VMware vSphere Automation SDK for Perl 6.5 Release Notes

VMware vSphere Automation SDK for Perl 6.5 | 15 November 2016 | Build 4571819

Check for additions and updates to these release notes.

This document contains the following sections:

Overview

The VMware vSphere Automation SDKs provide support for your client application infrastructure with services to perform management operations in your vSphere environment. The vSphere Automation SDK for Perl also contains samples that demonstrate how the libraries work with other vSphere APIs.

The version 6.5 SDK enables programmatic access to the following services:

  • Service discovery using Lookup Service
  • Authentication (Single Sign-On)
  • Session management
  • Tagging
  • Content Library
  • Virtual Machines
  • vCenter Server Appliance management

Note:  Single Sign-On authentication is available through the VMware vCenter Single Sign-On API. Service discovery is available through the Lookup Service API.

Distribution Kit

When you extract the contents of the vSphere Automation SDK for Perl distribution kit, you see the following directory structure:

    VMware-vSphere-Automation-SDK-Perl-6.5.0/
        client/
        docs/
        SDK-EULA.txt
        README

You can download the vSphere Automation SDK for Perl distribution kit from the VMware Developer Center.

What's New

This release of vSphere 6.5 included the following new features:

  • vCloud Suite SDK for Perl is now renamed to vSphere Automation SDK for Perl.
  • Creating a content library backed by a file storage URI is not supported. When you create a content library and specify a Windows Shared Folder as a storage backing, note that the file URI format is not supported and you should use smb://unc-server/path instead of file://unc-server/path.
  • Creating a subscribed content library with a file subscription URL is not supported. When you create a subscribed library you can use an HTTP or HTTPS subscription URL. The new URI schemes supported for this release are NFS, SMB, and DS. For more information about the supported URI formats, see the API Reference documentation.
  • Virtual Machine Management APIs that enable developers to manage the lifecycle and configure the hardware of a virtual machine.
  • The Tagging API is more powerful, including improved search methods and bulk tagging capability.
  • vCenter Server Appliance Management APIs that enable developers to create client applications to configure, monitor, and manage the vCenter Server Appliance.

Resolved Issues

The following issues are resolved for this release:

  • Attempts to run the samples provided in the vSphere Automation SDK for Perl fail

    Before you install the vSphere Automation SDK for Perl, you must already have the vSphere SDK for Perl installed on your client platform. If you have installed the vSphere SDK for Perl version 6.5 and try to run the samples from the vSphere Automation SDK for Perl 6.5, the samples fail to start. An error message similar to the following is logged: 

    Undefined subroutine &LookupService::get_ssourl_from_lookupservice

    The vSphere SDK for Perl version 6.5 includes a new method for retrieving the URL of the Single Sign-On service which is not implemented in the vSphere Automation SDK for Perl 6.5 samples.

    Workaround:

    Use the vSphere SDK for Perl version 6.0 Update 2 to run the samples included in the vSphere Automation SDK for Perl 6.5.

Known Issues

The following issues were discovered during testing.

  • Running VMware vSphere Automation SDK for Perl 6.5 samples on Windows fails with an error

    If you try to run VMware vSphere Automation SDK for Perl 6.5 samples on Windows, you receive an error message of type: (pythondll) failed. The specified module could not be found.

    Workaround:

    Copy python27.dll from <vCLI_install_directory>/bin to <vCLI_install_directory>/Perl/lib/VMware.

  • Internal Server Error if Tagging Description Field is Empty

    The Tag Category Description field is optional in the vSphere Web Services API, but it is mandatory in the vSphere Automation SDK. Therefore, if the description field is empty, the vSphere Automation SDK can return an internal server error that states, "the ‘description’ field of the Category model is empty".

    Workaround:

    When creating tags, do not leave the description field empty. If you do not have any description, you may add a whitespace character (i.e. space).

  • Unauthenticated exception following long-running operation

    After an API client completes a long-running operation, such as an upload to the content library, the next operation might fail with an "Unauthenticated exception" message. This happens if the long running operation did not complete within the lifetime of the authentication session.

    Workarounds:

    • Keep the session alive by issuing short operations on another thread until the long running operation completes.
    • Increase the session length using the VMware vSphere Web Client. Select Administration > System Configuration > Services > vAPI Endpoint > Manage > General, and increase the value for the Maximum session idle time.
  • Perl async call limitations

    Some of the key CPAN modules are not thread-safe. They may crash the Perl interpreter during execution, or may dump core memory on termination.

    To work around these difficulties, the vSphere Automation SDK for Perl creates long lived threads to handle async calls. On most systems, frequent and continual creation and destruction of async calls can lead to an ever-increasing number of threads that increases the memory footprint of the Perl interpreter. It is a best practice to not use Perl async calls frequently.

  • Limitation with certificate validation

    The samples in the vSphere Automation SDK for Perl do not perform certificate validation for Single Sign-On endpoints. The samples do validate certificates from other service endpoints.

  • Sample tagging_workflow.pl fails for M2Nx configuration.

    The tagging_workflow.pl sample in the Perl SDK fails if you run it with more than one management node. It displays the following error message:

    Multiple management node found on server.

    The sample assumes there is only one management node available, and it does not provide a command-line argument to select from more than one node.

    Workaround:

    None