than a per-host or per-virtual machine operation.